It's initially pretty hard to do that! He loses one of his two rabbits, and one of the four trials the next day. He's getting a better feel for it, though, both his intuitions for how the morph setup gets mangled when the safeguard kicks in, and his short-range Foresight warning him if hooking up a connection a particular way is going to result in disaster. 

By the third day he manages five in a row with zero rabbit-murder. The surviving rabbits from previous days, disconnected from the remains of their morph setups, still seem fine. 

:How reliable is reliable enough to try it on Andalites, do you think?: he asks Cayaldwin at the end of that day. :I can do more of the tests, but - honestly it is getting rather tedious and repetitive: 

<Is it going to be harder to do on Andalites? WIll anything look different?>

:I think it will look a little different, which makes the first Andalite attempt slightly more fraught, but I do not think it is more difficult in principle?: 

<Do you think practicing for another week will make you significantly better at it? It's probably not worth it anyway because we need you for other things, but - getting a sense of the tradeoffs.>

:I think I will get faster at it, and probably have somewhat better intuitions and Foresight for how to link it up? I suspect I have already made the steepest gains to be had from practice, though: 

<That does not seem worth waiting further on when we need you for so many things.>

It's kind of nervewracking, but– :I agree. I will get some rest and tomorrow I can try with the Andalite who is trapped as a bird: 

<I expect he will be very grateful.>

:I hope so: Leareth really, really hopes it works. 

He heads to bed early-ish, gets a good night's sleep, does his morning running-around in Andalite form, and then switches to his human composite-morph with extra Gifts, and looks for the Andalite in question. 

The bird-Andalite mostly flies around the general area where everyone else is, but not within sight.

Well, they've Mindspoken before. Leareth extends his Thoughtsensing to cover the whole area around the base, feeling for a familiar mind.

Bird-Andalite!

:Are you busy?: Leareth asks him. :I - have a prototype method for undoing the morph and returning you to your own body. It is not without risk, but - I think at least four of five odds it will work without any negative effects...: 

<...I did not know that was possible at all. I would like that.>

:I have only tested it with rabbits so far, but all five yesterday were successful. Do you want to try it now? I am available: He sends a flash of his location, near the rabbit cages and worm box. (All the dead rabbits or too-much-demorphed rabbits have been taken away.) 

A bird lands there a minute later.

Leareth explains his current process. It'll take about an hour, because he intends to go very cautiously. He's going to replace the minimally-functional morph tether to z-space with a magical substitute, using this artifact and mage-energy generator, and then he's going to dismantle the z-space pockets belonging to a couple of worms that were given morph setups for this, to replace missing components and provide material to reconstruct his original Andalite body, and he'll use magic to paste those in and reconnect components as appropriate. Reconnecting is the riskiest part, because if it turns out that the nothlit safeguard ends up doing something different for Andalites versus rabbits, he may link up something wrong; he's going to be very careful about double-checking things, and he'll probably see this with Foresight before he attempts to trigger the demorph, but in the worst-case scenario the Andalite could die.

Leareth doesn't need the Andalite to do anything in particular, although it'll be easier if he stays physically still and near Leareth. Leareth won't be able to talk to him for most of it, because he'll be projecting his mind to z-space to do the required magic. He isn't sure if it subjectively feels like anything, the rabbits couldn't report on this to him. 

The Andalite-bird will sit still for this operation. He accepts that he may die of it. He will be so good at holding still.

Leareth is so, so careful. It takes him substantially longer than an hour, actually, because before every single move he pokes his Foresight for any hint of something-about-to-go-wrong. 

The mage-artifact generates a new tether with all the required functionality, the worms' morph setups are sacrificed and pieced together into just enough components for a demorph, and then slowly, slooooowly, Leareth stares at it and makes the connections. He considers asking Cayaldwin for a second look, but honestly at this point he has a better sense of how the mangling tends to happen than Cayaldwin does. 

Finally, everything is set up. Leareth pulls his mind briefly out of the Void, back into his body. He's tired, but not tired enough to be sloppy. 

:I have done all the setup: he tells the Andalite-bird. :I am going to try for a forced demorph now: 

The bird sends the one-syllable Thoughtspeech acknowledgement.

And Leareth leaps out of his body again into the Void, following the artifact-tether to the normalspace pocket that holds the only record of the Andalite-bird's true body, and some jerry-rigged parts adequate for a single demorph. 

He can't actually hold his breath while projecting his mind to another plane, and there's no point in hesitating now. He imagines triggering the demorph, pokes his Foresight for any hint of an answer - 

- his Foresight seems to think it'll work, or at least isn't giving him any danger-signs about it - 

He triggers the demorph, watches the link closely. If something goes wrong he probably won't have time to do anything about it, but he can at least try...

It looks like the forced-demorph for the rabbit; the mangled tether mangles further, swings wildly, wants lots and lots of energy - and at the other end, starts swapping out to an Andalite.

It should have lots of wiggle room in terms of increasing the energy-flow, his computer-controlled channel is now additionally set up to notice if the power-drain is faster than the input to the channel, and increase both the channel width and rate of mage-energy generation. Leareth watches intently anyway, ready to leap in and add his own reserves if it turns out that Andalite demorphs are orders of magnitude more expensive than rabbit ones. He's ready to reach in and attempt to stabilize it if the swinging seems about to destabilize things further, but he didn't do that in any of the tests and doesn't want to break anything worse.

He watches. This is, bizarrely, substantially more stressful than a number of literal battles he's fought in.

Andalite demorphs do seem to require much more power than rabbit ones, probably because a lot more matter transfer has to happen through the mangled channel and also it's getting harder as the tether swings more.

With the best mix of caution and sheer power he can manage, Leareth 'holds' the pocket steady relative to the tether's endpoint where it cuts through into the material plane, and feeds it energy from his reserves to supplement while the mage-energy generator catches up. It drains his reserves fast, but the demorph looks at least half done...