A few days into my… airlane trip? Roadtrip but in the air? Ahh, flying around. Whatever. Other people can make a good word when this gets more popular, as I assume it will be. Anyway, after afew days of meeting customers and fans on my zig-zagging way, there is reports of a pod of sky whales nearby!

…but today is when I’m doing the rejuvenation, and I expect the entire process to take a while. I can probably track down the air whales later, though. I find the address easily enough, and hit the doorbell for what can only be called a mansion.

After greeting each other, we look over the paperwork together. It all seems in order, though it still lacks my signature, obviously. Since that’s handled, we go over what he wants as he shows me photos from his life. Seeing how a person grew up is one thing, but dang photography has improved over the years.

After a somewhat lengthy discussion where I outline what I can and can’t do, as well as a few things I won’t do (I am not changing anyone’s brain), he settles on reverting his body to more or less how it was 20-30 years ago, though with some minor changes like putting all senses on the better side of human average and keeping the overall structure of his face.

He drives us to a clinic of some sort, where we meet a police officer and some medical forensics technician, and of course a doctor. For documentation and research purposes the police will take DNA samples of the man, both before and after the procedure, and the puppet I used to show him how he will look.

It’s quick and mostly painless, aside from the medical tests, of course. When we’re done and the doctor and police say everything is in order, he makes a call and ask me to verify if the transaction is complete. After having him clarify I check on my bank’s app and holiii- (ah, avoid religious swear words, remember) FUCK that’s a lot of money!

And then he thanks me energetically, before just… running off, leaving his car behind. I guess it’s a great success, then? I mean… well, not my problem. Let’s see, next up…

The day after, I find myself by the Great Lakes, and they are indeed quite great, at least in size. I can see why he wanted his mansion-house in the area. People around here are pretty nice too, except for- no, don’t think of that! And no, don’t think of her either. I was really nice but- lalalalala stupid brain, uh, topic change, lalalala, white background…

Oh yeah, that guy who introduced himself as an artisan! I should get to him tomorrow, so I suppose I should give him a heads-up and make sure he is somewhat prepared. Those people who don’t know what they want are pretty annoying. I mean, ffs, ‘please teach me magic’ is not a good request. Unless they can use mana but somehow haven’t looked up how to use magic online yet.

Well, as long as they have not cultivated, more like. At least that’s the latest theory - People who had practiced mana in the Lull all kept it after the Upheaval, but after that? Observations say that, in general, people tend to get the same powers as those around them. On the other hand, there are still people with no power, or at least who have not actively practiced either.

From a few experiments -too few to say for sure- it seems like they’ll just take on what power they first truly come in contact with. Strong(ish) spells would then give them mana, qi techniques gave them qi. Speaking of qi, usually you would slowly cultivate essence and then convert that to qi, but you can start absorbing qi directly, if you have a place with actual qi in the air, like the Water Temple.

Unsurprisingly, that’s significantly faster than the whole essence conversion thing, and if you started in such a place, you could maybe skip two stages, but you would proooobably want to learn those basics anyway. Makes stuff faster, though. Last I heard Sensei had figured out how to refine qi, though I have no idea what that actually means, and he refuses to teach the others until they can liquify their qi. I should meet up with Jasper some time…

“Are you Lars Eikeli?”

“Yep.” I answer, turning to a trio of teens. Looks like the fans are gathering.

“Oh man, we gotta call the others, it’s the Phoenix!”

Oooor maybe they just recognized me. Dang, I’m famous enough to be recognized on the street, not just home (which makes sense given the size and population. And the interviews.), but here? I- Well, I guess I’ll milk my fifteen minutes of fame for all it’s worth. It’ll be great if I can create a ‘brand’ before it fades. I haven’t really pushed the Terra Arcana name in a while since it’s well known back home.

Alright, time to meet this ‘artisan’. Huh, this area is surprisingly sparsely populated compared to well, the cities. It should be one of those houses, and that road is empty enough to land on. Okay, it should be… that house. I walk over to the door as I revert to human. Well, human with fur, because my flight clothes are somewhat airy. But even without that, can it really be called human? It’s not baseline, at least.

I hit the doorbell and wait.

And wait.

And hit the doorbell again.

After the third time I give up. The light is on, so clearly he’s home. I should just walk around to the backyard. Wait, will that get me shot? Well, probably not if I intentionally make noise and call out. Actually, I can just sense him with mana, can’t I. He said he already knew how to use magic.

Oh, there he is. In the garage. And he seems to have noticed my mana. “Hey, It’s Lars Eikeli.”

“Oh hey, you’re here.”

The garage door opens and reveals a man with darkish skin and dreadlocks collected in a ponytail. He reaches hand, lightly covered in sawdust.

Oh, I shouldn’t stare at his hand like that, probably seems terribly rude. I flick my wrist and summon a gust of wind, then grasp his hand firmly.

“Call me Karma!”

“Uh, really? Like, is that an actual name?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Huh, today I learned. You were fairly specific in what you wanted -as opposed to certain people- but I’d still like to get an overview over your relevant abilities and talk about what you want. Shall we get right to it?”

Aside from completely nonmagical abilities, of which he has a significant number related to crafting, notably blacksmithing, he is decent enough in the basic mana abilities, and has a few other magics. One of those is [Aspect Magic], which is the main thing he wants to improve.

Other than that he wants to learn more magical ways to craft, after watching a video where I mentioned the spear I made. I find it interesting how that, and not any of the videos on the actual topic, is what inspired that. Naturally, he wants to see my spear as well, especially after inquiring into what out it's made of.

As has become the usual way to do it, I teach him [Mana Manipulation: Mana Link] before anything else. We stay with aspects, and he's minds bad at it. He has weak affinity with a few elemental aspects, but all he can do is the most basic version of taking on an aspect.

“Okay, so aspects are like the concept or idea of a thing. It's… hard to describe in a good way, but that's the general idea. There are many things you can do with them but all of them essentially boil down to making one thing more like another.”

“For shapeshifting, that's pretty clear, and for puppets… I'm not entirely sure, but you make a puppet which is like one or more other things. What you do is what I call taking on an aspect. The most surface level version of that is giving something the attributes of the aspect.”

“Fire is violent, powerful, raging, hot, and so forth. Earth is solid, tough, stable, and so forth. It doesn't work as well with animal aspects, which brings me to the second version, which is taking on an aspect in a more physical manner, like changing your skin to have fur or scales or something.”

“Isn't that just shapeshifting?”

“Well, basically. There's a slight difference in how you do things, but functionally the same. Anyway, you must take on not just the attributes, but physical form of an aspect to shapeshift, and I would highly suggest starting with partial animal shapeshifts if possible.”

As it turns out, I have to help him get an animal aspect -Dog, in this case- for that to be possible, but after that it doesn’t take long to teach him how to shapeshift. He then wants to learn how to make puppets, but all I can do is to shake my head. He’ll have to get better at using Aspect magic, as well as get at least one Aspect to high affinities.

He seems displeased with this, but you need it so not much I can do. Instead we move on to using magic for crafting, starting by going over what I can do. We go outside for a demonstration of my vacuum furnace technique on a bit of metal, and I note which abilities I use -and why- as I do.

After the demonstration we discuss the specific abilities, which, if any, he has, possible alternatives, and get a little bit sidetracked. Okay, maybe more than just a little. Either way, he mentions he uses chanting to cast magic, but that doesn’t work very well if working in his forge, and I can think of a few other situations where that’d be inconvenient.

“Okay, so chanting, that’s a focus. If I have to come up with a definitions… It’s something like ‘a physical or mental tool to cast magic’. Like be hand or body movements, wands, chanting, and so forth.”

“So I just have to use a mental focus?”

“Ehh, chanting is mostly mental, though? Like, a wand is physical, but the specific way you would, I dunno, swish and flick it would be a mental shortcut to tell your brain to do a particular magic.”

“What about magic which requires you to do specific motions?”

“I have yet to see such a thing. I’d guess it’s just easier to cast that way, or maybe they don’t know how without it. Personally I just started using magic by mentally forming the spell, but there are times where I do motions or use physical foci to do something. The thing about mentally forming spells is that it takes some mental effort, and well, if a five year old can learn to recite a short poem, if that poem can be used to cast a spell…”

“So it’s a crutch.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“But can you teach me how to use magic without chanting?”

“Yeah, that’s easy. Ah, uh, teaching you how, is easy, if you’ve used chanting until now it might be hard to change that habit.”

As it turns out, he uses chanting for elemental magic and more complex mana manipulation-derived spells, but not simple stuff, so I start there and teach him [Force Magic] making sure that he does not chant, and also avoid other ‘crutch’ foci.

I think about it in more detail, and remember that I’ve picked up a few habits, and also realize that I might be wrong about foci not being necessary. For one, I can’t do a single bit of [Water Bending] without moving. But then again, I have two other magics which can create much of the same effects, of which one is nigh-impossible without chanting.

As he moves on to other magic he starts chanting several times but eventually he seems satisfied with his success. “Now I just gotta make it a habit.”

“Yeah, just gotta change habits. No big deal.”

We have a bit more banter/discussion before I have to leave for the next client, though we set up another, longer session, as he realises he has a lot he wants to learn. It seems like he wants to do what I’m doing back home with making and selling things, or rather he just wants to make stuff and selling stuff is a good way to get money to make more stuff. Or something like that.

A few more days pass as I travel around and do the routine. One of the clients I meet is a girl buying one of the cheaper flight packs. She looks very young, so I ask about her age, but she even pulls out a card with ID, so I guess she’s used to people thinking that.

After that she offers to pay upfront, and then soaks up what I teach her. I am surprised by how little resistance she has to the shapeshifting, considering that she’s a decent magician, but I suppose she’s just being very cooperative. She seems really excited for this, after all.

She asks to buy the spatial pouch after putting her phone and some other things in it, but since I don’t have any extras on me to sell I have to say no. I point out that I can make another with some time and materials, or just enchant an existing bag, but she shakes her head.

Snow and human feet does not mix well, which is why my flight form has furred, talon-like feet. Well, more like talon-paws. I gradually improve my forms, which includes the talon-paws, to better do what they should, and -especially after winter hit- be better at protecting against the environment.

So when she steps into the snow and gasps, I get worried as I realize I didn’t think about it and gave her similar feet, so she’s not wearing shoes or anything. Before I can ask if she’s okay she starts hopping from talon to talon and giggling like a, well, girl.

The takeoff and landing training goes smoothly as well, though having purchased the cheapest pack she doesn’t become very good at either before we take to the sky. At first she seems almost overwhelmed, but she soon starts laughing again, especially when we get high enough to do aerobatics.

Communicating while flying is a bit tough, but I get her to fly straight, then demonstrate some simple tricks, ending with a loop. She’s very careful at first, but manage to do a loop before her time is up. I make an illusory arrow pointing down, and when she nods pull in front of her and start descending to the landing spot.

As I get in low I turn around to make sure she’s following and also not crashing or anything. She’s gone. What? Where’d she go? Since I’m low enough I stop my flight and levitate in place, looking around to find her. Nope, completely gone. Did she crash?

Shit.

I take off against, slowly spiralling upwards while looking for her. After ten minutes of searching I give up. If she crashed she should be visible from above, at least with my eyes. But where did she go? As far as I know it’s not even possible to have a ‘freak teleportation accident’ or anything like that, and it’s not like she ran away to avoid paying me, since she already paid and will be stuck like that.

Wait, is that what happened? Does she want to stay like that? I sell shapeshifting as a service, though. She could just have bought that specifically? I guess it’s more expensive, but… Ehh, I don’t know. In that case she should’ve gone home, so I guess I’ll look for her there.