Kendra took advantage of the sorcerer’s distraction to charge Flaro, swinging with her staff and following him through the air with her foothold armor. The pelatia wizard was forced to shift focus, dodging away.

Drazaria rolled back to avoid the Companion’s antlers, magic around his arms and legs quickly shifting from red to teal reactive barriers. He hadn’t fought the magical animal for a while and took stock while dodging it - Owal was facing off against Jax, the Guardian looking frustrated by thons constant dodging and taunts. Heline kept Tedi busy, both focused on more basic duel forms - barriers and attack blasts. Their individual skills showed through in small ways - Heline using her vines and throwing in the occasional illusionary feint, Tedi making his barrier mines to make footwork difficult.

Drazaria found himself pressed towards their fight as he dodged the Companion’s antlers, and had to watch for the further spread barrier mines as he did.

Testing a theory, he used magic to open his senses to animal speech - it wouldn’t do much, but it would confirm whether or not the Companion was susceptible to magic that affected animals. Construct companions weren’t, but since this one was previously a familiar, it could be.

Do you think speaking to me will make me less aggressive? the Companion asked immediately, pausing its attack to glare.

No, Drazaria replied, taking the reprieve. He was impressed by its eloquence - clearly, it was more intelligent than the average animal. Not terribly surprising, but unexpected.

You cannot manipulate me like you do the children, the Companion growled, I know my purpose.

Good for you, Drazaria thought back, mind racing with possibilities - then a ball of lavender magic appeared between him and the Companion.

“I think we could use some new dance partners, don’t you all agree?” Flaro called out, suddenly floating above everyone - and with a wave of his fan, he sent distortions flying into everyone, swapping their positions at random.

Drazaria found himself now standing across from Tedi and scowled - of all the teens, he was the only one he couldn’t even pretend to fight.

“Oh no,” Tedi lamented, eyes going wide.

“And just to keep those dance cards full, let’s change the venue a little,” Flaro added and waved his fan out again.

Drazaria didn’t have time to react before everything went black - literally. He looked around, and there was darkness as far as the eye could see, with an indistinguishable light source surrounding the immediate area.

A pocket dimension, Drazaria thought, immediately releasing his own magic.

“Oh no, this is bad, bad, bad,” Tedi muttered, looking around and smoothing his hands down the ends of the scarf he usually wore anxiously, “Am I dead? No, that’s dumb; this is magic - magic! Just gotta… figure out what kind…”

The sorcerer ignored him, holding out a hand and walking in a random direction. If Flaro had sealed them all in small pocket dimensions, it made sense there wasn’t a landscape - a solid blank room like this used less energy. Soon enough, Drazaria’s hand hit a wall - he followed it to a corner and then again to the next corner. He estimated they were in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot box. Likely, it would collapse after a few hours - spitting them back out in the regular world. Which was too long to be stuck in a box by far.

With a sigh, Drazaria turned to look back at the teen he was stuck with.

Tedi was crouched on the ground, holding his head in his hands and still muttering to himself, “Even if I could figure out what this was and how to get out, I’d still have to fight Drazaria first, and there’s no way I can win! I mean, I haven’t lasted two seconds against the guy! So he’s just going to kill me - no, wait, everyone’s sure he’s holding back, so he’ll just knock me out again, but then I’ll just wake up when everything is over again like a loser and-”

Drazaria rolled his eyes and walked over, crouching to be closer to eye level and saying, “Hey.”

Tedi screamed and fell back in surprise, holding up his hands and yelling, “Don’t hit me!”

The sorcerer rolled his eyes again and stood as he asked, “Do you have a piece of chalk on you?”

“W… what?” Tedi asked, blinking owlishly.

“Chalk,” Drazaria repeated, “To write with.”

The teen stared at him, blinking, then cleared his throat. He got to his own feet and patted the many pockets of his colorful vest before finding a piece and hesitantly holding it out.

Drazaria took it and started drawing a ritual circle on the floor. He’d figured there was a good chance a young wizard would have some, especially one that started with merchant spells - most of those were protective circles that used rituals to establish boundaries.

“Um,” Tedi hovered a foot or so off his shoulder, “What… are you doing?”

“Breaking this pocket dimension,” Drazaria replied, “This ritual circle does that.”

“You know that off the top of your head?” the teen asked incredulously.

“Well, after I almost got trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension,” the sorcerer replied flatly, finishing up the circle, “I made sure to memorize some just in case.”

“How did that ha- oh,” Tedi said sheepishly, “Right.”

Drazaria rolled his eyes again and double-checked his work. He tossed the chalk back to the kid and sat in the center of the circle, “You know how a ritual works, right?”

The teen caught the chalk after several missed attempts and said, “Uh, yeah…?”

“The phrase for this one is ‘This place is not where I belong; break and crack into the dawn,’” the sorcerer replied.

“Oh… okay?” Tedi frowned, “But… why are you telling me this?”

“Rituals work by tapping into the power in Vaseridan directly,” Drazaria replied, tapping the ground, “But pocket dimensions aren’t connected to Vaseridan, so in order for the circle to work, it needs an alternate power source. For this much, I can be the power source - I have enough Vaseridiana magic stored up to do it.”

Technically, he could have also used the crystal stored in his pocket - but he didn’t want to reveal that kind of trump card too early if he didn’t have to, and he wasn’t sure if it would have enough. Even repurposed, it couldn’t hold an equal amount of magic to his natural stores, so making himself the power source made more sense between the two options.

“I can’t be the power source and the caster, so you’ll have to do the actual spell,” Drazaria went on - which wasn’t strictly true. He could cast and throw his own power into it, but it would take more energy than passively allowing someone else to do the ritual. Which, even though he’d fought earlier, wasn’t too much of a burden to break out of a temporary pocket dimension like this. But since he was already trying to get better at conserving his power and there was another magic user present, there was no need to add the complication.

And if it seemed like the kid could still use a confidence boost here and there when it came to magic, that was completely incidental.

“… you want… me… to break us out of here?” Tedi asked, looking like Drazaria had asked him to do something a lot more complicated than recite a sentence.

“Unless you have a better idea,” the sorcerer replied, resting his chin in his hand.

The teen seemed to consider this, pacing and muttering to himself for a few moments, then asked, “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“You don’t,” Drazaria replied bluntly.

“… that’s not very convincing,” Tedi said, tugging at his scarf in distress.

The sorcerer shrugged, “Come to your own conclusions.”

The teen frowned, opened his mouth - then closed it, frowning and pacing again.

Drazaria knew why - he’d very purposefully used Klamra’s pet phrase when it came to combat analysis. Past a certain point, she didn’t like explaining what had gone wrong. She wanted students to tell her what they thought, then would guide them based on their own analysis. While Tedi was a new student, he’d been in real combat - the sorcerer correctly guessed she was already trying to impart personal analysis skills to the teen.

“Okay,” Tedi said, returning to the edge of the circle, “Okay, okay, okay - I’ll do it. Um, what was the phrase again?”

“This place is not where I belong; break and crack into the dawn,” Drazaria repeated, closing his eyes. He regulated his breathing into deep, even breaths, letting his stored energy roll out onto the ground within the confines of the circle.

“Okay,” the teen said again, and took a deep breath of his own - taking a few minutes to build up his nerve before finally reciting, “This place is not where I belong, break and crack into the dawn.”

Drazaria felt the ritual circle activate, and his magic quickly sucked into the circle to power it. He kept adding more until it was full, then opened his eyes to watch the walls of the pocket dimension shatter like glass.

He was up in a moment, turning and spotting a shocked looking Flaro floating above the platform as high as he could and three more black boxes of pocket dimensions. After feeling how much magic it took to break through the box he’d been in, he had two options - engage Flaro directly again or use his remaining magic to blast through the other dimensions.

He chose the latter, sending out three attack magic blasts and boosting what little remained of his magic with the crystal store he’d brought.

As everyone was back out, Flaro chuckled nervously and said, “Well, what a … smashing success - so much so that I feel the need to retire early, lovelies!”

Drazaria panted, feeling the effects of both using so much magic and dealing with so much distortion magic specifically, and said, “We also forfeit.”

The platform broke apart as usual, and Flaro flew away very quickly, which was a good idea on his part. Drazaria and his charges hopped out as usual. When they made it far enough, Drazaria paused to catch his breath.

“Sometimes I forget you’re old,” Owal said, stretching thons arms over thons head.

Drazaria rolled his eyes at the comment.

“How did you break out of the pocket dimension?” Heline asked, eyes shining.

“I used a ritual,” the sorcerer replied, and went into more detail as he waited for his head to feel less woozy from all the spacial magic.

When he was sufficiently recovered, the three of them returned to his base. 

Vasskr showed up the next day.

“Klamra asked me to pass along some notes,” his brother said, arching a brow ridge at the covered pond.

Drazaria had come out to check on the crystal inside - the water had gotten a little darker but not completely tainted. The sorcerer had more wierwood stacked nearby, thinking the quantity could be off. He tossed in two pieces of it before covering the pond again, saying, “I’m sure she did.”

“‘Your magic control is even more impressive than it used to be, but your physical abilities have become almost unmanageably reckless and unrefined,’” Vasskr said, in Trainer’s familiar brusque cadence, “She said if your magic control was any less precise, it would be completely unsustainable and get you killed.”

“Good thing my control is so precise, then,” Drazaria snorted, standing and brushing the dirt off his hands.

His brother sighed, then smiled, “She also said she’s glad you haven’t forgotten the basics since you’ve taught them well.”

The sorcerer rolled his eyes, “Anyone can teach the basics.”

“If you say so,” Vasskr said, “Are you returning to your old research?”

“Something like that,” Drazaria replied evasively, looking around the area, “I need to set up a workshop.”

“Would make it harder to move around,” his brother replied with an unspoken question.

“I’d just abandon it,” the sorcerer said.

Vasskr sighed, “I see. How would you insulate it?”

“I have some spare Scourgebeast hide to line it with,” Drazaria said.

“And you have a way to purify yourself if you get infected with Scourge sickness?” Vasskr prompted.

The sorcerer made a noncommittal noise.

“… if you tell me where you left the dagger, I can get it for you,” his brother suggested.