I say goodbye to Leda then get away from the rather immense surge of mana around her. Once away from the worst of it, I reach out with my mana, sensing how far I can go while retaining full control. Thirty to forty meters, huh.

Actually… Let’s do it the simplest way first. I form a tendril of mana about a dozen meters, and summon a puppet at that location. Then I ‘unsummon’ my main body, ‘re-summon’ it next to the puppet, and finally unsummon the puppet.

Teleportation, huh. This is neither the long-distance transportation version, nor can I use it as a short, but frequent combat blink. Actually, given that it is limited by mana range, Leda could do kilometer-long teleports. Actually, by ‘leapfrogging’ the main body and a puppet you could move decently fast.

The biggest source of speed would be mana range. On the other hand, sending the mana and finding a viable spot, which should be pretty quick with a clear line of sight, takes some time. Well, the biggest factor in time would be the actual summon-/unsummoning of the forms, which looks instant, but while it takes about as long as the blink of an eye, one ‘step’ would take three (un)summonings.

On the bright side I learned something new yesterday. Your effective range of mana is a bubble, but more importantly, it’s a stretchy bubble. Usually it’s roughly spherical but a bit squashed on the bottom, but I figured out that I can ‘push’ the bubble in a direction. It’s pretty hard to do but I assume I’ll get better with practice.

Speaking of practice, I brought the Anderson kids to a nice flat grassy place. There’s other people around, but I had them change in their own home. I also sold them their flight-suits and bags. They don’t seem to mind the attention they’re getting as they practice no-magic landing and takeoffs, as well as turns, dives and even aerobatics.

I throw a yellow ball of light into the air, and not long after they both perform almost graceful landings. “You’re both doing great. The question is: Can you fly for longer distances? You can consider that your ‘final exam’ when it comes to flying. And so, we’re taking a quick trip to Sweden.”

For a longer flight there is a few things you want to take into consideration. One is your equipped abilities and classes, but when flying in a group communications and agreed-upon rules are just as important. “First off, you want [Shapechanger], [Meditation] and your air magic ability equipped, as well as [Body Enhancement] and [Force Magic]. Uh, don’t change them yet.”

I take a pause to gather my thoughts. “When flying we don’t want to fly too close to each other, which means that communication would be pretty hard. When moving that fast I wouldn’t expect our voices to carry over the wind unless we figure out some spell, which would be useful but let’s assume we don’t have that for a moment.”

“Therefore I suggest we use light - both of you are able to create a simple colored ball of light, right?” I hold out my hand, forming a small green sphere. The others follow suit, though a bit slowly. “Okay perfect. Green means ‘good’ or ‘all is fine’. Yellow means ‘caution’, or ‘slow down’. Red is ‘danger’ or ‘land’.”

“So if we need to land we create a red orb?”

“Exactly. That’s basically for emergencies, though. Yellow light means we should slow down and gather together - we should be able to get close and slow enough to communicate. Maybe. Probably. Worst case scenario we just land. Now, unless we form a line, someone will be ahead of the others.

Therefore I want us to fly in an inverted V formation. You two in front and me behind. That way I can monitor you. If there’s something I can also just catch up to you guys. We should also try to keep a distance of say… five meters. Of course, if that seems too close, just spread out. We’ll have all the sky to ourselves.

Oh, and while we should be below any planes, we will have to give right of way. That means we’ll do a large detour around any airports (we’ll see them from a distance) and lower our altitude if there’s nearby planes. Questions?”

“No? Okay. Here’s a compass, one of you will navigate there, and the other will navigate back.”

They were a bit confused on the whole navigation thing, but I specified that they can (and should) use any means available to do the navigation. They asked me for examples, to which I simply told them to discuss. They came up with following the roads, using landmarks, using the compass, and using the sun.

I could see their internal facepalms when I pointed out that they could also just use their phones’ GPS and map. And then I explained that I wanted them to know about the other methods since they can’t exactly fiddle with their phones while flying.

They looked on the map together, and realised the closest point of Sweden is due east. Then they realized I hadn’t specified where in Sweden I meant. I answered truthfully that it doesn’t matter, I just chose it arbitrarily. I had the road south in mind, though. We ended up in an echelon (diagonal) formation with Silje navigating.

While hardly the most efficient path, it went pretty well, and about fifty minutes later I land on swedish soil next to the siblings. “Good job. How does it feel being faster than a car?”

“That was cool! And a little bit boring. There should be some games for flying…”

“Oh, I’ve given that topic some thought.”

He perks up. “What did you come up with?”

“Not much.”

He gives me a flat stare. “Really…”

“Yes really. I figured you could do something like tag, though that could be dangerous. Races, though. That can very much be done. Timed flying races. I even made some things to use as checkpoints.”

“Like flying ring?”

“Eh, no. They’d drift out of place, and what if you hit them? They’re small devices that creates an illusion. I guess the illusion could be a ring, but I was thinking they would just be markers that shows which side you have to pass them.”

“Like slalom?”

Slalom? Ah, right, the blue and red poles. “Yeah, like that. Though, if the race is in three dimensions we need a line rather than a point.”

“But slalom uses poles, those are lines…?”

“No, if you look at a ‘map’ of the course, seen from above, they are just points. A T-shape should work - you fly over the ‘top’ of the T. And it can be rotated to make true 3D courses.”

“How about the low-gravity thing you talked about?”

“I have a working prototype, but it needs a bit more work, and I also have to make a mobile power hub. I should have a working version early next week, so talk with your team about it before then. Anyway, I’m hungry, so I’m heading to the shopping centre for some food.”

Aside from talking, nothing particular happened while eating. After that the siblings took the opportunity to buy a some sweets on the cheap, then we headed back. After some discussion they agreed they wanted to learn crafting, so for the rest of today’s lesson I guided them through the process of making a wand, making sure to teach them the underlying methods and abilities.

The results were quite workable, and when they were done I went over points of improvement. Then I went into the strengths and weaknesses I’ve seen during the lessons, giving them some points they should improve on, with some tips as to how. They grumbled a bit over not learning everything they wanted, but I pointed out they should focus on what they’ve learned so far. If that’s not good enough, I joked, I’m only a call and some money away.

I spend the rest of the day leisurely, catching up with the net. And boy is there a lot to catch up with. Discoveries, murders, accidents, one international conference for a ‘standard’ set of laws, two if you count what the EU is doing. My vids and such are somewhat getting drowned by other people who are better at presenting things, but that suits me fine.

That said I already have a nice little following, which seems to have spiked with, well, every video. Notably the one with the elf girl. That settles it: I’ll make more videos with creatures, humanoid and otherwise. Add to that the exploration needed to actually find creatures and I think I have my niche.

First long term goal, more for my own experience than to make videos: Sky whales. Yes, flying whales, of varying size, have been detected, both by radar and by eyes and cameras. I think it’s fairly reasonable to assume they have a temperament like that of water whales, which is to say don’t mess with them and don’t go near their young and you’ll do fine.

The next day becomes a lazy day, though I practice the teleportation trick, check up on Tåke, Leda and the egg, practice water bending, work on my experiments and finally practice my use of mana. Specifically, mana sense, or using mana to sense stuff with the goal of being able to discern different materials, and experimenting with the ‘mana bubble’, or the range you can use mana in.

With some effort the normally round bubble can be stretched to get the form of an egg for more range, and things in the way (like the ground below) also shape it. In the end I mostly just do whatever I fancy, which happens to be ‘magic’ and ‘stuff on computer’ instead of just sitting in front of a computer all day.

The next few days pass in much the same manner, though the psychologist call and tell me they got permission for Leda to come if we can be sneaky about it. Apparently Leda’s under some surveillance, and by the sounds of it whoever is in charge of that is not particularly pleased with her…. creative interpretation of the rules.

The psychologist told me that those people stressed that they don’t know where the line is, but we’ll have to be really careful not to cross it. That said, they had decided that as long as no harm was done, be it on property, people or just by scaring people, they would leave it be.

I spent a day with Leda working on improving [Mind Magic: Masking] and giving her a simple and low-upkeep way to keep it cast when near people and settlements. Masking being the variant of [Mind Magic] where you make other creatures ignore you. It works really well on humans, apparently. I think it taps into whatever part of the brain makes you completely tune out things you are used to and either don’t need to or don’t want to notice, like homeless people.

I also went to the last mandated psych visit. Her official conclusion is the same as earlier, in that I am sane and yadda yadda don’t do stupid things again. With that done I found Leda in that one grassy patch at the northern border of the city. She was playing football with some kids, including that one friend I can’t even remember if she told me his name, so to not interrupt the game I communicated with a mind bond.

Well, one of the kids pointed out she started playing worse after I got there and they ended the game anyway, wondering who I was. I just told them we’re friends and that I needed to ask her about something. The others went back to play while I told her the psych had said she could come for the research stuff.

She seemed happy to come, so we talked a bit about how exactly we’d do things, with her refusing to let the egg out of sight and needing to bring her main body and all. I had talked about a couple possibilities and possible problems with the psych anyway, intentionally leaving out the egg, so it didn’t take long.

After the both of us played with the kids a bit (with me taking on the form of a ‘kid-version’ of myself), she promised to play with them another time. We then went to her nest/mini-fortress to prepare a few things for hiding Leda on the way to the hospital on tuesday and also hiding the egg.