“Woah, these caves are big.” Hilde says, before we even get that deep.

“We’ve barely entered! I don’t actually know how deep they are, though.”

I make sure to light up a large radius around us and be as vigilant as I can be as I lead her about a hundred meters in and stop. “As you can see, they’re really deep. Around this point I start feeling… uncomfortable, though.”

“I see what you mean, it’s a little suffocating.”

“Oh, maybe that’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“The signs of carbon monoxide poisoning include stuff like an inexplicable sense of dread and a tight feeling in the chest. Well, it doesn’t quite fit, but I guess finding some way to measure the air quality would be wise.”

“I-isn’t that dangerous?”

“It is, but I’ve gone deeper and been fine. The feeling just gets worse, though, and my mana sense acts up, too. Anyway, there’s another exit if we go this way.”

I hear joyful shouting from her direction, though the wind makes it impossible to make out and we’re too far away for the mind bond. In the short moment we pass by each other I transmit amusement, while she says it’s really fun. I think my affirmative reaches her before the winds take us apart again.

A bit later we find ourselves down on the ground, and she looks tired, but in that good way. “That was so fun!”

“See, that’s why I told you you gotta know how to find and use thermals and updrafts.”

We share a moment of silence as she catches her breath.

“Did you see the giant thing moving around in that direction?” I say, pointing roughly north-northwest.

“There was something giant there?”

“Hmm, I’m not one hundred percent sure. Either way, let’s go that way.”

“Nooo, I’m too tired, I don’t know if I can fly any more.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know any spells to energize people.” I say, rolling my eyes. “Seriously though, it’s that or walking, and honestly flying isn’t that tiring. Less than walking the same distance, at least.”

“Whaaat, isn’t it more like jogging, and also for your magic?”

“Uh, no? If you properly soar, you don’t even need to use magic while in the air.”

“But then I’ll fall!”

…

“Oh, I think you just suck at flying. And overly rely on magic. I thought you just happened to use magic when I looked at you, but in hindsight you did it all the time…”

“What do you mean? And that’s rude!”

Aaaand there comes the attempted pout, yet again failing because she’s too happy. “Well,” I start, then reform the mind bond to properly explain.

During my explanation she seems to have multiple aha-moments, and after tweaking her form a little bit she does a few test flights, after which she thanks me for teaching her. Apparently she thought I had been expending mana like crazy while flying to show off, but now realize she was just incredibly inefficient in her flight technique. I guess self-taught techniques based on using magic until it works with no basis in physics will do that.

After that it’s just a short hop to find that big shape I saw. She giggles the entire time, presumably at no longer having a terrible technique.

“You were right, there really was a giant thing here.”

“Yep. I guess you haven’t improved your eyesight with some bird aspect or anything?”

“I-I-I don’t even think of that… But ehm, should we really be sitting on it?”

“Why should we not be sitting on it?”

“What if it doesn’t like it?”

“Well, before we even got here there was a colony of those flappy balloon-bird things, and also, mind magic.”

“You’re reading it’s mind?” She exclaim, and I am not sure if it’s in surprise or anger or whatnot.

“No. Well, yes, sorta. I used a temporary one-way surface level mind bond and [Beast Empathy].”

“Which means?”

“It means I got a general idea of how it felt, and I’m ninety-nine point nine dot-dot-dot percent sure it just doesn’t care. I mean, normally, how would something our size even hurt something so big?”

“We hunted the mammoths to extinction, didn’t we?”

“Well, I said normally, and if you’re likening it to a mammoth I urge you to recount its seven legs and want to inform you that no mammoth has ever been this big. Maybe, I dunno, a fifth as large or something, but this thing could rival the biggest dinosaurs, I think.”

“What, but there’s only three legs on this side!”

“Three and a stump, yes. I can sense four things on the other side, and I don’t think it has a penis sticking out like that.”

“Eww.”

“Yeah, it’s be a pretty stupid, evolutionary speaking.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“That’s not what I thought you meant.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“What did you say?”

“What did I say when?”

“Maaaw! Now you’re just making fun of me.”

“A little bit, sorry, but you invited it.”

A little time passes, and I at least find it pleasant in these snowy highlands, sitting atop this lumbering leviathan as it slowly moves towards some unknown goal.

She’s the one to break the silence. “Should we go back home?”

“Sure, it’s getting dark, anyway. Lemme just get some photos of Bertha.”

“Bertha? Really?”

“Yeah, big ol’ berthy. Big and ridiculously powerful.”

“Powerful?”

“You didn’t try to magically prod it?”

“Are you crazy!?!”

“Certifiably not, and it’s not like it cares if some puny little thing pokes it. At most it would just wave the flies away.”

“…you are crazy.”

I simply shrug, before retrieving my phone and getting a number of photos. And then we’re off. “Bye Bertha!”

The next day goes roughly: wake up, morning routine, blah blah blah meetings, more meetings, blah blah, some planning, sharing of new information, change of plans, go home, make stuff, sell stuff.

As does the rest of the week, though I don’t head out to my spot to sell, and we actually work on the equipment for the hop. After a break on saturday, on sunday we do a test hop, with a target altitude of fifteen kilometer, to test the equipment in actual use.

No problems are found, though we do find a couple things that can benefit from minor changes. And so, the date is set for the stratosphere jump, and the ‘hopeful target’ is raised to 45 km, while the goal is still 30 km. It’s set to the seventeenth of february.

I somewhat settle back into a routine, though one where I have to work with the space guys as we develop plans, techniques, and equipment. Multiple redundancies in life support, several ways to get and keep speed, etc. The stratospheric hop will be just that, a ‘hop’, and once the atmosphere gets too thin I will just follow a ballistic trajectory, or a ‘nice physics arc’ as one of them put it.

Tåke becomes a bit clingy when she returns with her pack from somewhere to the north, and Leda’s whelp, Lucas (keeping the L theme going), is growing nicely, and can already glide fairly well. The only reason he can’t fly just yet is because he has pretty much no fine control over his magic, so for the moment he’s reliant on just using his body, which definitely needs more practice.

Also interesting is his mana physique. As best as I can tell it was ‘finalized’ before I left, but there are subtle changes, probably from him actually using (or attempting to use) magic, and perhaps the environment. I want to catch up on how the cultivators are doing too, so I’ve contacted Jasper, but aside from sharing a little bit of information we decided to put things off for now, since I’m so busy with the hop and all.

When the day comes I fly over to the launch site (some old, small, closed airport), bringing only the bare minimum that I need, which means the kinda things you never leave home without, as well as the few pieces of equipment I brought home.

By the time I get there they’ve been setting up things for an hour, and we use another, and then a bit more to get everything fully set up and myself equipped. After that comes equipment checks, a fifteen kilometer hop, and then more equipment checks, all the while coordinating with flight control and whatnot.

“Okay, we are ready to go.” I hear through the speakers of the stiff, but flexible, helmet.

“Lars, you ready?”

“Yep, waiting for the clear signal.”

“There’s a plane under your projected flight path, we’re waiting for flight control to give the go-ahead… And we got it.”

They do a final double check of all measurement and recording devices, then start the countdown.

It hits zero.

“Honestly,” I start as I kick off the ground and accelerate parallel to the ground, “the countdown makes this feel anticlimactic.”

When I reach a good speed I pitch upwards, and activate the thruster when the GPS altitude says I’m a kilometer up. It takes a while to wind up, during which time I have to do minor adjustments to my wings to stay stable.

We long since decided that wyvern style wings with feather-scales would be better for this, less chance of getting stuck or something, and that proved a correct choice as we developed the suit I’m using.

It fits my entire body quite snugly, including my wings, and relies on entering it before shapeshifting to properly wear it. As opposed to my usual belt, I’m wearing a flat harness on the inside, and have put my phone, keys, and the electronics in each their own pocket. The latter has a cooling mechanism, and the entire suit has several enchants the big one being to control temperature.

“You are at five kilometers, status?”

“Reading five point two kilometers and rising, status all green.”

I’m rising significantly faster than I can without the thruster, making a slowly expanding spiral around the ‘launch site’. After the night’s snowfall, everything looks all white and pretty from up here, at least when ignoring the plowed roads and splotches of color that is towns and cities.

“You are at ten kilometers, status?”

“Reading ten point one kilometers and rising, status all green. Ready to go max thrust.”

“Got it. Clear for max thrust.”

And so I turn the thruster to the max and take an even steeper climb, at forty-five degrees.

I pass fifteen kilometers, which is where the thrust would really start dropping at the normal levels, and I clearly notice the thinner air as I keep steady.

“You are at twenty kilometers, status?”

“Reading twenty point two kilometers and rising, status all green. External air pressure is getting pretty low and I got less control, but the filter spells are still working fine.”

I rise and rise and rise.

“Eikeli reporting: Reading twenty-four point six kilometers, air quality has dropped to yellow, switching to internal air.”

“Internal air connected.”

“Air intake closed.”

“It’s back in the green.”

“Gotcha, you are past twenty-five, status?”

“Reading twenty-five point nine, all green.”

“Copy that. How are you feeling?”

“Hmm, airy? Floaty? The air resistance is noticeably lower, and I’m glad I have the internal air supply.”

…

“You are at thirty kilometers, status?”

“Reading thirty point one, all green.”

“You’ve reached the goal, do you wish to continue?”

“Yeah, let’s see how far we can push it.”

I look around, carefully. From up here everything looks… small would be an understatement. Even with my improved eyesight I can’t discern specific buildings, and even the few heated football fields are but distant, green, specks.

I pass thirty-five kilometers, still all green.

From up here I can definitely see the curvature of the earth. It’s nowhere near the level you see in images from the ISS and other satellites, but… wow. I can see the entirety of southern Norway, the neighbouring parts of Sweden, and even over to the northern parts of Denmark.

“Hey, is the camera feed working?”

“Yes, why?”

“This view… I don’t- I’m not- I- I’m speechless. I’m in awe. I want to share this.”

“It must be quite something to see it from up there, huh? You just reached forty kilometers, status?”

“Reading forty point one kilometers, all green and in awe. Definitely want to push this as far as possible.”

I’m starting to really slow down due to the reduced thrust, so I pitch a bit towards the horizon. It takes longer than any of the previous intervals, but eventually I hit that optimistic target.

“You’re at forty-five kilometers, status?”

“Reading forty-five kilometers, all green.”

“What’s your reading on your remaining air?”

“It says seventy percent. I have not used any of the magically stored air.”

“Okay, we got the same. You are cleared for the next checkpoint.”

“Copy that. I can see all three scandinavian capitals from here, you know. I think I can see a little bit of germany, too, but there are no borders from up here.”

At this point the thrust I get is low enough that I think I would slow down even if I went horizontally (or just drop down), so, for the first time since I left the ground, I spread out my mana to do some magic.

Wow, the mana up here is weird… The Air aspect is here, but it’s… faint, and feels a bit off. No matter. I don’t use much etheric mana anyway.

The first spell I attempt is the one I learnt from the sky-whales, refined by both Leda and me. It does the opposite of what I want it to, so I quickly dispel it. Next up is plain manipulation of the air around me which… maybe does something? What if I expand the spell’s radius? Well, yeah, it does something.

I cycle through a couple different spells, but the manipulation method seems to be the most efficient one. Even with that I can only delay the inevitable.

“You’re at fifty kilometers, status?”

“Reading forty-nine point nine and dropping. All green.”

“I think that’s it people.”

“Yeah, can’t maintain speed up here. Shutting down the thruster.”

I might be able to land anywhere I can see from here… well let’s not. At least getting back down is easy. I use what little control I have (and some magic) to point straight down, and then fold my wings around my body.

“Lars, you are falling rapidly, what’s going on?”

“I have next to no control up here, but the low amount air pressure means a higher terminal velocity, so I figured I could do some extreme skydiving back down to thirty or so.”

“Just be careful.”

And so I plummet towards the ground, soon reaching startling speeds. Mach 1, then mach 2. Those speeds with actual air resistance would tear me to pieces, but up here I don’t even break the sound barrier. I think? There’s too little air for sound to really work, anyway.

Either way, it’s a little bit scary, so I slowly fold out my wings to increase drag. Not that it does much. Eventually I do start to slow down, and eventually my speed drops below mach 1 as my terminal velocity does.

At an altitude of five kilometers I start properly slowing down and evening out. That last bit takes as long as the first twenty, and then I touch down, almost the same exact same spot I took off from.

There’s clapping and cheering, and we properly celebrate the achievement in their local office with cake. And alcohol, of course, but I don’t partake in that. Honestly it’s a bit rowdy for my taste, but the cake is good, and we have a conversation of what to do next, to get all the way into space.

The drunk and possibly temporary answer is that we need more rockets, which sounds very Kerbal, but it’s true that a regular air-breathing engine won’t cut it. It sounds like the engineers have a couple ideas for mana-powered rocket thrusters, though the little suit won’t cut it for that - a proper vehicle or at least some exo-suit would be needed for that.

As things wind down a little bit I am the first to excuse myself and leave, and they promise to contact me in a few days, after they’ve gone over the data they got and come up with some plans for the way forward.