Already at the initial stage of creating the protective artifact, I realized I had decided to bite off more than I could chew. While I knew the ethereal and steel shields, the rest still needed to be mastered.
That's when my anti-talent for creating new Sumerian spells reared its head in full. And I'm not even talking about the fact that applying spells is one thing, but stuffing them into an artifact is completely different.
Moreover, I shouldn't forget about the other facets of my abilities in the form of mind magic, yoga, or metamorphism. Speaking of the latter.
"Where are you leading us?" Patrick asked me, walking next to Apolline while swatting away Pixie with her little quill pen. "And tell your fairy to stop drawing on everything already."
"You still can't forget that time when you walked around with 'Little Wolf' written on your forehead? Come on, she's a child, she marked me too," I smirked, and Apolline snorted with laughter.
"But you knew about it, while I thought she was just being affectionate, and I walked around like a laughingstock afterward. You've spoiled your little troublemaker!" The discussed character stuck out her tongue and flew over to me, habitually perching on my shoulder.
Over these six months, she had grown another five centimeters and then stopped growing, but she hadn't stopped consuming less prana and mana because of it. Quite the opposite.
"Come on, how can you be angry at this cutie? Am I right?" I stroked the fairy. In response, she held up a small notebook sized for her, on which "Yes" was crookedly written. She's still far from complex sentences, but she can already answer consciously.
"What's this?" she showed another page, flipping the notebook and pointing at a small bush.
"Black elderberry, you can only eat the berries when they're ripe, but they're sour," I answered and duplicated this with a mental image and inscription in my own notebook. Pixie had recently entered the "why" stage and was already asking questions about everything herself.
"How did you even manage to teach her to write?" Apolline asked.
"I pointed at objects, pronounced them, and also wrote the name on paper," I waved my notebook, naturally keeping quiet about mind magic.
"No, that's not what I mean," she shook her head. "How did you even think of this?"
"What's so special about it? Fairies are intelligent, they just can't speak. You didn't learn to speak French right away either, your mom taught you, same here."
"So you're Pixie's mom?" Patrick laughed.
"No, Papa!" the fairy wrote crookedly, and then all three of us laughed while the little one pouted cutely.
"Don't be offended," I stroked her and, seeing our destination in the form of a small hill, stopped. "Here we are, we've arrived!"
"And what's this? Some kind of mound?" Patrick asked skeptically.
"You're a wizard, aren't you used to the fact that not everything in the magical world is what it looks like?" After which I pointed my wand at what appeared to be a thorny bush, said "Finite," and it dissolved, turning into a dark opening of a cave entrance.
"Illusion magic? How didn't I guess right away?" Apolline posed a rhetorical question.
"Well? Shall we go?" I called everyone to follow me, prudently lighting a "Lumos" light at the tip of my wand. My companions cautiously and warily stepped behind, lighting their own lights and trying not to stumble.
Too bad I can't see their surprised faces, considering we're walking down quite comfortable steps with handrails on the side. I didn't forget to cast illusion spells again so we wouldn't be found.
The next obstacle turned out to be a steel door, or more precisely, titanium alloy. As it turned out, almost all elements are known to modern wizards, except perhaps the newest ones discovered in the last thirty years - some inertia of the magical world is still present.
And spells that turn anything into pure titanium aren't some secret. Another matter is that pure titanium is quite brittle, but for this case there are metal mixing spells, and mixing it with aluminum or molybdenum isn't difficult, the main thing is to observe proportions written in ordinary world reference books.
In practice - this is just a side effect of research where I was looking for the best material to create my bracelets, but why not use it? And it turned out to be good training too.
I approached, tapped out a code known only to me, and opened the heavy door inward, almost half a meter thick. Inside, magical lights immediately lit up, illuminating a huge dome of the same alloy.
"What is this?" Apolline asked in amazement, while Pixie proudly lifted her nose. Well yes, she was with me when I built all this.
"My shelter, where I usually train," I answered. I needed a place to practice Sumerian magic.
"And you did all this just for that? But how? Alone?" Patrick asked this time, amazed at the scale of work. No wonder, at the highest point the dome was ten meters high and fifty meters in radius.
"Household spells work miracles, I told you. Or more precisely - construction spells. When I found this cave, my first thought was just to tidy it up, then I got carried away," I laughed awkwardly.
Yes, after removing stalactites and stalagmites, compacting and leveling the walls, floor and ceiling, I gave them a dome shape. Then I decided to try using ersatz-permanent transfiguration. This is when after transformation and various spells like strengthening, a stabilization rune is carved on the object. And over time, the object becomes real, not temporary.
Then I gathered blocks, glued them with permanent sticking spells to the compacted stone and welded them together, resulting in a monolith where you could hide from an atomic explosion. I haven't done anything else yet, as I feared my knowledge would be insufficient for further wall strengthening and isolation.
The only other thing I did was ventilation pipes leading outside, some of which pump air in and some pump it out, preventing suffocation.
"Yeah, you really got carried away seriously. And why didn't you tell us about such a place before?"
"Because I only recently finished. So are we going to train or not?" And I demonstratively spread my black wings of my second form. Just wings, without feathers all over my body and beak. Besides this, I also change my eye color to brown and become a brunette.
"Wow, so that's what your form looks like? You're like an angel!" This time it was Apolline's turn to be amazed. Not for nothing did I train in metamorphism for so long and not show my form. Now there will be fewer questions about me, since no one has seen male veela and doesn't know how they should look.
"Some kind of fallen angel," I answered the girl.
"Finally you decided to fight with full strength!" Patrick grinned, showing his elongated fangs.
And then we started training again like in the good old days. Apolline showered me with a hail of fire, and Patrick tried to at least slightly hit me, which sometimes worked, though it didn't cause me much harm - I'm still not a master at flying, I need to learn this.
As well as controlling six limbs, which would be impossible without the instinctive understanding of veela. Moreover, when they took up wands, dodging became even harder.
I could, of course, activate ethereal armor, which I constantly keep in memory along with the others, but that's unsporting. Doppelgangers have the same skill as me and therefore help rather polish skills. Still, living people are more initiative and cunning, and also know how to act as a group. Which the fight with seemingly weaker opponents proved.
"Stop, stop! You did great!" I gave in a little at the end to please the kids.
"Vive la victoire!" Apolline exclaimed and Patrick supported her.
"True, your spell set is small, you only overwhelmed me because I still can't fly well," I reproached them a little.
"Yeah, make excuses now," the blonde showed me her tongue. "What do you want, we're studying and training with you, and you also make us learn spells, meanie!"
"But look how much stronger you've become! Even upperclassmen can't hold a candle to you."
"Why do we need this strength? Are we aurors?"
"Alright, will you come tomorrow?" I waved my hand, not continuing the beaten topic. If they don't want to - I won't force them.
"No, tomorrow I'm going to Sangleur with my girlfriends," this is the nearest magical village where students from third year are allowed to walk if they have parental permission. There are several shops with school supplies, a prank shop, and a couple of cafes, one for children, another with a more adult audience.
"And you?" I turned to Patrick.
"I can't either, sorry, I have Quidditch practice tomorrow," yeah, what do they all like about this sport? Even the wolf didn't escape this hobby and became a keeper on the mixed team, "Dragonflies."
"Let's go for a walk instead," Apolline suggested. "Otherwise there are already rumors about you."
"What kind?" I became interested.
"That you're an old dark wizard who captured a child's body and forces him to study and train. Come on, come on, let's go!" And they dragged me to the exit.
No, I don't argue that you need to rest, but not all the time! Before I didn't even need to say anything, we went and trained, but now they've gotten lazy, I have to drag them, persuade them.
Eh, lately I want to give up on this and let them live as they want. If they don't like studying, let them, especially since they already surpass their peers. Maybe they'll gain sense in the future. For now, I went for a walk myself, since my head was already buzzing from calculations for another artifact.
***
The next day I was in my "bunker" alone. It was far enough from Beauxbatons and because it was behind a rock, it was impossible to notice.
Today I had yoga training, which, frankly speaking, I was afraid of. I had already learned to inhabit pixie and feel everything as if she were me. Thanks to this, I understood how to better teach her. Trees and even stones were no longer obstacles for me either.
And now it was fire's turn.
I built a small fire, threw floo powder into it, turned ventilation to maximum and began meditation. I didn't call Ariel because last time she couldn't help me with anything. I'm afraid she'll only get hurt.
Why am I taking risks? Because I hit a limit, fire control began growing at miserable rates. No, in 40 years I would have achieved mastery, but who said I have that time?
I again felt myself as fire, but this time I felt a blurred boundary. Cross it and I'll lose myself. That's why I began balancing as if on a knife's edge, not losing the sense of my body and trying to know the spirit of flame.
There, I began to be drawn in again and with heavy effort I broke free and was stunned. Good thing I prudently undressed, because instead of a small fire, alloy was burning, air was burning, and it seemed space itself was distorting under tongues of green flame.
But having lost fuel, it extinguished quite quickly, leaving a shallow, white-glowing melted crater in the center of the bunker and red-hot air around. I began to burn, and I entered meditation again.
Now I understood how yogis acquire their invulnerability to physical phenomena! They understand them, temper themselves in them! Apparently, I should now represent a roasted piece of meat, but no! I'm sitting on red-hot metal and I don't care, though mana began leaving in horse doses.
Here it is, yoga!
From that incident, I began to better understand what this mysterious discipline represents. This didn't give a sharp jump in strength, but I stopped being a blind kitten who only knows how to meditate on everything.
I may have seen my future path only vaguely, but I saw it. Take just physical enhancement, whose coefficient grew at turtle pace, stuck at four-fold. It was enough to create unbearable conditions for myself, casting wand spells "Pondus" on myself, which temporarily make any object heavier, and you can cast it multiple times, like "Engorgio" for example, and progress began.
It turned out that it's not enough to understand yourself and others, you also need to subject yourself to extreme and quite risky trials. But interestingly, progress in metamorphism also accelerated, because trying not to get serious damage, I rebuilt myself also with this discipline, and often this didn't always happen consciously.
***
The last Quidditch match of the year, April 17, 1972.
Petit and Patrick sat next to me, and we watched as a bludger knocked another chaser off his broom. He tumbled down and right before the ground... froze. After which he fell softly, dusted himself off and went to look for his broom as if nothing happened.
"After you and your mom invented these safety bracelets of yours, it became completely uninteresting to watch!" my neighbor was outraged by this scene.
"How bloodthirsty you are," I answered him. "But people suffer less now."
"I agree," my hairy-during-full-moons neighbor responded. "You should know how many people they don't manage to save when they fall from brooms. Broken arms and legs are fine, they heal in minutes if not seconds. But if you break your neck? And if it happens far away, in nature?"
"Exactly, listen to the smart person," I agreed.
"Though watching really became less interesting," and you too, Brutus?
"Hey, are you for me or for him?" I was outraged. At this time Pixie wrote on paper: "I'm for you."
"See," I threw up my hands, stroking the fairy. "Everyone betrayed me, only you are for me."
"Enough already, clown. Let's watch the match," Petit suggested, holding back laughter, and we continued observing the flashing players.
This time I wasn't training telekinesis, but with joy and some pride observed bracelets on the hands and brooms of each Quidditch player. Development of my protective artifact was going quite slowly, and once, seeing a player flying head down, whom the coach barely managed to catch with "Arresto Momentum" spells, I got the idea to create such an artifact that would activate fall cushioning if a player falls from a broom.
Said and done, I went to Ariel, she really liked such an idea, and we moved to calculations, experiments and error correction. I don't know why we again chose bracelets. Either because applying runes to them is easier, or because we were already used to making them, but the fact remains.
In the end, we got two rings - one smaller, one larger. The smaller one goes on the broom and is powered by it, the larger one goes on the hand. They act as receivers and transmitters connected by Protean charms, which excludes their mistaken connection to another broom.
When the distance between them becomes more than three meters, the bracelet on the hand activates and the person falls not on the ground, but as if on a soft pillow, receiving no damage.
The first tests were on my doppelgangers, then on volunteers we paid, and after a series of tests confirming the artifact's functionality, we began selling it.
And while the professional league was still only looking at buying our artifacts after all, spectacle is often more important to them than player safety - concerned parents bought them by the hundreds.
And even most kids didn't complain, because if before they could only fly under adult supervision, now you put on a bracelet and fly. Of course, there were also dissatisfied ones, like Petit, who want to hear and see people turn into bloody pieces of meat and agonize in pain. But we won't listen to them, right?
The money question interested me little, though the income, especially initially, was very considerable. Much more important was the experience of creating artifacts and reputation. No one will be surprised that the son of a famous woman - creator of artifacts, who helped her create them, became an artificer himself, and at such an early age.
Then there will be fewer questions and more trust in me.
***
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Thank you for the help with the power stones!!!