“Lad? This is hardly the right place for a nap! Hoho!”
I woke up to the hearty jeering of Thorton Wisebeak as he made his way into the workshop. I jolted upright in my chair and found that some ink had rubbed into my face.
Wisebeak handed me a rag, “Usually these are for oil and grease, not ink! Might I ask what you are working on?”
“Thanks, I’m not working on any designs actually. Just trying to do some writing.”
“Hoohmmm? Writing you say? I didn’t think you were the authorial type?”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea, a favour for a friend you might call it,”
Wisebeak nodded understandingly, “I see… I should let you know that your captain asked me to put you to work this week,”
I wiped the ink off with my sleeve and tried to calm myself down from being woken up so suddenly, “Oh, right, what do you need?” I said as I stacked my papers together. I didn’t want to let anyone know about my plans to leave until I had finished.
“Well, since you’re in the mood for writing, I’ll have you write up your mission report first. I’ll have something for you by the time you are done,”
“Yes sir,” I said as I threw together a report of our undertakings from Oakenveil to Begoniastead.
I could hear Wisebeak’s digging through scrap parts and discarded prototypes as I wrote. As well as various mutterings of “Hoo? I don’t remember what this was?”, “That’s where I left it!”, and, “I thought I had this burned!”.
“Tell me, Mak, did your training with the blinders yield any results?” he asked as he continued to riffle through various old projects.
“Yes, actually, they helped a lot. I was able to track a thief after placing a small portal on him, and I was able to hear the movements of… that monster… as it approached us,” my body shuddered as the memory of that murderous creature entered my mind.
Wisebeak, intentionally or not, immediately drew my attention away from the subject. “Did you say “portal” lad?” he said as he dropped some sort of hollow metal sphere and quickly made his way over to me.
“Um, yes sir, I specialize in the use of portal magic. Due to my size I-”
“You can make portals big enough for you to jump through! Brilliant!” he interrupted and he ran back to his desk, pulled down a set of protective spectacles, and began to draw up something.
“That solves the issue entirely!” he said to himself, “Get over here boy!”
I hopped down from my chair and made my way over, hopping on top of a lower desk that he haphazardly cleared of clutter with a swift swipe of his wing.
“What issue has been solved exactly?”
“Your glider of course!” he replied enthusiastically.
“How do my portals-”
He practically shoved his quickly scribbled design into my face.
“It is quite simple! Truly marvelous, I should’ve asked your specialty in the first place. It would have saved quite a bit of time, I must say!”
I looked over his design, it was impressive, to say the least. It would involve installing wings into my outfit that could retract when not in use, but…
“I don’t think they are large enough to keep me airborne for very long,”
“Not on their own they’re not! But you have the right skills to make it happen! Hoo hoo!”
“I’m still not sure what you mean, how do portals make me lighter?”
“Not portals exactly, but surely you must know-”
“That portal magic is a subsect of Gravity magic, yes,” it was my turn to interrupt him, “But I’ve never been good at lifting things with my magic, the last time I tried it nearly killed me,” I thought back to my encounter with the Wolfsnakes.
“It may not come naturally to you,” he said as he adjusted his spectacles, “But much like your portals, it is far easier to lift something smaller,”
The portly Owlfolk then began to rise in the air, some tools and scrap paper going up with him. “And with time and training, you can safely push your limits,”
“So then,” I said, “It seems you have plenty for me to do this week,”
“Hooho! I do indeed! It will be a much longer road towards mastery, but I should be able to drill the basics into you,” he landed with a soft THUMP.
And so began a week of alternating between training in Gravity magic and adjusting designs for my glider. I worked in some writing as well, whenever possible.
It was a truly grueling process. I didn’t even know why I was trying so hard; I had no intention of going on another mission and I couldn’t consistently move anything larger than a cup for the first two days. Then I nearly broke my arm when we tried to test out the glider. Wisebeak had underestimated my weight and the wings simply folded as soon as took to the air.
“In my defence, I did my calculations based on the average weight of a Nequese,” he said, “Your training seems to have yielded results in your muscle mass!”
The compliment was appreciated but hardly healed my bruises.
Each day I woke up early and worked late into the night. The work was interesting but thoroughly exhausting. In retrospect, that was probably the intention, as I was too tired to be kept up by nightmares for the entire week.
On the second day, we used a different material for the wings, but I couldn’t steer it properly and crashed into a tree.
It wasn’t until the fourth day that I had my breakthrough in Gravity magic.
Wisebeak was having me try and move a box of parts and the mental strain was pulling me back into the visions of my past.
“What are you seeing, my boy?” he asked, clearly noticing the pain in my face.
“Just, unpleasant memories,” I replied as the ghostly figures of Gus, Dralp, and Crob began to take shape in the room around me.
“Unpleasant you say? Hmph!” he scoffed, “I dare say they must be more than that!” he then swatted me on the nose with a ruler.
“Ouch!” I yelled as I dropped the box to the ground.
“You are stronger than you realize,” he said as he motioned for me to try again. “All magic creates some kind of strain on the body or mind, but Gravity inflicts the most mental stress of all. To use it effectively one must be able to tune out internal distractions while being fully aware of one’s surroundings.”
I began to lift the box again, with similar results.
“Mak, your pain resides in your regret. Regret that you were not strong enough, fast enough, brave enough, aware enough. But if you want to keep your friends safe in the present and future, you must learn from the past. Not wallow in it,”
He was right, and I knew that. It wasn’t a difficult concept on paper, but putting it into practice is much less simple.
“Put your blinders on,” he said after a few more moments of struggling.
“Oh, why? Are we stopping this for now?” I replied as I put down the box and put the blinders over my eyes.
“Take a breath, focus on your surroundings, take in everything around you, and lift the box,”
I proceeded as instructed and channeled a bit of magic into my senses as I lifted the box again.
“Now dodge this!” Wisebeak said as he tossed the ruler at me.
I quickly ducked as the ruler flew over my head, nearly dropping the box.
“What was that about? I didn’t even drop it yet!” I shouted.
“That’s the idea!” he chuckled, “Now think fast!”
I sensed the ruler coming back around and dodged it as well.
“The box isn’t as heavy as before, is it?”
Now I saw where he was going with this, oddly enough, a physical distraction was improving my mental concentration!
We spent the rest of the day practicing until I was able to lift two boxes at once without… well, having a mental breakdown.
The next day we dedicated ourselves to the glider.
“Now that I have a better grasp of things,” I said as I began to draw up a design, “I have an idea,”
Wisebeak chortled excitedly, “Hoo? An idea you say?”
“Well, with gravity magic I can make up for the issue of weight, and a stronger material can be used to prevent collapse...”
“But the steering?”
“That’s the thing, we’ve been designing the glider based on how birds fly, but I don’t have a bird’s tail for steering,”
“Indeed, a Nequese tail is hardly suited for aerodynamics,”
“So perhaps instead of flying like a bird…” I said as I finished my drawing and presented it. “I try to fly like a bat!”
The hefty Owlfolk leaned towards my design, “I see… Multiple points of articulation in the wings, controlled by Gravity magic for precise maneuverability… You’ll have to make sure to reinforce them, perhaps with a touch of enhancement magic while you use it, but I think this just might work!”
He quickly began adding a few notes, “You’ll want an easy-to-use locking mechanism for if you need to focus on something else while gliding…” he began to mutter suggestions as he wrote. “It will certainly take practice to control of all of this at once,”
For the first time since Begoniastead, I felt something faintly resembling hope.
“I know, and I’m prepared to put in the time,”
ns 15.158.61.12da2
