[I'm coming too!] Guinevere called.

  [It's just Fire magic,] Caen sent back. [But you're welcome to join us.]

  [Sweet!]

  Caen and Zeris had made plans to practice with Ardor, but they'd been busy with other pursuits. Ever since she'd learned how to Impassion her fire, Caen's mind had been contemplating what a shared spell with doubled Impassioning might look like.

  Caen sat with his back to an awakened tree stump and watched the Aperture as he replenished his reserves.

  [To your right!] he called to Zeris as she walked through. He connected to her, laughing at the way she'd jumped.

  “Ancestors! Don't startle me like that! This place is somehow more eerie when it's quiet.”

  There were still a few people out here at the front zone, but no Cutter or Attacker teams that Caen could discern, which meant that no ants were chittering or cutting equipment whirring.

  Caen conjured tiny sparks of fire above his palm, having them dance slowly in a twirling pattern.

  Zeris gave him a strange look. “Who are you Mimicking to do that? Because I'm not using any Fire right now.”

  “You, actually,” he said, making the sparks twirl in the opposite direction. “It's getting much easier to imitate inactive thread clusters.” It also helped that he'd Mimicked her Fire affinity many times already.

  “Huh. Good for you. That'll be rather convenient at the trials,” she said.

  Guinevere walked out of the Aperture and joined them. Caen dismissed his sparks, and they all moved to the edge of the front zone—as far away as they could get from the Aperture without entering into the midst of the unfelled trees—and sat around some stumps there. The surrounding holes in the ground were sealed with grates.

  “So what exactly is this about?” Guinevere asked, leaning her elbows on the stump behind her.

  “Our second bloodline lets us share fire spells,” Zeris said.

  “Oh. The Fire one you guys used in the tunnels. So lucky!"

  "I've gotten a much better understanding of it, and we want to experiment some more," Zeris said.

  “Can you share Fire spells with anyone besides each other?”

  “I don't think so,” Caen said. He honestly suspected that he might be able to, but testing out something like that would require him to explain the mechanics of Mimicry to another Aialda Fire practician.

  “I'll start small,” Zeris said, conjuring a small orb of fire in front of her and applying modifiers to make it spin slowly. She told Caen what modifiers she'd used even as she Impassioned the orb of flame. Glowing streaks of purple, pink, and red danced and twirled within the orb. Caen added his intention to her spell and Impassioned the orb of fire.

  Immediately, a ghostly spell imprint was imposed on his mind, and he began performing the components for the same spell. A spell imprint was the diagnostic element in a visualization that gave you information about the spell you'd just cast. It was incredibly complex and difficult to parse, but most practicians learned to glean basic information about their spells from it.

  “The spell construct is unstable,” Zeris said, and the next moment, the spell winked out.

  “Okay. Impressions of dissymmetry and instability again,” Caen said. “We need to synchronize the Impassioning, I think.”

  In answer, Zeris conjured another small orb of flame. To this, she applied the previous modifiers to make it rotate.

  This time, they Impassioned the spell at about the same time. When the imprint appeared in Caen's mind, he quickly cast the same spell, applying the relevant modifiers, and the imprint grew more stable—as firm as a spell he'd cast properly.

  The orb of fire pulsed with the colors of purple, pink, and red. It was much brighter than he thought it should have been and also heavier on his mind and spirit than he'd expected. A waft of warmth washed over them.

  “How hot is that thing exactly?” Guinevere asked, squinting at the orb of fire.

  “Really hot, probably,” Zeris said, laughing. “Let's try using an actual fireball, something much larger than this.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Caen nodded, then halted. “Actually, I—”

  The spell construct grew very unstable, and the orb of fire began to swell. Zeris had already dismissed her half of the spell construct.

  “Uh… is that supposed to happen?” Guinevere asked, standing up and backing away.

  Caen was already layering modifiers on the crumbling spell construct to send it away from them as fast as he could while they all scrambled backwards in the opposite direction.

  Not even three seconds later, the orb exploded with a muted bang, packing more concussive force than something of that caliber should have had.

  Even from so many yards away, the hot air ruffled his hair.

  “Holy shit!” Guinevere looked at the two of them. “What was that?”

  “A very fortuitous spell malfunction,” Zeris said, turning to Caen. “I thought we agreed to dismiss the spell together.”

  “We did,” Caen said. “I had an idea that made me pause. Now, though, I have two ideas. Whatever that was just now, we need to try reproducing it.”

  Zeris laughed. “That goes without saying. What was the first thing you were thinking about?”

  “I wanted to see if I could undo my Impassioning of the orb. But we can just do that later. I'm more excited about the explosion. Also, I think we should try having me cast the spell first this time.”

  “Go right ahead,” Zeris said.

  Caen cast the spell this time, announcing what modifiers he'd used. It wouldn't matter if Zeris couldn't Impassion his own fire, but he suspected that she might be able to.

  Mimicry was most likely the reason why they could even share spells in the first place, though he'd yet to figure out why or even how exactly. Ardor had to be pulling its own weight here, though. It was well known that conceptual bloodlines had all sorts of strange effects, and he'd already read some unbelievable stories about Ardor. Caen was starting to think that it was possible to exploit the inherent weirdness of Ardor to explain away… certain things about what he could do through Mimicry. It was worth thinking over.

  Caen and Zeris spent a moment discussing how to approach the Impassioning.

  The mechanics were straightforward: Caen had cast the spell, intending not just to have it Impassioned but to share it. There was a willingness on both ends.

  As swirling streaks of Passionfire infested the fireball, brightening their vicinity significantly, Caen also joined his will to the fireball and Impassioned alongside Zeris. The spell grew unstable that very instant, and Caen announced this to her promptly.

  Zeris was already casting the spell herself. Caen could tell when she'd succeeded because the spell imprint in his own mind stabilized. But, surprisingly, it did not weigh any less than it had a moment ago. It was so much hotter than it had been before being Impassioned; hotter than if he'd Impassioned it alone, even.

  "Wow, this is heavy," Zeris said. "I suppose if we're both shouldering the weight of the spell, it wouldn't matter with two times the Impassioning involved."

  “Okay, so how did we stumble our way into that explosion last time?” Caen mused. “You dismissed your own portion of the spell construct, and that caused a critical instability.”

  Based on past events, Caen assumed that both of them owned or possessed a part of the spell. Every time they'd shared a spell before now, it had terminated either by collapsing or both of them dismissing it at the same time.

  “It usually just winks out harmlessly every time we don't apply modifiers simultaneously,” Zeris said. “Why is this different?”

  Caen thought back to the Fire practician he'd fought in the woods several weeks ago. Caen had Impassioned the man's fireball, which had exploded a moment later. He'd gotten leverage somehow through a mix of Mimicry and Ardor shenanigans to Impassion the man's flame. Though, of course, they hadn't actually shared the spell. Had the man tried to dismiss his own spell after Caen had Impassioned it?

  “Let's just try what we did last time,” Caen said. It had been a fluke, but many good discoveries were made that way. “I'll dismiss it from my end this time, while you maintain your portion of the spell construct.”

  As soon as Caen dismissed the spell, the fireball began to swell dangerously.

  Zeris sent it hurtling into the air. The explosion lit up the night sky of the Odaton-plane Plane, brightening the world for just an instant.

  Caen laughed excitedly, and Zeris cackled like an evil Spirit-healer from the stories.

  “The two of you are really fucking crazy,” Guinevere said.

  “Well, crazy attracts crazy,” Zeris said, reaching for her.

  Guinevere dodged out of the way, laughing. “Again?” she asked them.

  “You catch on quick,” Caen said.

  They spent the next hour testing out the other thing Caen wanted to try. He was pleased to learn that he could, in fact, dispel his… Ardor? He wasn't quite sure if it was dismissal or reabsorption. He could, at the very least, undo the effects of Passionfire, removing his Impassioning and returning his flame to a regular one.

  When he and Zeris did this simultaneously, they also returned their shared spell to its regular orange hue. Though, of course, undoing Passionfire separately caused the spell construct to collapse safely.

  Even with all their light shows, they hadn't drawn any ants. Caen cast a paralysis spell on a nearby awakened tree after placing a hand on one of its roots. Ants streamed out from a hole close to them. Then he and Zeris bathed them with double Passionfire. The strain was just about as much as if Caen—with a boosted affinity—used Passionfire on his own.

  But it was far more effective than he'd predicted. Guinevere hadn't even needed to step in. The fire was just that much hotter and clung stubbornly to the ants.

  They also used their improvised explosives a few times, and the results were beyond expectations.

  “I really wish you'd figured this out in the tunnels,” Guinevere said.

  “Your siblings might not have been able to find our corpses intact,” Caen replied.