294 294 Flying Stick
The witch took the staff in her hand and gasped as she extended her senses to detect the spells that were placed on it.
“Go on. You can’t tell how well it flies until you’re up in the air.” Wolfe encouraged her.
The witch stepped over the staff and activated just the flight Array, which sent her rocketing into the air with a shrill whistle of displaced air. The new array took less than a third of what the old air spell did, so the same amount of magic moved her nearly twice as fast.
Wolfe could hear her swearing at him as she nearly hit a swinging bridge and had to barrel roll around it, then recovered to a proper flight attitude and circled the village.
After a few minutes, she activated [Mirage], and the shimmer of air around her hid her from sight as she moved through the sky.
Well, most of the time. Now and then, she could be spotted again as she passed through the shadows of trees, but it was as good as Wolfe had hoped for, a simple disguise to make the rider harder to spot.
“Did you remove the attack spell from the staff?” Priya asked as she watched the witch flying around the compound with a huge grin on her face. She had disengaged the [Mirage] again for some reason, but that was better for the people on the ground, who were having a hard time tracking her.
Her face was glowing red with the force of the wind, as well as joy when the witch landed and handed the staff back to Priya with a reluctant sigh.
“That is amazing. It takes almost no mana to fly, and it’s so agile with whatever extra spells you put on it. But [Mirage] has a huge drawback.”
Wolfe gave her a confused look, and the witch continued. “It works the same from both sides. When you have it active, it’s really hard to see where you’re going.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. It’s probably meant to be cast on a stationary object, like a house, to make it harder to find. I just thought that it would be cool on the staff.” Wolfe shrugged.
Priya activated the [Mirage] spell with the staff in her hand, and the witches further away from them clapped at the spectacle.
“It seems it is also much less effective at short range because I can see you just fine,” Wolfe added.
“It’s still pretty awesome. Should we make these the standard issue for our scouts and patrols? With the mana crystal in them, they could sustain a whole shift’s worth of regular spells, and you would only have to start casting your own spells if there was combat.
Speaking of which, how is the combat spell on this thing?” She asked.
“Remember this morning when we were playing baseball and causing thunder? That was this staff. I kept the spell mostly the same, just optimized a little for the shape of the staff. It only affects the top third so that you can safely use it for thumping.”
The witches began to gather around the staff so that they could get a sense of what it was capable of, so Wolfe backed away and let them do their research.
“You need to use this array on our plane when we finish it. Along with the motors you helped design, it should be really efficient. We’re halfway done with the construction of our first prototype, so it won’t be long now before it’s time to start layering the Arrays on it.
We will definitely need you for that. We went over the spells we need, and there is no way for Witches to combine them in the way they need to be combined for a flying machine.” Ella whispered from behind him while running her fingers down his stomach and across the front of his pants.
He could sense her amusement and knew that her actions were intended to tease Cassie, who was underground somewhere. Wolfe didn’t feel her responding, though, so at this distance, with the link deliberately dulled to avoid the confusion of double sensations, she wouldn’t immediately respond to any contact with Wolfe’s body.
That had to be a relief because she was much more touch sensitive than he was, and the test in bed last night had been quite entertaining. She was awake, though, so she hadn’t slept the whole day away. Most likely, she was in the downstairs dining room, a few hundred metres away from where Wolfe was standing.
“No teasing Cassie while she’s trying to have dinner.” Wolfe reprimanded Ella before removing her hand and giving her a kiss in exchange.
“So she could feel it even from here?” Ella asked.
“I don’t think so. We’ve both dulled the connection as much as we can so we can work for the day, so I don’t think she actually felt the touch, but a bit longer, and she would feel my response to it.”
The witches examining the staff were nearly done, and they were working on a schedule to make more of the staves, so they must have decided that they would be standard issue items for Witches in the Den.
There had been a lot of talk about that, forming their own uniforms for patrols in the woods so that they would have a professional appearance if they had to meet someone at the edge of the Forest.
In their experience, those with questionable intentions would be more reluctant to bother someone in uniform than some random young witch who walked out of the trees.
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From tomorrow on, we should be able to send out properly uniformed witches to greet anyone who comes looking for us, and the scouts won’t have to rely on their own training when they’re working alone.” Priya informed Wolfe in a determined voice.
“Got it. We’re bypassing the need for years of training with a few simple but powerful spells so that our patrols can defend themselves. I will make sure that I’ve got Arrays ready to go on in the morning.