We returned to the cottage, and spent the rest of the night studying through the various materials we’d brought. I didn’t even touch the sixth circle booklets I had, not with only a week to study. Instead, I split my focus between arcane wall and Yushin’s ritual. Arcane wall was simply a useful spell, being far more battle-useful than wall of stone, and capable of taking hits from powerful creatures. I wasn’t sure I’d reached the point where I could learn it while casually spending a week doing other things, but progress was progress. Yushin’s ritual, on the other hand, was continually polished, expanded, and perfected. I was glad that Martha Shé had agreed to foot the bill for the ether crystal, because as things were, I was well past certain that I didn’t have the reserves to cast the spell.

  As the evening wound on, we used create food and water to create our dinner, I created a single spellglyph for the following morning, and we broke off into watch shifts. There wasn’t much that would be able to break through the defensive wall of stone and protective runes, but we felt better keeping someone posted than not. The following morning, once all of our spirits were less wrung out from the constant channeling of so much ether, I began my preparations with the help of Yushin and Salem. Yushin cast spells on me to hide me from sight and scent, while Salem did his best to layer a spell around me that would make me be ignored. It probably wasn’t perfect, as a thermal sense wasn’t something he’d needed to work his spell around before, but it was better than nothing. I pulled Seren into my ether pool as they did, since he was literally made of fire, and hiding his heat signature would be significantly more difficult than it would be for me.

  While they worked, I also worked on spells of my own. Most of them, I couldn’t cast now, as they wouldn’t last the slow flight up the mountain while hiding from the hundreds of turkey-like monsters, but I mentally went over them, and spun my ether into their shapes for practice before pulling the ether back into my pool. I’d be casting a life barrier as soon as I got within range of the stronger obsidian shards. It wouldn’t protect me from any ranged bloodline attacks like fire breath, but it would stop them from just leaping onto me. I’d be weaving a shield from arrows spell, since that did protect from most solid projectiles, not just arrows. An energy barrier spell would accompany it, tuned to the lava lake creatures of this plane. Ordinary shield spells, which I’d need to reinforce with dragonfire, would serve as yet another layer of protection I’d cast when I arrived near the top of the basin. I had a few retributive curses in mind, but the main one was a simple bad luck spell. I’d make it intense, short lived, and only targeting those who tried to prey on me. Suffering curses to burn out their bloodlines or sealing curses to lock them away would be great if I had the time to study them, or if I was planning to try and kill them, but I was doing neither. Far more important for me was simply not dying. Summoning magic to be used for a distraction, orb of air to help me breathe, and ethersight to help me identify the strongest stones. Finally, there was the one thing I could do now: I cast greater arcane armor, and then infused it with dragonfire. The force magic molded around me like full plate armor, and I reached into my locker to touch the spellglyphed sheet of paper: my escape plan.

  I had debated using haste as well. It was a powerful spell, and incredibly useful, but the snapback effect was too dangerous. If I lost control of the spell and was slowed, I’d be a fish fry – only it would be the fish that did the frying.

  With that, I set off, conjuring only a single air elemental to hide the currents of air around me. I was walking up the mountain on foot, using some of my enhanced physicality to make the trek easier, and since the hot stones beneath my feet didn’t particularly bother me. Scaling to the top did take some time, but it wasn’t absurd, especially since I did use flyte a handful of times on some more insurmountable cliffs. When I finally reached the point where I could see the top of the volcano, and the metaphorical eye of the hurricane where the birds avoided, I pulled out my staff and began to cast.

  Magic circled around me, and within moments, a collection of forms appeared. Six workers, with one leader, and each and every one of them an ant. I raised my hand and spoke, relying on true tongue to communicate my desires. I was just glad that Yushin and Salem’s spells meant that, as I was their summoner, they could see and hear me.

  “Hello, ant friends,” I said. “I would like to ask you to take on a task that is fairly dangerous. If you agree, then when I return to my world, I will use the worldmerchant spell to grant each of you a jar of honey.”

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  The ants' antennae all bolted straight up into the air, and the leader spoke. The mouth of the ant didn’t move, but I understood what she was saying regardless.

  “What task is this?!”

  “I need to collect some stones from up there,” I said, gesturing. “But there are many dangerous beings protecting it. I will cast defensive spells, and you will circle around, climbing just within the ring of the basin and firing your acid at them as a distraction, while I collect the obsidian.”

  “Why do you need obsidian?” one of the worker ants asked. Her voice, though again it did not come from her mouth, was noticeably younger and more childlike.

  “It’s a magical obsidian, and it’ll be used for my friend and I for more magic,” I explained, trying to keep it fairly high-level and broad. “Like I said, this is risky. That’s why I’m bartering. There’s a good chance your bodies will die, and you’ll return to your home.”

  Whatever I said, it must have been the right thing, as their antennae shot upwards as one again, and all seven of them spoke as one, their non-vocal voice making my nose hurt.

  “We will die for the colony!”

  “Only in this case, it’s your colony,” the leader added. “Yes, this is acceptable. When shall we begin?”

  “As soon as I’ve finished my spells,” I instructed, then turned my attention to doing just that. As soon as I had, the ants scurried off, moving with shocking speed. I rushed up the last bit of the hill, spinning my shields around me, and watched as the ants climbed down the side. They maneuvered through the terrain and sharp bits of glass like they were born to it, and immediately began to pelt acid down into the lake of lava. I leapt forward, jumping over a jagged spike of obsidian sharp enough to slice me in half, caught myself on a small flat area, and leapt again, using a touch of the flyte spell to assist in the jumps.

  Small fish began to leap from the water, and I could see the cords of lava tethering them into the lake this time. Before, I’d thought it looked like a strange perversion of a fishing line, but a horrifying thought struck me now. With the flow of magic between the lava and the fish, it was less a fishing line, and more like an umbilical cord.

  I flew closer to the ground and raised my wand, starting the chant for life barrier. Even with most of the spell stored within my wand, it was such an expansively long spell that I needed to do a little bit now. As I did, I watched the ants. They used their acid to defend against the first couple of leaping small fish, but when a larger one exploded from the water, one of the ants was sent back to its home plane in a flash of light. Another larger one leapt, and this time a combined volley of four acid shots knocked it back down, but more and more of the medium sized fish were attacking. Another ant down, leaving five left.

  Life barrier sprung up around me then, the far end of the spell just touching the gently lapping waves of the lava. I bolted down to the edge of the lava and began to scan for rocks, even as another ant died. Four remaining. The first stones I could see glowing in my ether sight were fifth and sixth circle respectively, and I swept them into my hand, hissing as they stung even my heat-resistant flesh.

  Another ant died. Three. I swept my gaze along the shoreline. When I’d been looking through Nurin’s eyes, I knew I’d seen several that were seventh circle… There! I snatched it up, choking down a shout from the actual pain these caused. If the sixth circle stone had been a sensation like stinging nettles, this was a normal person placing their hand on a hot stove.

  Now only two ants remained, but a bigger problem was starting to emerge. A fin broke the surface of the water as the massive shark emerged, and I could feel the spell that Salem had used to hide me from the creatures heat senses starting to buckle. I frantically swept my gaze around, before spotting a stone among the lava. As the shark killed both of the remaining ants, I raised my wand and felt the spell around me snap. I mumbled words to a spell, even as creatures began to leap at me. Small and medium fish alike slammed against the life barrier, and I continued to speak the spell, going for speed over anything.

  Then the shark struck. It leapt from the lava, and I had a second to realize that it truly was a beautiful creature, before it slammed into my life barrier. It was stopped, despite having truly immense power, but it continued to hover in the air. Light gathered in the back of its mouth as its bloodline activated.

  My spell finished, and the stone teleported into my arms, where I was cradling the others. I spun my three shields, and one shattered as I reached into my locker and dropped my wand inside. The second exploded as I reached for the sheet of paper. The third was destroyed as I pulled the sheet out into reality. Even through the other defenses, I knew that if that stream touched me, I would die. I poured dragonfire into my buckler and swung it around, interposing it between the breath and me.

  “Egg!” I shouted, which was the command word to activate the spellglyph. As the powerful shark’s lava breath punched through the buckler, I vanished, appearing a thousand feet up in the air.

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