Once we are outside I tell Kechara to try flying, she looks both nervous and excited at the same time. With a snap she unfolds her wings and jumps into the air, once she starts flapping she quickly lifts further into the air. When she gets about thirty feet in the air she stops and hovers as she looks around.
Watching her I can't help but smile at the joyous look on her face, I wonder what it feels like to fly. Now that she is less nervous she starts flying around the slope, but her legs are still moving like she is running. I can't help but laugh as I watch her, after a few minutes she returns to me and lands.
Her landing is a bit rough, but her legs absorb the impact so she isn't hurt, she will need more practice. I can tell that she is very happy but also quite tired from her short flight. Taking her back inside I sit down and start talking to her about wind resistance and air flow.
She has some understanding of what I am saying from her natural instincts, but I go into a lot more detail. I can see from the look in her eyes that she is following everything I am saying and she wants to go try it out. While I can appreciate her enthusiasm I make her stay inside and rest for a while.
While I am at it I tell her everything I can remember from my old world about weather patterns and how air tends to move in the world. I also talk to her about how she moves her body, since she is serpentine like a Chinese dragon. Based on the way her body is built she should try and move through the air like a snake, not just depend on her wings.
After lunch we go back outside so she can try again, as I watch I can't help but be a little jealous. It takes her a few tries but she improves quickly and soon she is soaring around with a lot more grace. She is obviously having a lot of fun, but watching her dance around in the air I realize it would be very hard to hit her with a ranged attack.
Deciding to add a bit of training I make a snowball, she isn't paying any attention to me so it hits her in the head. She quickly shakes it off and turns to give me a dirty look, just in time to see the second one and dodge. During the next ten minutes I throw about a hundred snowballs but Kechara is able to dodge every single one.
By then she has started to slow down a lot so I call her to come back down and rest a bit. Her maneuverability is very impressive, thanks to having four wings she is almost as maneuverable as a hummingbird. The fact that this is her first day flying makes it even more impressive, once she builds up some experience she will be untouchable.
After she lands she rubs up against me, it seems she has forgiven me for that first snowball. I am not surprised, she had a lot of fun dodging the rest of them, and she is smart enough to know why I did it. By the end I was using my current full strength, so the snowballs were flying much faster than an arrow.
As long as no one manages to catch her by surprise I don't think she will ever be threatened while in the air. Once we are back in the cave I start talking to her about tactics that she should think about for fighting against something else that can fly. While I haven't seen anything else flying around the mountain it is something she should be aware of.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Since aerial combat is the only thing I can't help her practice I have to settle with just talking theory with her. I tell her about dive bombing and using the sun to hide and every other tactic I can remember from movies and video games. She sits and listens to every word with absolute attention, I can tell she understands how serious this is.
I end up talking until her growling belly interrupts us, with a laugh I start cooking dinner. After dinner I sit down and pull out the basic combat book, Kechara curls herself around me and we read together. After a couple of hours I send her to bed and before I go to sleep I pour my power into her core.
In the morning, after breakfast, I summon Bones and have Kechara practice attacking the two of us from the air. While attacking from the air is fairly easy, I am more interested in having her practice dodging counter attacks. The fact that she can fly backwards is her biggest advantage, she can attack and reverse direction in an instant.
Of course she quickly learns that she has to pay a lot of attention to her surroundings. Flying backwards into a tree is a really unpleasant lesson for her, but one she isn't likely to forget. After that we take a break for lunch and I decide to leave Bones out since he hasn't been out except for practice.
While Bones wanders around outside exploring, Kechara and I enjoy our lunch. After lunch when we head back outside there is no sign of Bones, so I ask Kechara to fly around and look for him. She jumps into the sky and quickly flies out of sight, so I sit down to wait for her return.
While I could easily dismiss and resummon Bones this is also good practice for Kechara. Trying to find Bones will teach her how to hunt while flying, something she needs to know. While I am planning to take her to the temple with me, most of this training is so she can take care of herself after I am gone.
The beastmen consider this mountain sacred so I am not worried about them coming up here. Humans on the other hand, if they can get here they will climb the mountain thinking there is treasure. After all, if it is sacred then there has to be a reason, humans just can't accept that others don't think the same way they do.
Although, in this case they would be right, there is treasure on this mountain. Besides the temple and the library, there is the city which definitely has treasure in it. I can just see the humans breaking the barriers in search of treasure and setting the driders free.
Or they might kill Kechara thinking she is guarding treasure, which would also set the driders free. Either way it would be a disaster, one that I would very much like to prevent. The easiest way will probably be to tell the beastmen the truth so that they know to always guard the mountain.
That is something that I can take care of once I am their king, for now Kechara will be enough of a guardian. Once the goddesses restore the leveling system then humans will become much stronger, then they might be a threat. By then Kechara will be much stronger than she is now, but I don't want her to have to constantly fight off humans.
Even though it will be far in the future, long after I am gone, I still want to do everything I can to give her a good life. It is bad enough that she will probably be very lonely on this mountain, but there really isn't much I can do about that. Maybe, in my travels if I come across more sacred beasts, I can convince them to come live here with her.