Guildmaster O’Bannon looked over the whole display, both of us ignoring everyone else inspecting what I’d laid out. He was thinking hard.

“Those arcs of influence are important,” he finally said, staring at them.

“They are,” I agreed.

“What are they?” he conceded.

Instead of a direct reply, I took the Holo down, and put up a new one. This one was filled with renditions of patterns of greenish light, all extending off a common point.

There were six of them, and they all extended off in different directions. It was only a Startrail each, but there seemed to be some sort of common variation among them.

“Water Magic!” he hissed with certainty. “That... and that!” he pointed out, identifying two of them after having learned Surfing and knowing the Basic Spell, Water Shield.

I radiated lines out from the starting Star through the endpoints. Everyone around blinked as suddenly they were looking at a six-sided starpoint. The sphere grew from one of them, and precisely expanded out to touch the exact same endpoints of the lines on all of the other spells.

The arcs of the spells drew themselves in, and the experts all around sucked in a breath as all those arcs touched perfectly, expanding out to devour the vast majority of the sphere, the borders oozing together in the empty spots between them.

Two of the lines, those Master O’Bannon knew, lit up. He swore as a third of the sphere’s directions were active, but the entire outer area beyond the end of his spell remained empty and uncolored.

“The ratio of area unused to area used... what is it?” he asked quickly.

The spells all lit up as they were energized, and the Tier-Two and Tier-Three adjustments to the spells were made more evident. They watched all the spells shift in tandem, swearing at the new starpoints and how they all moved perfectly to keep a balance between them.

The Tier-Three spells were much closer to the edge of the sphere, but obviously weren’t going to match a straight-shot spell.

“What... does learning the spell from the Spellhouse, instead of normally, do?” a spectacled fellow spoke up. I glanced at him, matched him with the list of invitees as Xavier Camdon, an MIT Fellow who was one of those involved in the new Water Mage curriculum project.

The lengths between the Stars of the adjusted Surfing Pattern extended, while keeping the same form, and touched the last part of the Sphere.

They all sighed despite themselves. “That maximizes the energy you can harvest from a Novice Spell,” O’Bannon began, and I held up a hand.

“No.” He blinked at my words. “Or rather, yes, that is true... for a Novice. As soon as you bring Will into play, however...”

The line through the adjusted Surfing suddenly extended, reflecting the additional length and power of the links between the Stars, and then Will began to act on those Stars, reducing the area of play sharply. The Startrail naturally lengthened along a new paradigm, the Stars swinging wildly about that line as they rebalanced under the impetus of ever more Will acting on them, drawing closer and closer to an ideal angle and positioning in a larger sphere.

“Thus, an Archmage tosses a Novice spell with greater force than a Novice, as his Will forces the flow of Mana into an ever-more perfect stream, instead of these odd swirls and interactions between your Stars.” The Holo gleamed once and evaporated. They sighed, just before the prior Fire Sphere and its much more complicated spell arose.

A Hunter with the Aura of the Fire Element spoke up quickly, “You’re saying... we’re not using the vast majority of the power of the spell here, with all that empty area?”

“Correct.”

“And... there’s five other spells there, representing the other starpoints?” a middle-aged woman threw out.

Question Marks popped up on all five Sides of the first Star as the view zoomed in. Five Startrails spun out of that central point, and the Starpoint of balance blew through all of them, in yet another perfect sphere of Spells known and unknown to them.

As soon as the Adept spell of the Fiery Fist was added on, the Starpoints shifted around, of course, but 5/6 of the Sphere of Power was still tantalizingly empty.

“What about Archmage?” O’Bannon asked me, intensely interested in all this. “I can demonstrate...” he trailed off as I whipped up the basic Water Shield, advanced it to Violent Waves, then to Flower Sky’s Constellation, and to his and everyone else’s astonishment, exploded it out to Water Holocaust’s full Star Palace.

Lines and arcs were drawn, but the major surprise was when the effects of Will were manifested on the spell. The width of the Cone of Possibility flared out to fill nearly half the sphere, eating into the potential Starpoint areas to every side of the basic spell!

O’Bannon’s eyes were not on what was possible, but on what was not. Perhaps not at all coincidentally, the arcs of control did not include any of the other Starpoints, and nothing of the spell on the opposite side at all. It meant that there were spell effects that a one-spell Water Archmage simply could not devise.

Still, it was a clear display of the enormous versatility an Archmage could get out of just the one spell Humanity knew!

“Sagedom?” he challenged me.

“Irrelevant at that point. All the spells are one to a Sage, although it is still true that a pure spell effect down the starpoints will have more power than one that has to loop around to imitate it, such as it is.” I waved my hand dismissively as the Holo faded out. “This isn’t about doing much for the top-end, as they don’t need the help. It’s trying to bring up the floor, not raise the ceiling.”

“Which,” O’Bannon asked shortly, “of the spells is opposite Water Holocaust?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, making fluttering motions above my head. “The relationships are not static. It’s possible that something opposed at Novice Level is easily duplicated at a higher one. It’s hard to tell since there is very little overlap until Magery... but my guess is Water Breathing.”

All the Water Mages sort of blinked. “That... seems unusual. Lasting underwater indefinitely is one of the hallmarks of a Water Mage,” O’Bannon said carefully.

“Mmm. Hence why it was the least popular of the Scrolls to fill up, and some are even passing on it altogether, figuring it is unnecessary. And yet...” I smiled cheerfully, and they all had the feeling they were missing something important.

“It’s a physical transformation!” piped up one of the younger Mages listening in, and all eyes turned his way. He blinked at being the sudden center of attention. “The spell actually physically alters you so your lungs process water, your skin doesn’t rot with too much water, your blood can deal with pressure changes, and your eyes are adjusted to see underwater. They are actual physical changes! This is all on top of the ability to just draw some oxygen out of the water! The spell even has a duration, you can just Cast it and forget about it for a long period of time!

“The second and third Tiers had more physical transformations. Your hands and feet become webbed, and your body changes to a more streamlined form when in water, plus you develop gills and you get stronger and more flexible so you can swim with much less effort,” he went on enthusiastically. “It’s nothing like controlling the water to swim around, except it does stack with it! I was much faster and smoother, more controlled underwater with Water Breathing up than without it. I even posted my take on the spell online, if you all want to read it, with some photos of some of the changes!”

He quickly had a bunch of mages pulling out their phones and going to his website, adding to his hitcount quickly, including O’Bannon.

I, of course, did not need that at all. I knew exactly what the spell did. I’d seen a lot of lists and descriptions of Water spells and effects, but none that actually claimed Water was transformative. It was all about controlling the water as exo-shells and stuff.

The Adept Tier of that line of spells actually let an Adept transform themselves into water, making themselves a false Elemental, albeit not a very powerful one... or possibly take on the form of an Aquatic Beast they had a Token made out of.

Direct body transformation spells and effects were not common, and often involved borrowing the bodies or powers of Magic Beasts to make such a transformation, a rare and very secretive brand of magic kept private by certain Families who had made their reputations off of it.

The fact that a Novice-tier spell fell into that category stunned a lot of the Water Mages here!

“So, does the Archmage of Water know any spells with a Water basis that transform him?” I asked Guildmaster O’Bannon leadingly.

He looked up at me sharply, running quickly through a long history of association with other Water mages. He glanced around once at the thoughtful expressions of the others here, many of whom he knew personally and professionally.

Very slowly, they all shook their heads. “I’ve only ever seen a Sage do something like that, transforming themselves into an awesomely tall and powerful being of living Water for a fight, and it was hard to tell if they were doing that, or just surrounding themselves in a living shell of Water and making up a mighty Beast of Water about themselves,” O’Bannon admitted. “The idea of a total transformation or something would likely not even occur to them, their mastery of Water being so high.”

“Their thinking was constrained by the limitations of their lower Levels, and they were not even trying to push into different uses, only more powerful and flexible versions of what they could already do.” I shrugged, then brought up the Archmage-class Sphere of Possibility. “Note you expand into about forty percent of the other four Starpoints, meaning over half of what is possible with those Starpoints is still out of reach.”

O’Bannon’s smile was suddenly very amused. “And I imagine you can’t learn a higher version of the spell without knowing the lower one...” he chuckled, as did all those people around.

I just shrugged. “I’m not making judgement calls on which spells are useful and which are not.” Meaning that once word spread, desire for Water Breathing was going to pop, and those who’d skipped it could only wait their turn.

“The ability to make our lesser mages more effective in water will be very effective in the Boonies,” O’Bannon remarked rather loudly, and everyone around nodded slowly at that observation.

“I’m sure that was not one of the reasons I put the Spellhouse here,” I nodded once, and the Guildmaster of the Boston Hunter’s Guild chuckled in grim appreciation for my forethought.

------

I watched the money flowing in, my accounts rising, and the money flowing out equally quickly as Sama and Briggs began to tap it in turn.

Another six thousand people at a thousand dollars a pop per day. It was a lot of revenue, and the mages were giving it to me gladly, even for the slightly upgraded version of the Water Shield they all already knew.

The delighted calls for the Adept spells were nonstop, of course. Many sharp-eyed mages had seen the KIA members tossing around spells that no one was familiar with, and which weren’t listed anywhere.

People who joined the KIA Team, now under Sama and Briggs’ Coralost team, were also seen to be quickly using spells that they hadn’t had access to before. It didn’t take long before the careful requests for information on joining the organization became a deluge.

But that was absolutely fine. We needed more people, it was a given, but we didn’t want those who wouldn’t want to stay, so turning away some powerful and gifted people was something Briggs and Sama did without the slightest hesitation, sometimes to their great disbelief...