After my initiation into wind magic, I realized that telekinesis was far more versatile than I initially gave it credit for. Of course, I realized that the way it was utilized in most works of fiction was severely limited or otherwise underutilized—for instance, conventional locks would pose absolutely no obstacle. Yet, it wasn't until after learning to cause wind that I realized I had barely scratched the surface of what was possible.
Telekinesis is kinetic in nature by definition. And when you think about it, how many phenomena are actually based on kinetics? Nearly all of classical physics! With this in mind, I began exploring more uses for this fox magic I had so miraculously found myself with.
Of course, before venturing into new frontiers, it is always a good idea to take stock of what has already been done. The tribe had made some novel uses of fox magic as I had already pointed out, especially in the arena of medicine. What was more ubiquitous though was the use of tools. This was especially true for craftsmen who needed to get into areas where hands wouldn't fit, like crafting the kinds of chimneys used in the dens. One particular example I was intrigued by was the fireboard and spindle. You may be familiar with the primitive means of fire starting which involved a bow drill and fireboard. With fox magic, the complexity was greatly simplified, with fox magic taking the place of the back plate and bow. This greatly improved the efficacy of this fire-starting method; spindles and fireboards were a common sight next to fireplaces the village over.
That's not to say everyone employed this method, there were some uncoordinated members, at least with fox magic, who apparently had a hard time getting the spindle to spin fast enough. You could tell these people by the constant burning embers they kept in their fireplaces. I myself had some difficulty doing this as well, mostly because I was not able to easily generate the amount of force needed. Still, I could spin the spindle with the best of them, so I could eventually create some hot embers, it just took time and effort.
As far as I could tell, and certainly to the extent I had access, this concluded my research into existing fox magic applications. I then began to experiment with novel ideas. When doing these kinds of things it is best to branch off from an existing body of knowledge and take it in a new direction. I had just learned wind magic, so it made sense to continue to explore the boundary of this. I could already move air and had been playing with increasingly intricate maneuvers, like mini tornados, and focused air currents. I will admit to causing a bit of a mess on several occasions with my rotary air exhibitions, and inadvertently caused distress for Lilac Governess after sending various foodstuffs and spices sailing across the room… Sorry Lilac Governess. I now do these kinds of trials during our outdoor recreation.
Still, these were just utilizing the principles already known, And I was sure Lilac Governess could easily do them as well. She was, after all, capable of completely stilling the wind currents at the shrine of the God of Clear Skies. So I would keep practicing those, but I began to think of other ways one could manipulate air. Aside from moving, you could also compress or expand a gas. This wasn't a great concept. If anything it was more a strength training exercise. Conceptually, the only thing you needed, assuming you already could use wind magic, was for the thought to occur. The challenge lay in actually compressing or expanding.
There were two practical uses for this. One, it was a great anti-bullying technique. It didn't do any damage but was incredibly startling. Having a nearly invisible sphere of compressed atmosphere suddenly hit you and rapidly expand is quite jarring as it turns out. It even knocked a few of those miscreants on their tails. Whether this was from the force of the expanding gas or being shocked and losing their balance, I would like to think it was the former, but who am I kidding.
And second I could use it to literally squeeze the heat out of the air. This is the same principle that a refrigerator or AC unit uses. Of course, upon reexpanding the gas, it is proportionally as cold as the heat given off. Conversely, if you expand the gas initially, you will get the opposite effect. Kind of cool, no pun intended. What practical applications were there for this? Well, if you were patient, you could use it to heat or cool a room, but this would take a lot of time and effort. I didn't think it was too practical. And also, this was a roundabout way of changing temperature, what if there was a more direct method?
As it turns out, there is! Temperature is nothing more than the average kinetic energy of a given volume of space. It is governed by how fast the particles of a substance are moving. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if you could just directly affect the speed of the particles? Well, guess what, you can! And it was not as hard as I initially thought.
It turns out intention is a powerful thing. Even if I couldn't instantaneously command or even sense every atomic particle, with a little practice, it was possible to will the particles to speed up, or even slow down, creating heat and cold respectively. Now the more astute among you might be wondering where the thermal energy of the cooled particles went, what with the law of Conservation of Energy and all. Well, here is the thing, I couldn't tell you. It's possible it ended up somewhere, in some form, but where that somewhere was, or what that form could be, I had no idea. What I can tell you, from all my investigations, as limited as they were, it seemed to have just disappeared.
Regardless of possible physics violations, the end result was to increase or decrease the heat of something. Once this concept was grasped, it wasn't difficult to heat a flammable substance to combustion or freeze water. But, if you wanted an immediate result, that could be a bit more challenging, as your PPUS (or Psionic Power Units per Second) would need to be greatly increased.
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Another neat parlor trick was to condense water vapors. This made it seem like you could materialize water, though admittedly only in small amounts. Still, to some, it was quite impressive. Others *Cough* Dusty *Cough*, saw it as stupid if you could only "conjure" a small quantity of water. Pffft, Dusty couldn't even use fox magic at this point, let alone appreciate what had been done there that day! Such a troglodyte!
Now all that is well and good, but let's be real here, flying is much cooler than that nerd stuff. And trust me, I hadn't been ignoring it. I'd seen others of the tribe flying, so I knew it could be done, and I wouldn't need to break new ground on this. On the contrary, I could just get a practitioner of the art to show me. Or so I thought.
The fact of the matter was that every time I found someone possessing a decent aptitude for flight, I got the same response from all of them. Some form of "ask me about an apprenticeship once you get your mask." It was an odd response as far as I knew, and I wasn't deterred by my first rejection. However, after getting the same nearly identical answer from everyone I asked, I became thoroughly perplexed. I decided to ask Lilac Governess about it.
"Of course they would say that. You are too young to take on an apprenticeship. You will have to wait until you get your mask," she said like it was obvious, but then realized it might not be for a child.
"But I just asked them how they fly, not to become an apprentice." This was precisely what I was trying to clear up. However, this statement caused confusion for Lilac Governess.
"But how are they supposed to show you unless you become their apprentice?" Huh? Was there some kind of prohibition on the skill? Were only those selected by other practitioners permitted to learn?
Well, if I couldn't get any insights from my fellow tribesmen, it wasn't beneath me to risk life and limb to learn on my own. It was simple in concept. You just used telekinesis on yourself. I was sure there were some unseen intricacies involved, but I could work through those.
And unseen intricacies there were. For one, using telekinesis on yourself was more difficult than you would think. That is if you didn't want to move around like a broken video game character animation. If you wanted to move your arms and legs with some fluidity, you would need a subtle touch. I thought I could get around this by just applying force to my center of gravity, but this would cause me to rotate in uncontrollable ways. I could think of ways to counter this, but trust me, they had their issues. To really achieve mastery, you would need full body control and that would require subtle uses of fox magic.
Of course, the real issue, and the elephant in the room was the sheer amount of energy flying would require. It could not be ignored. Flight requires a lot of energy. How much energy? I'm glad you asked!
Physics Breakdown
My best guess at the weight of an average adult tribesman would be around 36 kilograms. As far as I could tell, gravity was similar to that of Earth's, so we will just say it is 9.8 m/s2. With these two numbers and the equation Force = Mass x Acceleration, we find this generates 352.8 kilograms meters per second squared or 352.8 Newtons of force.
So in order just to levitate, that is no upward or lateral movement, or any other for that matter, would require 352.8 Newtons of upward force to counter it.
That's all well and good, but how does that equate to energy requirements? Well, Energy = Force x Distance, but we need energy over time since we want to hover over time; Energy/time = Power. So the equation we want is Power = Force x Velocity (distance/time). That's great, but we don't know velocity, but we do know Velocity = Acceleration x Time. With this, we have everything we need. I'll spare you the tedious substitution and simplifications and tell you the equation will be Power = Mass x (Acceleration)2 x Time. We now have the mass: 36 kg; the acceleration: 9.8 m/s2; and the time: 1 s. And now that we have all the pieces of the Triforce…
Power = 36 kg x (9.8 m/s2)2 x 1 second = 3457.44 Watts, which is equivalent to 825.8 calories per second or .8258 Kilo calories as it is read off the cereal box. Now maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, but that is 49.548 Calories per minute and that is just to hold a steady hover with perfect efficiency, which in reality is never achieved. Also, Keep in mind that this race is probably only around half the size of your average human and perhaps a third the size of your average American, requiring around 99.096 and 145.644 Calories per minute respectively. So the average human would burn through the recommended daily Calorie allotment in 20 minutes of hovering, and your average American would burn through it in about 14 minutes. But then again, we know your average American is usually well past that milestone before their midday meal, but I digress.
TLDR: Flying requires a lot of energy; America needs to get its act together!
All that being said, I was not sure where the energy for fox magic came from. So maybe there wasn't a correlation between Calories consumed and magical reserves. And despite the challenges, I managed to achieve a hover for short durations, though admittedly, stability proved challenging.