The Elder smiled at Wolfe. "You know, since you've got the engine all sorted out, I think we can make a Cub-style puddle jumper in the next few hours with all the witch magic in this place. The rebels make them out of bamboo and cloth with motorcycle engines. I'm sure we can manage that easily enough.
The witches were intrigued by his explanation, and Ella cracked her fingers as if she was stretching out her spell-casting muscles.
"Just show me the pattern, and I can grow a bamboo frame in a matter of seconds." She informed the Elder.
The Elder picked up the pencil that was sitting on the plans and got to work drawing a crude line picture on the grid paper sitting on the tailgate of a truck.
"Alright, that's it. If every square is ten centimetres, that's your frame. Make this bulkhead out of something solid, and make sure the floor is strong. This is the diagram for the spars in the wings. Can you make that?" He asked.
Ella nodded, then a swirl of vines filled the garage as she got to work with her Witch Magic.
The frame of the simple airplane was formed in under a minute, with the wings sitting on the ground next to it, ready for covering and assembly.
"Now, you can use stretched cloth, plastic, or thin aluminum. It's really your choice. But first, the fuel cells are usually in the base of the wings here, so that's where you put the mana crystals to power this thing since you are using a magical motor."
Ella smiled and waved her hand, letting a thin green surface cover the entire airframe.
"Is that one giant leaf?" The Elder laughed when he realized what she had done.
"Yeah, it was easiest, and we're going to cover it in safety spells anyhow, so we might as well go with the lightest and easiest option for the testing."
Wolfe reached down and picked up one of the wings to see just how light it was. It should be about ten kilograms, and Wolfe worried it might not be strong enough.
"It's magical wood created by a Second Rank Witch. It's plenty strong, assuming that the design was correct." Ella informed him.
The Elder nodded. "Yeah, that looks right. They make the sticks themselves too, so yours should be better. Now, we need to mount some wheels under it, or skis for sliding, then the engine and the crystals."
Janet opened a crate in the truck they had been using as a table and showed him the huge pile of magical crystals they had already built for the purpose.
Janet looked at the design and began writing notes. "It looks like it should work really well for carrying stuff, but it will be slow, and it can't take off straight up from the village."
"You forget, we have a Wolfe. He can use Gravity Magic, so we can just lift the plane with magic if we need it. But getting to the edge of the forest is a good start. A light plane would be way better than a truck if it can carry enough." Ella suggested.
"That's true. How much can it carry?" Janet asked.
"If we add all those crystals to the wings, with the weight of this frame and two witches, I would say about five hundred kilos of cargo." The Elder calculated.
They could use Air Magic and Gravity spells to keep the plane in the air without aerodynamics, but in the interest of mana savings, they would try it with just the engine and the defensive spells.
"Oh, that's good. We can stuff it full of food and ammunition then. That will keep the villages happy." Janet cheered while the Elder looked over the design to see if he missed anything.
"I suppose I could have designed a bigger one, but if you need it, you can make a larger design or even make more of these ones since Ella can make them so fast."
Wolfe looked over the pile of Crystals that Janet was about to install in the wings and stopped her before she could get started.
"With the Arrays I need to add and the motor you built, that is nearly three days' worth of capacity. Just how far are you planning to go?" He asked Janet.
"Not that far. I will save some for later." She laughed, shaking her black braids back out of her face.
Ella and the Elder got the small motor mounted, and Wolfe assembled the Array to make everything work while the two mechanically minded members assembled the controls and tested them to make sure everything worked, then took the wings back off for transport.
"Alright, if we toss this in the boat, we can take it to the northwest corner for a test flight. Nobody will miss us for the morning, and we will have good news when we return. Hopefully, at least." Janet decided.
They carefully loaded the plane parts, and Wolfe activated the protective armour spell on the body so it wasn't damaged in transit. The fan boat nearly flew over the water's surface as Ella raced to the edge of the woods, where the twins and the trolls were waiting for visitors.
"Greetings. We have come to test a new toy. Since you didn't want to return for the festivities today, we brought entertainment to you. The Elder has seen the rebel witches using a plane like this to fly around the swamps in Morgana, and the hunter teams use a similar one to chase them, so we're pretty sure it will work and be mana efficient enough to be viable without making fuel.
Speaking of which, what do the rebels use for fuel? It's not like they can get the human military fuel easily." Wolfe asked.
"They run the motorcycle engines on alcohol. You can tell when they've been using a vehicle nearby. The whole area smells like burning corn liquor." The Elder laughed.
The twins joined Ella and Janet in getting the plane assembled and all the linkages set up and tested.
"Alright, that's it. Once the crystals are charged, we are ready for the first power-up and test flight." Janet cheered.
"You two take the first test flight. Should we put something to represent cargo in the body to balance it out?" Wolfe asked.
"It should be fine. There is an adjustment on the stick to set the trim tab on the tail to keep it level. That's a little trick that we learned. The rebels just muscle it out when the plane is unbalanced."
He gave it a bit of a preset since there would only be the two witches inside and gave them the thumbs up.
"Aim it toward the open fields, and you're ready to go."
The two witches hopped in, and Janet began to look around for something that she wasn't finding in the plane.
"What's missing?" Wolfe asked.
ραndαsΝοvεl.cοm "Seatbelts. There are no seatbelts in here. How are we supposed to stay seated when the plane shifts?" She asked.
Wolfe and the Elder just shrugged. They hadn't thought of that part. The slow-moving planes weren't really a violent ride, so the ones that the hunters used didn't have any form of restraint.
Ella created a strip of cloth and tied Janet to the seat frame at the waist with a smile.
"Alright, test flight one, ready to go."
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