Mibbet had a newfound appreciation for the sheer amount of work that went into a broom now. Having done all the carving and sanding she felt like she would end up with arms like Hes before long. (Mibbet wasn’t quite sure at what point in time Hestia became Hes in her head. Social interactions were not something frogs were good at. But it seemed Hes was there in her head to stay, apparently humans called that sort of thing a “nickname” or something like that. Which confused Mibbet a tad given that she definitely wasn’t calling Hes Nick. She supposed the only option was to chalk another one up to human strangeness. With the amount of times she’d had to do that lately her mental blackboard was packed.)

Even after all that work she apparently wasn’t even close to done, and next up was array lessons with Song.

“Okiedokie, you’re off to a good start, broom is coming together so nicely. Now next up we take this ink, and use it to draw all these enchantments on the wood. Don’t worry though it’s invisible once it’s dry. Now do what I do.”

Wormwood started to sketch into a separate broomstick with ink, which would have been fine normally, but this was not what one would normally call doodling. The sketches that were etched into the wood defied the laws of physics, geometry, mathematics, reality, and three dimensional space. Then when they were done violating those rules seemed to pop off into another dimension to bring back a few new rules kicking and screaming to break those too.

Mibbet was fairly sure it was not in any way possible to draw on the inside of the broom shank, especially not multiple layers deep. Yet here she was beholding it with her own two eyes, that in protest that they could not possibly be seeing what they thought they were seeing filed a report with her poor beleagured brain. Which given that Mibbet was already imitating to the best of her abilities proving the glitch must be real sighed, pondered a resignation letter. Gave up, and filed the incident under M for Must be Tuesday. (As if that particular neurological file wasn’t already stuffed to the gills.)

Mibbet did her best to replicate what was happening before her, which in all fairness can not have been easy, as the arrays went deeper and deeper into the wood. Increasing in complexity, until she started to wonder if making a Princesses head explode with excess study would be counted as an assassination attempt, or merely a side effect of making her think. (If you asked any of the clerks who had been at the castle for any longer than a few short months it was a fairly safe bet they would imply it could go either way really.)

It was getting easier again now, maybe she was getting the hang of it? Then again the sculpted tentacle popping to life for a moment and slapping her across the face before reverting to inanimate wood implied that maybe she wasn’t quite there yet.

“Well done Princess, you’re really getting there, remember to leave an area blank at the top though.”

“Why?” Mibbet asked.

“Cushioning spell, trust me you’re really going to need one if you plan to fly for long. Otherwise you’ll end up like grandma, she had to fly with a donut cushion after a few years. It was really embarrassing, especially since those things are always so brightly coloured. Poor grandma always said she was blessed by Heamarroidus, that blessing can’t have been fun. But yeah always use a cushioning spell, it’s totally worth it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mibbet replied with a wince.

“After this we’ll teach you to properly varnish the wood, because you reaaaly don’t want a splinter.”

“Can see that” Mibbet chuckled. She was finding that while Song was a very talkative sort she really did have a heart of gold. Mibbet found yet again that she was more than happy to be friends. (Copious courses of caffeine may have contributed here. She was so twitchy right now she could almost keep up with what Song was saying all the time. Was this what it was like inside her head twenty four seven? No wonder she liked to talk so much. With that much pent up energy it was either that or explode.)

Soon enough things were really starting to pull together, and Mibbet was genuinely starting to believe that she could pull this off.

“Now we have a problem, beast stones sre fairly easy to get. All we need to do is track down some kind of flying beastie, Wormy prefers to go after tree wyrms on the grounds that they’re plant based, but we’ll need something with more oomph for you, and you need to harvest it yourself. Personal energy is a big thing in spell weaving, which is why the spells in those mass printed books for teenagers never work to curse your ex. They’re too general to be personal, so the energy just isn’t there. (Mibbet suspected there was a story here, but also suspected she was best off not knowing it on the grounds she did not need another drama explosion in an unpredictable place, she had plenty of those already without borrowing other peoples.) We’ll get to that soon though, first there’s a bigger problem.”

“And what would that be? Maybe I can help”

“Elemental stones are needed. A beast stone is only as good as the power behind it, and right now we don’t have any of those, rotten mages hog em all,” Song pouted.

“Elemental stones? What are they?”

“Well there’s all sorts, lightning gems. fire crystals, water stones. There’s ones for every element, they kind of form where an element is real strong.

“What do they look like?”

“About ye big?” Song gestured, holding out her fist. “You can’t miss em. They give off the energy of their element.”

Mibbet chuckled as she popped on Hestias forge glove, and reached into her holding bag. “Something like THIS?” She asked grinning as Song’s jaw dropped at a sun crystal the size of her head. The smugness lasted a few seconds before Hestia charged over and grabbed her.

“Hey what’s going on?” Mibbet asked.

“Well it’ll be time for your first flying lesson soon.” Hestia said with a smirk, “but first we’re goin huntin”