Taking Magic to New Heights
Though typically I am the very first person to tell you never ever provide your magic for free, to know your worth and not let your hard work be taken advantage of, recently I did join a special project team at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards. As a part of this team I take a few hours off from my typical duties as a Mid-Level Mage and meet with some other wizards from the council in order to work on the special project assigned to us by our supervisors. When they first approached me with what they called an “exciting opportunity” I was hesitant to exert more effort than I felt I was being compensated for, but then I learned we would be experimenting with new forms of magic, and of course I could not turn that down.
The primary objective of our study is granting man (and elves and dwarves etc.) the power of flight. Sure, we have the ability to cast temporary levitation spells on people or turn ourselves into flying creatures for a short period of time, but that’s not our focus. We are attempting to grant a total lifestyle change, and develop a spell or potion that changes the recipient permanently. Permanent magic is incredibly under-studied, and cracking the code on the issue of flight could open many doors for other permanent magics to finally come to fruition.
Our first attempt at granting one of our test subjects (who have all consented thoroughly to the experimentation) flight was to remove the wings of a normal bird (who also thoroughly consented to the operation)(the bird requested we make them golden wings which is much easier than anything else we are doing in this operation), enlarge those wings, and fuse them to the subject. This worked way better than anyone was expecting, but when they went to flap those wings and take off, all they did was create a light breeze. It turns out that despite the enlargement, the wings were still not strong enough to support the flight of a full grown human.
The issue then became a question of, should we strengthen the wings or lighten the subject? It was easy enough to cast temporary levitation spells on the subject, during which their wings could carry them in different directions, but so far we couldn’t figure out a way to permanently lighten a person without causing serious side effects to their normal life. Thus we began to focus on altering the wings themselves.
After focusing a very long time on the idea of making the wings stronger, eventually someone posed the idea of instead making the wings faster. It seemed about as likely to work or not work as everything else we had tried, so we went for it. Someone grabbed a speed potion from our supplies, and began administering the potion like a balm just to the wings, rather than having the subject drink it since we were looking to keep the actual person in the experiment as unchanged as possible. However, this is when we learned something entirely new about magic. Obviously, when a person drinks a potion of speed, they then use their brain to make their legs run like normal, only the speed is enhanced. Apparently, when a potion of speed is administered to organic matter without a brain that has recently undergone a great deal of magical tampering, a reactive combination is triggered, and the wings started beating at the speed of light of their own accord. The test subject was thrown all around the room before anyone could react, and somehow managed to fall out the door and be raced down the hallway.
In conclusion, we still have not mastered the power of permanent flight, but we did discover something fascinating about potions, and discovery was all I really wanted out of this opportunity anyways.
May the moon shine favorably and without hesitation upon you,
Alexan Drytus
