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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 18:56:33 GMT -6
--- And then Avander was way, way up in the air somewhere, still trying to sort himself out, but nowhere near the ground anymore.
Aster blinked.
It felt like some kind of trick, some glitch or optical illusion. But if he was confused, Avander was even more so. The Wiurn’s bafflement outweighed his own to such an extent that Aster could feel it more distinctly in his mind than whatever he was feeling himself. Still, Avander had enough mental presence to focus on his flying again, and hovered where he had ended up in the air.
Aster sighed, feeling the energy drain out of him with the adrenaline. “What was that?” he said.
{I don’t know,} Avander said. {You said ‘higher’, and I---}
“No.” Aster shook his head, though from that height Avander might not have been able to see it. “Not the part where you disappeared. I can explain about that one. But the diving… What were you thinking? Why didn’t you pull up earlier?”
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 18:56:47 GMT -6
{Ah,} Avander said. He was silent for a time, but the feeling radiating from him changed from confusion and a little panic to something that distinctly resembled embarrassment. {Well… I forgot I was calling it myself,} Avander said. {I was waiting for your signal.}
Aster was left at a loss for a moment by his answer, but… No, thinking about it, it did make sense. Aster had been the one signalling the timing of that for their entire first session. It wasn’t unthinkable for Avander to forget that things had changed over, even if the results were… well…
“Come down,” Aster said, rubbing at his face. He didn’t have the heart to watch Avander dive anymore, at least not right now, even if Avander had the nerve to do it, which Aster wasn’t sure he did either. He needed a break, and there were, fortunately, conveniently other matters that needed to be addressed.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:22:23 GMT -6
“I’ll explain about how you got up there,” Aster said.
Just as Aster could sense Avander’s moods, so too could Avander sense his, and right now the Wiurn understood that Aster was still reeling from what had happened--- or what had almost happened, really. Avander landed, and walked to where Aster was. Aster took a deep breath, then shook his head again, and tried to marshall his thoughts.
“That’s one of your new abilities, though I guess this is the first either of us has seen of it,” Aster said. “It’s… Well, the proper name for it is teleportation, but that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?” The ribbon could translate a lot of things, but sufficiently abstract concepts were still foreign to the creature he was speaking to. Though, then again, if he said the word ‘teleportation’ to a person who didn’t know what that was, that wouldn’t mean anything to them either.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:22:46 GMT -6
It wasn’t a common phenomenon, nor a common ability among creatures. At least, Aster had never seen it used himself.
Avander was waiting for him to elaborate, so Aster did. “Basically it lets you instantly get to a different place, without moving your body at all. I don’t know what the upper limit on range would be for you, but at the very least, you should be able to go a short distance. Like you did just now.” It was, he found, a little easier to explain to Avander now that the Wiurn had actually experienced it firsthand himself. At least then it wouldn’t sound so outlandish, and Avander would have at least a little frame of reference for what Aster was talking about.
{Not move my body?} said Avander. {I was moving when it happened that time.} Which was true enough; he had been flailing around pretty wildly.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:23:00 GMT -6
“Right, but you moved because of something that happened with… magic, or maybe your inner workings, not because you moved your wings or your legs. Just like you don’t need to move anything to call the ice wall to you.” Now he was glad that they had done that too; the ice was at least a more tangible thing, and now Avander had some rudimentary understanding of that kind of ability.
Avander made a low grumble deep in his throat. {This is more complicated magic, isn’t it? Let’s just go back to diving, and leave this for tomorrow,} he suggested.
But Aster shook his head. “No, you’ve done it the once already, so I want you to be able to control it before we resume. This time we were lucky, and you ported up. Imagine what would’ve happened if you ported down in the middle of a dive.”
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:23:27 GMT -6
Avander fell silent at that. Aster had to drive the thought from his own mind, even though he had been the one who had spoken it into existence. “Well, you see my point, right? Besides, you’ve done it once. You can do it again.”
{... Yeah, alright,} said Avander. He settled and resettled his wings, nosing at one a little, a small self soothing gesture. {Okay. What do I have to do?}
Aster thought about it for a moment. “What were you thinking when it happened? Do you remember at all?” He had advice he could give, but it would be easiest if Avander could come up with what he had done on his own.
Avander shook his head from side to side, not in an imitation of a human gesture, but more like something he might have learned from watching Grunty. It boggled Aster to think that Avander was the younger of the two.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:24:23 GMT -6
That was because Aster was beginning to have trouble thinking back to a time when he lived here without having Avander with him. It felt as though Aster had had him almost as long as he'd had Summer, but Aster had in fact raised him from a hatchling as a Sarane. {There was too much going on. I can’t think. I…} Here he hesitated, and Aster waited, willing to be patient as Avander sorted out his thoughts. {I think I just wanted… I needed to be higher. Because that was what you said.}
And because there wasn’t enough time for anything else to work, Aster thought. But that was something they weren’t going to replicate here. Aster had had just enough of that to last him a good long time. “Okay,” Aster said. “That’s a good start. Hold onto that.” He stepped away a short distance from Avander, then went on.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:24:34 GMT -6
“Let’s see if we can make it happen again. Just focus on the idea of being here, next to me, instead of where you are now.”
{But I can just--- Ah, right. Practice.} Avander took a breath, then squared himself off and looked at where Aster was standing. After a moment, the Wiurn closed his eyes. Aster imagined he must have been trying to concentrate on the idea that Aster had said to him. For now, Aster didn’t bother trying to look inside Avander’s head. He didn’t want to disrupt whatever might be going on there. And since Avander had managed to do it once on his own…
Aster was left waiting for quite some time, but since Avander showed no signs of having given up, Aster simply waited it out. And then it happened, and caught him so totally off guard that Aster was scrambling away from Avander for a moment when the Wiurn materialized beside him.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:25:13 GMT -6
The two of them stood for a moment, staring at each other, before Avander snorted in amusement, tail lashing from side to side. {Wait, really? Did I scare you?} he said. Mirth rolled off him in waves, and Aster had to fight the urge to say something snappy in his own defense.
Avander wasn’t wrong. He had startled Aster. It was only pride and for the sake of saving face that Aster didn’t admit as much. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he said, though his heart wasn’t really in it. “But good on you for managing it. You think you got a better grasp on it now?”
Avander calmed himself, and gave the question some thought. {It’s hard. I have to concentrate a lot. Do you need me to be able to do it fast?}
The way he said it, Aster almost wished he could say no.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:25:35 GMT -6
Unfortunately though, that wasn't the case. “That’s the goal. Think of how useful it would be in a fight. You could close with your opponent before they have time to react, or blink out of range of one of their strikes.”
Aster mostly had offensive purposes in mind for it, but honestly, the practical applications were nothing to sniff at either. The only issue was that Aster didn’t think it was a good idea to be riding on Avander when he did it, since he doubted Avander could take people with him when he did it. But conventional means of mounted travel were more than good enough for Aster.
{I guess we’ll be doing this for a while then,} said Avander.
“Seems like it. But the sooner we keep going, the sooner we can be done,” Aster said.
{Let’s keep going then. What’s your signal for this?}
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:25:50 GMT -6
“Let’s say… ‘blink’. For now, just try to appear beside me. We can experiment with other destinations later, when you’re more comfortable with it,” Aster said.
Avander had no arguments against that, so they began in earnest. Aster walked a little further off again and said, “Blink.” In response, Avander closed his eyes to concentrate… And Aster settled in for another wait.
It took time, but already there was progress: it didn’t take as long as Avander’s first conscious attempt to do it. “See, it’s already a little better. You have an idea of what to think about now, don’t you?” Aster said.
{I guess so. I feel like my head is going to hurt after a while though,} Avander said. It wasn’t an idle complaint either, or at least Aster didn’t think so. Some of these abilities really were quite mentally taxing, even once you became proficient with it.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:26:03 GMT -6
“Alright, just one more time then. Think you got one more in you?” Aster said.
{I’ll try,} Avander replied.
“Okay. Blink.”
Avander managed it--- one more teleportation. It was a good, clean one, about the same amount of time that the previous attempt had taken, but he was sufficiently tired at the end of it that Aster didn’t ask for any more. They rested a while before heading back, and didn’t resume again until the next day.
From there, it was once again a matter of practice, though they were limited by the amount of mental energy that Avander could muster up in a day. In the beginning, that was a hard limit of three a day, which Aster kept to in order not to tax Avander too much. Later on, when he had gotten faster and more proficient with it, he could sometimes do a few more if they rested a while between them.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:26:28 GMT -6
But that came with its own caveats: they couldn’t be too quickly in succession, and they also couldn’t be more than three at a time without a significant rest period in between.
Still, that broadened their horizons on the amount that they could practice the skill. And Avander really needed the practice this time around. It wasn’t an intuitive thing for him, and it took a significant amount of time before he could do it quickly, as soon as Aster asked it of him.
Over time, they found out other quirks--- longer distances were actually easier, for one, than very short ones, up to a certain point. After that, they became harder again as the distance increased, and there was a limit to how far Avander could go via teleportation. He couldn’t get anywhere he couldn’t see either, so there was none of that jumping through walls stuff unless he could see through a window or something like that.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:26:49 GMT -6
Aster wondered if that could be circumvented if Avander knew the location well, but he didn’t want to try it and end up with a terrible accident. Even the window trick had been risky, in retrospect.
Eventually, when Avander had a good grasp of it, Aster started to have him attempt an attack when he came out of it. This was ironically the easiest part, because by then, Avander had had some practice with orienting himself after a blink as well, and could control where it was he ended up with incredible flexibility. That was the real boon of the skill, and while they hadn’t had an opportunity to test it out in a live setting, Aster was sure it would be impressive in action.
But beyond that, when they were finally finished with teaching Avander to control his teleportation, Aster was just relieved that it was done.
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Post by Noa on May 30, 2020 22:27:25 GMT -6
Now they could do other things again, and not worry about Avander triggering the ability without meaning to. Which meant that it was time to go back to their diving practice.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Aster said. “I hope you haven’t forgotten everything.”
{Of course not. Once you learn to fly, you never really forget,} Avander replied. But Aster could sense that behind his bravado was some genuine concern, as though he wasn’t sure either.
Well, one way to find out. “Dive,” Aster said.
The first few stoops were honestly a little shaky. It had been some time since their last practice with this skill. But Avander remembered it the more he practiced, and it didn’t take him nearly as long to recover his previous progress. Aster was still calling when he pulled out of the dive for their first session after the break, because Avander was finding his footing with it again.
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