I was wondering what Leda has been doing lately, with the companion bond cutting out almost completely for significant periods. At first I figured she was just temporarily blocking it for some reason, maybe she was, but when the time periods grew longer I figured it was something else, and it seems like my guess about her going to another world was correct, as now that I’m back from japan I could tell the direction she came from is that of iceland.

She’s a big girl, so to speak, so I guess she’s managed to get some agreement with the people in charge of the gate. You’d think they’d contact me as her guardian, but maybe they just don’t know? I guess she’s going there to see Lucas, and maybe fly around and do wyvern-things without silly human-rules tying her down.

Oh, she’s noticed me. Or, noticed that I’ve moved closer, at least. Mmm, that’s a pleasant feeling, like a warm smile that says ‘I see you’. I didn’t know the bond could do that, I’ll have to ask her how. For that matter, how do I know that’s what that feeling is?

Ah, she disappeared again.

I went to bed early, according to local, english, non-japan time, but still got less sleep than I should (jet lag, ho!), so getting out of bed is a pain, but I have to get up north, to the school to finish what needs to be done before I start classes. Turns out, after the administration filtered out the applications from students that don’t fit the criteria, we’re left with twenty-one students.

That’s… a bit too big for one class, but somewhat small for two. It seems they had already thought of that, and suggest splitting the time I teach here in three: One teaching all of them, and two parts of teaching half the class. The first part would be theory and other stuff that can be taught to a larger group, and eleven students is a very manageable number to teach and still be able to pay attention to each one. Some might even find that they aren’t so interested after all.

As for how we split the class, they lump that responsibility on me, which is fine. I don’t think I should be too strict about it and instead let the kids choose, and even have some leeway to temporarily or permanently switch groups, for example if they have something else they need or want to do one day. Within reason, of course.

Three days later it’s friday, and by my count twenty eager faces show up in the classroom that has been allotted me. Quite a few of them walk up to chat with me, though I can spot two distinct cliques among those who don’t; one of ‘pretty girls’ and another that have no easily identifiable common trait. I try to temper any prejudice and expectations until I can see how they act when we get started, though.

It doesn’t look like the last person will come, so I do a roll call in the form of introductions, asking everyone to state their name, why they wanted to come here, and a bit about their magic skills.

There’s unsurprisingly a bit of variance, but aside from the boy that I have previously tutored a bit, most have little to no experience. Next I address go through those who haven’t used magic, totalling seven, and -after explaining what that means- flush their body with a burst of mana to ensure they don’t have ki, and also to give them a feeling of what mana is.

After going over the general plan for what I want them to learn (asking for input and wishes), not much time is left, so I form a web of mana with each of them linked to me, then display various magics.

“I don’t expect you to have learnt anything from my little number, but remember the feeling of the mana coursing through you, and in the air; your homework until next time is to to learn to sense mana.”

I pull out a bag of imbued marbles I prepared hovering one of the little balls to each student.

“These are imbued with mana and should stand out like a beacon to your budding mana sense. It should be easy for those who have already used magic, and for the rest, hold it in your hand and focus on it. There’s lots of tutorials online, too, including some I’ve made.”

“Once you can do that, your next task is to manipulate your mana. Try to make a ball of mana the size of the marble. It’s easiest to do this inside your body, usually somewhere around the chest, but once you manage that you can try to do the same outside your body. Don’t expect to see anything; you need to feel it with your mana sense.”

“Oh, and if I hear you try something reckless with magic I might kick you out of the group, so don’t. Mistakes happen, which is okay, but make sure you don’t do anything you can’t undo, and nothing that can hurt yourself or others if it goes wrong.”

With that warning class is over, but as expected quite a few of them stay back to chat. I get some good questions, some questions they’d have the answer to if they read the paper they got and/or paid attention, and some wildly off-topic questions.

The mixed clique again doesn’t come up to chat, but seem to already be practicing and discussing, so I start weaving a web of mana around them, for them to discover if they get that far.

They didn’t.

Tuesday the next week, Leda finally pops back out of the portal as I fly towards england, feeling really… refreshed, relaxed… Satisfied, yeah, that’s it. This time, she doesn’t leave again, even after quite a while, and while that specific feeling fades, she seems to be in a good mood. Well, I move my focus to the class. The boy who didn’t show up previously are there, his right arm in a cast.

“Should you really be here?”

“Uhm, we aren’t going to run or anything, right? It’s just magic.”

“Just magic, huh. Well, if you -and your parents- think it’s fine. Last time I just went over my plans and showed off some magic, talk to me after class and I’ll give you the short version. Before that, though, can I take a look at your arm?”

The cast is there for a reason, and a damn good one at that; how the hell did he get half of one of the bones in his forearm pulverized?!? I doubt they’d replace it with metal unless it was utterly unrecoverable. That said, if I just weave the metal aspect into the remaining bone, and apply Human on top of that, and heal this clean neatly cut incision and the rough areas over here-

“What are you doing?”

I blink.

“Uhh… that’s a good question.” I look at the student who asked, then back to the boy. “I should probably start class -and shouldn’t have done that…- See if you can’t get a doctor to take a fresh look at it as soon as possible, hm?”

Almost all the kids raise their hands when I ask who managed to form their mana into a ball, and only a couple hands drop when I ask about doing it outside their body, so I ask the students to form groups of two or three and show each other their progress in manipulation, making sure that each group has one person who was able to do it externally.

I use that time to properly flush the new kid and then link with him and get him a bit up to speed. He seems to have some experience from before, so he manages to form a very rough ball in time for me to continue the lesson. And I switch straight to physics, specifically the conservation of energy.

I only talk for five minutes, before engaging the class in a discussion about what that actually means when it comes to using magic. Tl;dr: You can’t do shit without energy (mana), your body can only hold so much mana, and there are inefficiencies in using magic which means some is lost.

Next up I explain a few methods of categorizing magic, ending with my (and the internet in general)’s current favorite, the effect-manipulation model. The magic I use are mainly near the manipulation end of the scale, and it is a sliding scale, and that end of the scale will also be our primary focus. Discussion: What magics do you know of, and how would you categorize it?

With such an open question I get a lot of answers, and not all of them agree, and perhaps I let things get a bit off topic, but eventually I stop the discussion.

“I previously mentioned that I will split the class into two halves, and have part of the lessons shared, part of the lessons with one half at a time. So now I want you divide into two. If there is someone you want to be in the same group as, please stand next to them. If there is anyone who don’t care, please stand over there.”

All right, that works out pretty nicely if I group those and those and that girl, and the rest on the other group.

“Alright; you guys are the tuesday group, the others are the wednesday group. Tuesday group please remain, wednesday group, I’ll you see you guys tomorrow.”

The members of the tuesday group are overall not quite as good as the others, the idea being that they might benefit from a bit more direct lessons before tomorrow; next week I’ll probably just have the split classes, and I’ll have all of them at once when they’ve improved enough to learn magic that actually does stuff.

Uh, is Leda coming this way? There’s a small airport a bit to the north, so I hope she remembers to have her transponder and radio on. I guess the students will get to experience something cool today.

But for now, they need to focus on improving their control; those who can use their mana externally will try to ‘wrap’ objects they see, and then recreate the shape separate from the object, while the rest just has to catch up.

After thirty minutes I stop them; progress has been made, but we can do better, so I conscript the externals and help each of them create a mana link to someone else. Two pairs end up both being externals, so I make sure they’re the worst of the bunch. Then they resume their activities, with the goal to teach each other how they do what they do.

Just five minutes later I’m surprised to find that all of them are able to manipulate mana externally and move on to the shape task. Note to self: when teaching multiple people, links are literally magic. And also really effective.

How does that even work? Do they… they cooperate, don’t they? Usually when I make a link I’m either far superior in both control and strength, or its with Leda who has to throttle her side to not burn me and also is a frickin’ genius, but among two people of roughly equal skill… I guess they cover each other’s weaknesses? That might mean the effect drops off as the same two people practice together, so I should make sure they don’t always have the same partners.

I’ve gone through all the pairs several times and made them try to form mana links on their own by the time my favorite feather-scaly death machine draws close. I create a beacon of mana in the yard outside the window, as it’s unused in this rain.

Soon, a familiar wave of mana washes over and latches onto me, and I’m positively surprised that several of the pairs react, looking to me by the window and wondering what that was; for all her massive power, Leda can handle her mana with the utmost precision and grace. Brute force just happens to be her default unless I specifically tell her not to. She’s learning, at least, and no longer carelessly throws her mana around like a giant mace.

You know the saying: When you’ve got a really big hammer…

I guess something is gonna get nailed. Heh. Sigh, I shouldn’t laugh at my own dry puns. And now that I think of it, that’s not a pleasant image. Wyvern… hammers are grotesque.

I accept the offered mind bond and mana link, which soon becomes a torrent of mana and memories and sensations and emotions.

There’s gasps, and the hands of someone half my size catches me before I fall over.

“Thanks.”

｢Ahaha, calm down, I almost fell over.｣

“Since she’s already made herself known, we might as well take a break.”

I send a burst message that I’m busy and don’t want her to disturb, but she can watch. That seems to be fine, and by deepening the bond we coordinate her entrance.

“Everyone, meet Leda, my ward and the first non-human in norway to be recognized as a legal person.”

“Didn’t you say in the world?” She says, having summoned her puppet next to me for a glomping hug and head pat.

“I said ‘as far as I know’. But I know for sure you were the first in norway and scandinavia.”

“I think I ruined my cool entrance.”

“Ah, don’t worry.” ｢But do grow yourself some clothes. That form has nothing to hide, but these are teenage boys.｣

Once the commotion and impromptu Q&A calms down I send Leda to a corner while the others continue. Unsurprisingly, not much progress is made for the remaining twenty minutes, at which point I have to make Leda withdraw her puppet to get actual on-topic questions done. As promised, they get to talk with her as we leave the school, though.

She’s a chatterbox as usual, but I can both see and feel that she’s practically exploding with something she wants to talk with me about, so I hurry things along. Or try to, anyway. In the end I just give up and levitate into the air with an air umbrella.

“I’m going back to the hostel, you’ll find me when you’re done.”

“Ah, but I-” She cuts the conversation, giving me a quick glance “uhm, sorry, I want to go with him!”

She gives a quick bow then follows me.

“That was a bit rude, don’t you think?”

“I said sorry and they just asked and asked and asked sooo many questions!”

“Hmm, you would neeeever do that, right?”

“Oh, I do that sometimes too… But my questions are better! It’s so that I can learn to be human!”

“You mean really basic questions that everyone knows and expect others to know too.”

“Oh, but that’s like-”

“Yes, like the questions they asked about you.”

“Oh.”

Her subdued mood doesn’t last long, as she blurts out that she’s helping the icelandic expeditionary force. At least, I think that’s what the icelandic words she tries to say mean. Scouting around, taking photos, both aerial and on the ground, of areas they find of interest, carrying stuff around, helping with magic, occasionally teaching magic, working as an ambassador/middleman between the wyverns and humans, etc.

Of interesting news, they’ve found some stuff of clearly human origin, including a dead smartphone they were only able to recover the sd card from and a backpack with a near-empty first aid kit stuffed with a bloody set of bandages.

She specifies that the blood tasted really weird, immediately admitting that she shouldn’t have tasted it but claiming that I don’t need to chew her out since the ‘angry man’ already did. The fact that parts of the blood were mixed with some gunky black stuff is worrying - or rather, the entire thing is, but y’know.

They concluded that the bag, some pieces of torn clothing, and a few other things they found, likely belong to the lost kids, but were unable to find out when they were there or where they went; the phone was found on one of the flying islands while the bag and clothing were found in the opposite direction of where I went, not too far from a shallow crater and stone spikes.

“Another dead end, huh.”

“They are maybe still alive! The angry man said they couldn’t have gotten there in less than a week, even if they rode on an island, so they lived for a little while at least. He said that hopes are grim but that’s why you hope, or something like that.”

They did a DNA test of the blood, naturally, and a hair they found in the backpack. The hair should definitely be one of the girls, but the blood was weird; parts looked like they would expect from one of the kids based on their parents’ DNA, but it didn’t look like it was human DNA. Might’ve been contaminated. Or, and it doesn’t sound like the icelanders thought of that, maybe they had shapeshifted.

Oh well. As for what the icelanders are doing; they’re still building up that base on the other side of the portal, which includes preparing large patch of land for farming, and they’re still surveying that world in a spiral outwards. Perhaps more interestingly, they publicized some of their findings in several different scientific journals (which I have seen no news of whatsoever), and it sounds like they’re reaching out to other countries to collaborate on exploring the other world.