“Right, for those of you who survived the trip, that’s my part of the deal, and you’re now in the so-called ‘Magical Forest’. We’ll stay here for a few hours or until y’all are bored, so make sure you stay nearby-ish or can find your way back pretty quickly.”

I point at the big tree we landed next to. “Yggdrasil here is pretty easy to spot given its size. That said, I have a simple spell which creates a flare if anyone is interested. It doesn’t make sound, so it might not be noticed, though.”

Only Stian comes over, though it seems more to chat. I sorta-kinda lurk in the chat we made for our little group, but I’m not exactly active in it, so there’s quite a few things I missed. Some of the others come to learn the spell, and somehow we end up discussing some of the weirder events that have happened since the Upheaval.

The Tokyo Demon Incident is one of course, and then there’s Moby Dick and other ‘behemoth class’ creatures. Of course, the flying ones are the most obvious and easy to spot, which means the sky whales get most of the buzz, but there’s rumors of an eastern dragon somewhere in the himalayas.

Aside from the fliers there’s a kraken somewhere in the caribbean. We know this because it sunk a cruise ship. While almost half of the passengers died, the rest all agree that a giant squid-thing attacked the ship and any lifeboats they tried to deploy. There’s even video proof, both from survivors, the wreck, and from streams. It’s a bit morbid, really.

“Anyway, did you guys hear about that Danish dungeon?”

Oh, skillfully executed topic change there!

“The one with creepy insect-things?”

“Yeah, that one. I read they send a proper dungeon diving team today to and establish a beachhead.”

“That was today?”

“Wait, wait" I interrupt. “Insect dungeon in Denmark? Is it in central Jylland?”

“I don't know.”

And neither does anyone else. “It sounds like this one place I was in…”

From there conversation derails, going from what I saw in that place to the giant caves in the mountains to the west. Well, cave systems - I went as far as I dared, but while I found connections between a few of the entrances, I couldn't find where any of them ended. For all I know they could lead all the way to Denmark or even the other side of the world. Or maybe I was really close to the end.

Either way, one cave off limits until I find what lives there (it's big), and the rest I won't venture into without more planning. Too bad Leda won't go into the territory of that ‘other’, or I could use her mana to sense around. I teach them the flare spell when conversation dies down, and half go off on their own with the rest staying back.

“You know, I might be a battle maniac.” I mutter more to the world in its entirety than anyone in particular.

“What do you mean?”

“Fight me.”

“Oh. Again?”

“Yeah, I brought some defensive equipment and stuff, but the kind of battle I’m thinking of doesn’t involved physical combat.”

“You’re gonna do the wizard battle game?” Stian asks, and seeing my nod, tell the other two what I told him just a bit earlier: “You each take a spot a few meters apart and raise a shield, and then it’s a competition to hit the other with magic.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” The sole woman of the aikido team asks.

As an answer I send a small magic orb into her, where it harmlessly dissipates. “Not really. You can use any magic to attack, but rule number one is to keep things in moderation; start out low and ramp up.”

“Well, it can get pretty crazy with my usual sparring partner, but we both know our limits.” I mutter after a moment of thought. “Anyway, the game has simple rules but can be deceptively complex. Great magic training, too.”

I teach them the basics, that being a simple no-effect bolt for offence and barriers for defence, then briefly mention and show off streams and dispelling. Those being reaching out with mana to directly hit your opponent or to attack from odd angles and reaching out with mana to stop the opponent’s spells, respectively.

I have one test battle with each of them, and despite being really easy on them I defeat them effortlessly. The 3v1 battle lasts a bit longer, as I have to hit each of them, and after that they refuse to play against me, so I instead just give advice from the side while they have fun.

Well, that and wait for a certain presence to get closer.

It doesn’t take long until the other spectator -Stian- notices Leda’s form, causing the fight to end early as the woman proves less distracted by the plane-sized flying lizard. Her enemy don’t seem to mind (or even notice), instead turning to me.

“Hey, is that that wyvern, I don’t remember her name, something sta-”

“Leda, yes. Don’t be afraid, she’s cool. Might wanna give her some space to land, though.”

Space is made, and Leda soon lands, her puppet popping into existence with a, well, soft pop. “Laaaaars, can I go see Philip yet?”

“I told you no, not until next week, at the earliest. You almost killed him and his mother was livid-”

“What’s that mean? Scared? Angry?”

“Very angry, yes. She was very angry and you better let her cool down a bit. Let her think about things. We’ll go knock on their door next saturday.”

“But I’m booooored!”

“And you think dealing with the aftereffects of your carelessness is not boring?”

“It is, but-”

“No buts, we’re both suffering for what you did, and the only reason we’re not suffering more is because you’re considered a kid and you got really fuh-nnng, really lucky that branch didn’t hit anything vital in the woman. Speaking of which, you still need to come up with an apology to her.”

I shake my head slightly, letting out a sigh. “Enough of that. I’m bored too so let’s do a wizard battle.”

She perks up at this. “Full power?”

“Hell no, there’s other people here.”

“Oh.” she says dejected, before quickly regaining her usual energetic… buzz.

It’s kinda funny how her main body mostly just lazy around except when out hunting or… something else , whereas her puppet practically vibrates. Then again, it might be because she’s not fully warm blooded. What was the scientific term, poikilotherm?

“But that’s fine too, that means I will win more!”

“Oh yeah?”

We continue our usual taunting routine while gaining some distance from each other, as well as the spectators. I quickly tell them to not go near us or behind one of us, though that would’ve become clear in a moment anyway.

We both raise our defences, consisting of mage armor (for protection, since it’s so close to the body hits to it count as a win), a ‘domain’ in which our mana is dense to effectively control it, and a mana barrier. More will be made on demand, of course, but this is the bare minimum, we’ve found. We both show a thumbs up, and then it’s game.

As usual she leverages her crazy mana to strike first, but I have long since gotten used to this and divert it with a conjured ‘lightning rod’. Another spell cracks it in the middle, but the first spell is already off course, and a simple barrier makes it harmlessly bounce off.

I conjure five hexagonal shields, spacing them evenly around myself as I start sneaking a tendril above her, with another weaker one to the right. She sends another, fully formed, spell crashing into my frontal defences, exploding the shield with a flash and forcing me to create a directional barrier to stop it.

The distraction meant she noticed the bigger tendril, and I pull it away while shooting off small mana bolts from it. In the meanwhile I gather a buffer of mana in for the smaller one, and just as she dispels the bigger one by pure force of mana, I snap out with the smaller one.

At first her barrier blocks it, but the slim target area causes it to penetrate when the buffer-mana follows the ‘tip’ of the spell. My win. Leda let’s her spells go while patching up her defences. “Round two!”

I laugh, losing always fires her up even more. I’d say she’d work well as a shounen-series protagonist if she can nail that obliviousness to the feelings of the opposite sex, but I know at least two of her friends see her as waaay more than a friend. Specifically, they adore her like some sorta demigod/hero/‘awesome magic dragon’, and she has no idea.

I give thumbs up again, and this time I launch three mana bolts while charging up a bigger mana spike. She defends against them, of course, after which a mass of mana slams into my barrier, having effortlessly gone through the conjured shield.

She’s really intent on winning, huh. That ridiculous mana of hers if her greatest weapon, and I can’t stop it, just hold it off. So I reduce the size and effectiveness of my domain while focusing more mana where she hits the barrier.

I hold out a hand as if to say stop, forming another barrier in front of my palm. Doing so probably looks silly, but the motion and stance makes it… not stronger, not by itself, but it makes it easier to make it stronger? Makes my upper limit of control higher? Something like that.

Apparently she’s learning too, and after a second she starts throwing mana bolts in addition to the pure mass of mana. That’s when I close my eyes as I shatter the shield in a flash of light. I open my eyes to shoot the shards at her, before swinging the mana bolt up and to the right and then towards her.

Except, I miss, or perhaps she deflects it. Welp, that was my chance. “Yield!”

“Aww, but I was winning!” She responds, twitching her mana for a moment before withdrawing it.

“But Lars surrendered, doesn’t that mean you won?” Says one of the three guys who returned during our battle. One looks a bit… out of it.

“But I didn’t win win, he just gave up and lost!”

I give her a flat stare. “You try getting mana burnt by something with stupid amounts of mana and see if you want to experience that again.”

“That would be fun!”

“Being mana burnt?”

“No! Finding something with more mana than me! Then I could fight full power without holding back!”

“Uhh, Lars?”

It’s about that plant, isn’t it? I turn to the guys who returned during the fight. I sniff the air. Yeah, he’s totally high on that plant. “Lemme guess, he grabbed a bulbous flower and it broke, then he slowly became…” I just point my hand at the person in question.

“Yeah. Uh, is it dangerous?”

I walk towards the group and, by extension, my bag. “I don’t think so. He must’ve seen a serious lightshow just now, though. With all the magic, I mean.”

“Your magic wasn’t that flashy, the entire battle was kinda lame, actually.”

“I know, that’s because you could only see the visible spells, not the raging torrent Leda used.”

“This guy, though.” I tap his forehead, getting only a slow blink and mindless look in return. “He got to see it all. That plant… is, err, interesting. I’ve studied it a bit. Good news? No permanent effects as far as I can tell, and we can get him down from his trippy cloud easily enough”

I retrieve a bottle of water from my bag, then sniff out which hand he grabbed it with. Left it is. I pour some water on it, before magically holding more water in place around his hand, making sure the water is circulating.

“So now I’m just washing off the remaining goo. Anyone else touched it?”

“I-I did. A bit.”

“And you’re not seeing swirly colors where magic is being done?”

“Uuuh… Ehm, a bit, actually. Just a splootch, like seeing through slightly stained glass.”

“Try using magic. Anything will do.”

He does as instructed, but seems to struggle a bit, despite what seems like a very simple spell.

“See?” I let the water drop. “I’ve washed off the goo, but it will take a little while until he, err, returns. Now, that plant has three effects that I know of. One, it’s a magic disruptor. Or something. Whatever you call it, it’s hard to use magic when affected by it. The second part is seeing magic, and, in slightly stronger doses, spirits.”

I look around, but somehow no one takes the bait. Well then. “Spirits being, errr, things, that can do magic. I don’t think they’re sapient or anything, but they’re definitely magical. As in, I think they are part of magic? Or a different form of mana? Either way, it’s easier to see spirits of elements you are aligned to, or maybe that just causes there to be more of them around.”

“The final effect is that it is a depressant. It makes you high, in the slower and sluggish way, not bouncy and awake. I am pretty sure that the goo primarily has the magic inhibiting effect, but also the depressant. The plant matter of the bulb itself, as well as the leaves, has the magic-vision effect and to a much lesser degree, the depressant.”

“So… it’s not dangerous?”

“It’s probably not dangerous. At least not more than other common intoxicants. Caffeine, alcohol, tobacco and so forth. I would avoid big doses, though.”

“How big is… big?”

“Well, you know that goo? What little you absorb through your skin can make it hard to impossible to cast magic. If you get a lot on your skin, well.” I wave at the guy whose name I probably should remember. Wait, did he even introduce himself?

“You can also drink it. Which has a much more… potent effect. Specifically, one little bulb like the one he broke has enough juice to make Leda -her main body- unable to use magic -and- even more lazy.”

“I’m not lazy!”

“Your main body is. Just lying around all day.”

“But I need to watch the egg!” She says with puffed cheeks, before realizing what she just said with an “Ah!”

She turns to me. “What do I do, I told them about the egg!”

“Well ideally you wouldn’t make a big deal of it, but since you’ve already failed that, just ask them to keep it secret. Or maybe threaten them with death, but that’s not very nice.”

“Ok!” She says, then turns to the others. “Please keep it a secret! Or maybe I will threaten you with death!”

Her cheeks go full hamster mode at our reactions, which does nothing to stop them. “Anyway, he'll be fine. Just give it time.”

Leda on the other hand has clearly recovered from our reaction, as well as switched gears. “You have tarnished my honor, and now I need to regain it, IN BATTLE!”

Sigh. What the hell is she watching with her friends? “Fine, you can have your full power battle as long as we don't endanger anyone else.”

Her response is some sort of yip mixed with a little girl's battle cry as she bounds up on her back, to one of the saddlebags. She grabs the ‘boundary set’ and sets it up next to her main body. It’s a bit small for seven people, but it should work fine as a ‘wall’ in one direction.

When she’s done setting it up, I stand right on the boundary. It’s just half a step from safety while not cutting myself off from controlling my battle puppet. I summon and shift my focus to to the puppet, grasping the staff with a heavily scaled hand. The entire form stands hunched slightly forwards with a thick tail for balance, and wears a kilt and poncho combo.

Each arm has a bracelet with some inscriptions, and there are inscriptions on the body, under the clothes, as well. I’ve been thinking about the difference between dead, living and, well, more-than-simply-alive matter, and come to the somewhat uncomfortable conclusion that magic does not care. A rock, tree, or unborn fetus, it works all the same. Thus, the battleform itself is enchanted.

Two thumbs point to the sky, and then hell breaks loose.