“All right, quiet down please.”

It takes a moment, and a magical poke on the shoulder of one of the ‘pretty girls’ for them to comply.

“As previously mentioned, we’ll have a shorter shared class, and then the wednesday class will remain. Yesterday I got the tuesday class up to speed to the point where everyone can manipulate mana externally, as well as form mana links, and will do the same for the wednesday class after the shared class.”

I nod to the raised hand.

“When will we learn magic that actually does something?”

“Yes.” I answer, though it’s obviously not a satisfying answer.

“You learn to walk before you run; as discussed yesterday I favor manipulation style magic, and for that you need a strong foundation and basic skills, but once you have that -and a decent understanding of physics- you can do a lot.”

“The real answer to your question is next week, hopefully, possibly later today if we’re efficient. Once I’m satisfied with you forming -and maintaining- mana links and your control of external mana I will teach you force magic.”

I lift myself off the ground, levitating a conveniently nearby pencil case in an orbit around me to demonstrate.

“Force magic will let you levitate and pick up objects when used correctly, but done incorrectly or inaccurately you might instead wound or damage what you’re trying to pick up, or lose control and drop it. That’s why, you’re not allowed to try levitating any living creature until I say so.”

“Before any of that, however, today we’re doing physics. If you want to use force magic you need to understand Newton’s laws of motion, particularly the third. I’ll go over all of them, then focus on the third. We will do some math, and then I will illustrate force magic with some illusions and we’ll discuss around that.

Despite the groans about that, the class is active and engaged the entire time. Before the tuesday class leaves I link with all of them and show how to use force magic on a couple objects, instructing them to practice on pieces of paper until they can keep them in the air, then practice pushing around a ball. I urge them to practice with each other, and teach them a simple game to get some competitiveness going.

It’s ball game, so you have a field with a goal on each of the short sides, and a ball. Get the ball into the enemy team’s goal. Simple, right? Well, they’re only allowed to affect the ball while it’s on their half of the field, so they need to shoot with enough power and precision to get it into the other goal.

You can scale the ball and field size by skill level, and when I’m confident they have enough control to not hurt each other I’ll introduce a rule that the field is split in four, and you can affect the ball in the three closest quarters to your side. At that point the field is probably sized more like a tennis court than a table tennis table, too.

For the wednesday class, I properly go through the stuff I did with the others, making sure everyone in this group can link, too. They seem to be slightly ahead, so I take them outside for some magic ball and other games. Over the course of a few matches, get really into it, and their competitive spirit and cheering attract attention from other students as well as some passersby.

Not bad, they took the simple game I came up with on the spot and turned it into a team game, with two or three on each team spread out to cover a larger area. And that’s before they mutated the game; the six people over there have turned the objective into hitting the other players, who aren’t allowed to move after the game starts.

What are those three-

“Hey, no!” I yell, slamming a wave of mana into them to disrupt the spell, causing the boy to drop back to the ground and stumble.

“I told you not to use it on living creatures, and that includes yourself.” For now, at least. Hmm, know what, it might be better to just demonstrate.

I have the class gather and summon a human puppet about their age. Then I use a bit of force to lift the football they obtained from wherever off the ground.

“There are two main things that can go wrong if you use force magic improperly. See how the ball deforms slightly, near the top? That’s where I’m ‘holding’ it.”

I let the ball fall to the ground, and have the puppet raise its right arm to chest level, then apply the same amount of force, the same way, to the inside of the forearm. At first it looks like an invisible hand pinches the skin and pulls up, and then an area the radius of an apple suddenly turns into that purplish red of ‘my insides are bleeding’

“To be clear, this is what happens if you don’t spread out the force enough -too much force in one place will break it. The ball is light enough that it will be lifted before too much force is applied, but heavier or weaker objects might break.”

I heal the wound of the puppet, then start levitating it, mimicking someone who is unskilled, but got the memo about spreading out the force. It’s woefully inefficient and should be immediately decipherable (and in turn dispellable) to anyone who knows even the tiniest thing about force magic, bt that’s kinda the point. Even if it pains me.

“And yes, if I didn’t suppress the pain from the puppet that would hurt. A lot. Just trust me on this. Now, does anyone see what’s wrong with this?”

Headshakes all around, and a hand twitch upwards before dropping.

“Trick question; there’s nothing wrong per say, it’s just poorly done. However, if I do this-”

I mentally center myself on the puppet, then shove it with my main body. I start tilting and drifting to the side, and in reaction I somewhat exaggerate the instinctual balancing reaction both in movement and magi, c

2 cxo-

I shake my head slowly, fighting to keep the queasiness down. I mentally recenter myself and I wave a hand at the worried students, reaching out to the quickly dying puppet with my mana to retrieve it before it’s too late.

With that mental drain out of the picture I take a few deep breaths and stand up.

“Okay,” deep breath, “that was only supposed to dislocate an arm, not- hmm, looks like I ripped one lung and one of the heart chambers to pieces.” Not to mention the brain, but let’s keep that a secret.

“But I suppose that’s a good warning; as skilled as I am, I can still make mistakes.”

I take a few moments to ensure the children that I am, indeed, fine, and that it was just mental backlash from the puppet’s injuries.

“I don’t know how much of that you caught, but I spread out the force magic, as I’ve told you is important. Can anyone tell me what went wrong?”

Several of them seem to have something to say, so I nod at the closest one. “Uhm, it didn’t feel like when you do magi, it was, like, really bad and… bad.”

“Yeah, that’s a good answer. One part I wanted to illustrate is that despite following the ‘rules’, or best practices rather, if you aren’t skilled enough you might still cause harm. But what caused the injuries?”

This time one hand snaps into the air, and I give the word.

“When you pushed him, he started falling, and he panicked and used too much force and -it was really fast, but- I think it was worse because his body was moving different ways. Like, his head was moving towards the ground, while his feet were almost still, and he tried to pull everything the opposite way of where he was falling.”

“Precisely; he panicked and lost control.”

“Uhm, will he be fine?”

“The puppet? Well, I have mostly healed that already.” That is, I fixed it enough that it didn’t hurt.

“Fine in no time.” I am, anyway. I disassembled the puppet, as I tend to do.

But let’s not raise those kind of philosophical or ethical questions with them and let them just believe it’s fine. Pretty sure I’d lose this job if it somehow blew into something like ‘Lars killed a person in front of school children’. Err, there would obviously be other issues, too.

So I hide how badly the backlash affected me and carry on with the games for the remaining time, giving pointers and in the end organizing a big game of magic dodgeball minus dodging, or movement, really, and it’s me versus them.

I’m not sure what they expected, or why they’re so upset about losing to someone with magnitudes more experience than all of them combined. They insist on a second round, where I will wear a blindfold, with my back turned.

Not sure what they think that will do, as I have already both explained and demonstrated that my mana sense lets me detect things all around me, but I make my third-person bird turn around too, for the spirit of things.

It goes much the same way as the first round, but they all link up, possibly to get more power against me. Doesn’t really help; with a chain that complex and no leader you might have a lot of power available, but no way to control it.

The girl who have taken charge of their team seems unaffected by their successive losses, though.

“Another! and this time you four are a group, I will link with Damien, you… five make two groups, and the rest also split into two groups!”

They’re much better with the smaller groups of people who know each other, and in the fourth round I feel like I actually have to be tactical, so I start by sniping the girl who took charge, then take out one in each group, then take out one in each group again, starting with the duos turned single.

Well, I say sniping, but aside from missing a couple times, they’re getting good (and smart) enough to deflect my shots, and they all cheer as the ball hits my hand. Launching it off the ground wasn’t supposed to be allowed, but when they figured they could use mana to create feints and distract me, I kinda let it escalate, so I’m not gonna say anything. Instead I congratulate them.

We’ve already gone over the time, so several students hurry to grab their stuff and leave, and the rest disperse after only a couple questions. Since I have recovered from the accident I just grab my own stuff and head home, stopping at some town at the english east coast for some dinner and just to make sure I’m fine, before continuing across the north sea.

The next days, then week, then weeks pass rather uneventfully. The magic class learns steadily, but it becomes quite clear people have different aptitudes; we’ve been through the basics, force magic, enchanting and imbuing, aspect magic, and started on effect-magic in the form of elemental magic, and people are simply better at different things. I am not great at the latter, for example, though I also haven’t practiced it much.

I have decided to accept the invitation to that shapeshifter convention. I thought a convention specifically for shapeshifting magic might be a bit too niche, but along with several other magic-related conventions it has been rolled into ‘Oslo Magic Convention 2018’, albeit as its own ‘module’.

They figured that since it’s less than a year since the Upheaval it might be a bit too early to have conventions dedicated to specific parts of magic, and these kinda things usually have to grow over time, but assuming it doesn’t disappear as suddenly as it came the con will probably grow rapidly, and they might need to separate each of the modules as their own things in a few years’ time.

I’ve made sure to go through my mail properly more often, and I got an… interesting letter. The unmarked envelope has no indication of who sent it, and contains a plain A4 sheet with the words ‘BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY’ written in tiny font size and comic sans. The opportunity it refers to is the attached probably ticket to some furry convention, so yeah.

I looked it up, and those tickets are not only pretty expensive, but sold out, so someone really went out of their way for this. It’d certainly be an interesting glimpse into that subculture. The convention is located on the US west coast, though, which while a good excuse to visit that area, is a bit of a pain, so for now I’ve just tucked it away, not sure if I’ll use it.

When it comes to what Leda has been doing, the icelandic government has set up an agency to handle the portal. Apparently they hired her to help them out, since she can not only fly but easily communicate with the nearby wyverns. That’s all nice and good, but I went with her to talk to them and make sure they know that she’s a legal minor and my ward, and of course to get a good and proper contract. Ain’t nobody gon’ fraud mah’ ward.

I say that, but the one they had was pretty good already, and after converting from icelandic krona to a currency I’m more familiar with, the pay is better than I had expected, too. That said, being paid in cash is a bit… yeah, so I went to my bank and set up a child account and deposited most of the money.

Well, I left her with some spending money, both in ISK and NOK, so that she can buy herself a snack or something every now and then. Withdrawing more will have to go through me, though; as her already broken drone shows (I didn’t even know she bought one) she’s not quite ready to handle that level of financial responsibility.

The space company had a minor breakthrough, having improved the magic thruster far beyond my own skill. They’ve built a computer model for simulating the magic components, and ran machine learning and stuff, so now they have the prototype of a vacuum-capable thruster.

As for the breakthrough, we (mostly them, with help and advice from me) made a proper magic-electronic interface, meaning we can control magic via computers - and use magic to send input to computers. That means the safety standards before flight tests are lower (since you don’t need a person to control them), so after a couple more flight tests things might be ready for me to test. I am… more excited than I’d admit to anyone at that prospect.

The magic-electronic interface is a refinement on the idea of using magic to generate or detect electricity as a bridge between the magical and electrical. You still need to make artifice that can do whatever magic you want to do, of course, and connect to the bridge itself, but that does all the ‘translation’ and just plugs into USB.

Making one-to-one on/off (single bit) connections is simple, and quite easy, as long as you account for the fact that magic isn’t digital, but analog. The breakthrough is a combined chip and very clever inscription on a small circuit board that takes mana of varying strength as input and sends that as signal through the USB. The first version used all the 32 bits on the digital side for one magical connection, but even my artifice, which is the most sensitive and precise, can’t really use that level of accuracy, so the current versions have four 8-bit connections instead, which each have 256 discrete levels.

I must admit I don’t understand the technical stuff the hardware does, but I helped make the spellware, and got myself a couple of the bridges to play around with. I’ve yet to think of anything I particularly want to make, but I have the possibility now, and I’ll at least play around with it.

I already made a device to measure the mana you channel into it. It’s logarithmic, kinda, and I calibrated it such that the highest amount of mana I can currently channel into it is the baseline; one ‘Eikeli’ worth of mana flow. I wanted to use Leda and ‘milli-Ledas’, but she broke the bridge, so she’s not allowed to do that any more. Obviously the name and base point of that unit is somewhat of a joke, but I’m working with the engineers to make a better (Leda-proof) version and find an SI-friendly way to define it.