Over the short break I teach Silje [Air Magic]. I chose that over the abilities I am better at to play to her strengths. At least I think she’s better at magic which involves chanting. I teach Tom [Aerokinesis], again playing to his strengths. It’s the best fit of the abilities I know, and he could use it by simply flapping his wings, so it’s not that big of a problem that he’s not very good at (external) mana manipulation.

After that I had the two of them try hovering over water, which is like hovering anywhere except you really need to apply force over a large area if you don’t wanna fall into the water. I demonstrate first through a mana link, then have them cooperate to find out how. Once they can both keep themselves above water, the break is over.

I return past the power tower, and turn south, the use of mana behind me is all I need to know the siblings are following me. We could’ve gone along the power towers, but I’d rather not get someone electrocuted, and between the relatively constant height of the forest and the up and down of the edge of the city, the forest is the obvious choice.

Not long after that I find myself hovering above what is essentially someone’s backyard. Letting out a sigh, I land at the outer edge of the lawn to not set a bad example. “Leda, I told you not to trespass on other people’s property. Why are you in someone’s backyard?”

I catch the incoming mind bond.

｢{Excited, mildly apologetic}I have a new friend! He lives here!｣ She sends an image of the outside of a house, bouncing up and down on a trampoline. There is a boy there. Accompanying that is a sense of location.

Oh, she’s befriended some kid and sent her puppet to visit him. I guess she moved closer to keep the puppet within her mana range. Her range should be better than that, though? “Do you need to be this close to control the puppet?”

｢{Excited, happy, annoyed}I don’t like it when it is far away.｣

I nod my head to the side. “Fair ‘nuff.”

“Uhh, Lars? Who are you talking to?”

I turn to the Anderson kids. “Oh, I’m just talking to Leda,” I wave my hand in her general direction. “Somewhere around here.”

“Who’s Leda?” “The girl from the elf video?”

I nod to Tom. “Yeah, the girl from the elf video, here in her full glory.”

“I can’t see anything, are you- are you sure?”

“Yeah, she’s just invisible and does a little mind trick that makes you ignore her even if you do notice something. Jedi mind trick, you know? Though…” I turn to the (presumed) direction of my wyvern friend. “If you were gonna turn invisible anyway, you might as well have gone a bit closer, instead of sitting in some random person’s backyard.”

I can feel her thinking as Silje turns in the same direction as me.

“Could I- see you?” She says, shortly before she takes a small, startled step backwards. “Wha- are- hu- how?”

｢{Happy, excited, questioning}Can I be visible here?｣

Hmm, can she indeed? As a rule, no, but I wanted for the siblings to learn the Wyvern aspect from her, which will be difficult if they can’t even register she’s there. Aside from the mind bond she seems to have made to Silje. Then again, if she’s playing with a friend I guess we shouldn’t disturb her from that.

“Usually, no. But it’s good that you ask. I’ll say yes for now.”

As soon as I finish the sentence, I sense a heavy presence of mana as the air shimmers, then her form becomes visible, safely guarding the egg-bag.

“Woah, hoooly HELL!” Tom turns to me with wide open eyes. “Is she a fucking dragon?”

I chuckle, noticing that Silje is just standing there, frozen. “Nah, ‘just’ a wyvern. I meant for her to be the basis for learning [Aspect Magic]. And for you to use the Wyvern aspect to make a flight form.”

I blink. “Speaking of which. Leda, don’t you have another humanoid puppet?”

She shakes her head gently. “Well, can you make one? It can be like the other one.”

Tom looked from me to Leda and back, then to Leda. “Can you really understand us?”

A nod from Leda and I chuckle. “Why else would I talk to-”

A soft pop, and a human girl appears before us. Completely naked, which I really should’ve expected. “Ehh, actually, change the puppet to raptor mode.”

“Oki.” The puppet says, growing a tail and scales that mostly hides her body from Tom’s now subtly different look. Wait, I have an extra sheet of silk, don’t I?

“You are the one from the elf video! You’re so cute! But, are you two the same? Which is the real one?”

I’ll let the subject handle Silje’s barrage of questions as I check my bag. Yeah, that’ll do. I grab a somewhat narrow sheet of silk and a clump of wood. When I reach over to her to put it on she helpfully moves her arm away and stands still, and I wrap the sheet around her waist, turning the wood into a simple clasp connecting the two ends of the sheet over her tail.

It really doesn’t matter to me, but I do think I should make her used to following at least the core rules of society. So I step away from Leda and help answering the sibling’s questions, clearing up a few misunderstandings she inevitably made.

While it would probably have been very awkward for a human, Leda is not, so… I told her to focus on having fun with her friend, and in the meanwhile I taught the siblings [Aspect Magic]. Silje learned it with the Grass aspect of all things, and both of them got the Wyvern aspect.

With my primary goal done I decide to leave Leda with her friend. Since she’s gonna be in the city anyway (but invisible) I tell her she can go closer, but to stay away from the roads and of course out of sight. Then I turn to the siblings, “Okay, make some distance.”

I take the makeshift skirt off her puppet, which she then returns, and then she turns invisible. I can still sense her, but… How she does that is incredible. The air does seem a bit hazy and ripples if she moves, but once she adds on the jedi mind trick…

A small gust of wind pushes against us, then a strong one almost makes Silje fall over. And then, I can longer sense her. “Isn’t that awesome? In the literal sense. Something which awes.”

They agree, and an animated discussion arises as we yet again lift off from the ground. Before we get far I break the flow by asking if they want to practice [Aspect Magic] and then flying nearby, or somewhere with less people. They chose people and promptly returned to their discussion, leaving me to think of a good place which is not too far away.

In the end I decide to head to the only place I can think of that is pretty close and still fits the requirements. We head to the lake, then cross it the long way, landing on the other side. Acting on an idea I got on the way, I take off my bag and drop it on the ground. “Wait here for a moment. I’ll be back in a moment.”

I launch myself into the air, transforming to my phoenix falcon in the air. Still close to the ground I push myself to high speeds then arc upwards. With a bird’s eye view I look around, and quickly find a suitable spot. The spot next to the lake has (unsurprisingly) quite a few people, some out for a walk, others taking a swim, but the spot I found doesn’t even have a proper road leading to it.

I do a steep dive towards the siblings and my bag, only to come in for a soft landing, the small frame of the bird taking much less effort to stop. I pop back to my main body and grab my bag. “I found a place, this way.”

They have a… very rudimentary understanding of [Aspect Magic], with Tom being the more skilled in this particular field. They manage to form scales easily enough, the more subtle changes to muscles and bones, especially the bigger changes, they both struggle with. I ask them to try to make a puppet, but then I realise they don’t have any mass to take from yet.

They do manage to revert to human if I shapeshift them, and that’s really all I wanted on that front. I retrieve the flight-form tops from my bag and hand them to their respective users. “Change into those and we can start the flight lessons. Oh, and I have some bags for you to put your clothes in.”

“It’s a little… breezy.” Silje says, hands folded across the chest.

I shrug. “Better than nothing, though. And you probably won’t mind once you’re shapeshifted. Ready?”

She nods and I walk up to her. We form a mana bond, then I put my hands on her shoulders, closing my eyes. Cover in scales, bigger on the torso. Move mass to the arms, form wings- “Arms out to the side.” Lock the wrist, grow the outer wing joint.

I open my eyes. “Do you want to keep your feet as-is, or take of your sandals and change them?”

“Uh, no it’s fine.” She says, stretching and bending to explore her new form, especially the wings.

I repeat the same for Tom, who decides to have his feet shapeshifted. I hang the bags with their clothes on my own bag, then finalize my own form by forming wings.

“First off some tips. Your wings are huge, but if you cross your arms on front of your chest, they will neatly fold in front of you. Your legs are also relatively stumpy, so walking will be awkward. You also have an extra joint, the one which sticks out from your hand. That means your hand will be less useful, though that should not be a problem with [Force Magic].”

I stretch out then contract my right wing. “As you can see here, it will stretch out if your arm-slash-wing is stretched out, so you generally don’t need to think too hard about it. Fine control will come with practice. To start off, make sure you’re not standing too close to each other, then stretch to get a feeling for how your wings work. Questions?”

With them already busy stretching there are no questions, and soon I move on to takeoff and landing. Specifically, doing so while completely disregarding the wings by levitating instead. Once they get the balance in, I demonstrate using that to essentially catapult myself into the air, and have them try one at a time.

It doesn’t take long until they are capable of gliding, and then it’s time for landing. I lift them as high as I can, then push them up to speeds they might have when landing. For the time being, I order them to only use [Force Magic] to slow down and land. After they’ve both had a go I realise something: I forgot to ask if their father was okay with this.

I hurriedly have them un-shapeshift their wings into arms and call him. Their father agreed in no time at all. To paraphrase, the call basically went like this:

“Dad, we can transform into dragons and Lars says he won’t teach us to fly unless you say yes.”

“Yes.”

So yeah. I was intending to describe in more details what I’ve taught them so far and what I will teach them, and give him my assessment of the dangers that might cause, but Tom already hung up before I had the time to ask for the phone. I don’t want to potentially make him say no after he’s already said yes, though…

Ah, good enough. I have thought a lot about the safety so it should be fine. Speaking of which, they’ll each do twenty more levitation-only landings, then they can start trying to break with their wings.

As time passes they get their landings to an acceptable level, then we move on to takeoffs, gradually moving from levitation to the air-based magics I taught them. Eventually Tom disregards my orders and try to turn, only to lose altitude quickly. He easily stops his fall with [Force Magic], causing me to (probably) have a ‘told ya’ face.

Well, they are both at the level where they can start worrying about actually flying. “As you just noticed, turning bleeds speed. The physics is a bit complex, but all you really need to know is that you will lose speed when you turn. Now, there is a saying in terms of flying: Speed is life, altitude is life insurance.

Now, being used to gravity, it’s probably obvious that you fall down, but when flying ‘falling down’ just means gaining more speed. Incidentally, if you slow down too much your wings won’t give you enough lift, causing you to ‘stall’ - That’s where altitude as life insurance comes in, as you can turn it into speed, and thus stay in control and in the air.”