She bowed her head and let her mana flow into the circle, hooves starting to shimmer with an inner light, orange eyes closed in concentration. One after another, the storage foci were primed and opened their stores to the working, leaving the gems glowing softly as motes of gold light occasionally rose from the chalk lines. When she could feel the mana pull begin to take hold, when it started to gain enough momentum to pull on her internal stores, she directed the flow into the first stage, the portion of the circle that represented the beginning of the ritual itself.