Mage Among Superheroes

“So asking about Zenfer was part of the agenda… what else?” I asked Sir Kalman.

“Well, aside from that… you can come directly here now, correct?”

“I should probably study it carefully if I want that to be consistent,” I said. “Though even now I should be able to appear close by.”

“Better if you come here directly. We don’t want to risk them knowing exactly when you’re here or not.”

“Does that make a difference, though?”

“They’ll be less able to notice anything here. Nobody can particularly complain about keeping one of our bases concealed from divination magic, now can they?” Sir Kalman shook his head.

“Can they even detect Gates opening?” Midnight asked.

“Can either of you say with assurance that it’s not possible?” Sir Kalman replied.

I looked at Midnight, and we shook our heads. “It’s powerful, so it makes sense.”

“And they must have some method, because they know about the permanent portals.”

“The what now?” I asked.

“The permanent portals. From Earth to here.”

“I don’t think there are… New Bay has been closing all the portals we find.” I frowned, “Could they be going somewhere else or…? No, it’s possible Doctor Doomsday has more permanent portals.” After all, a single one in a single base was pretty unlikely. “Do they know where these portals are?”

“Some of them, I believe. However, the information hasn’t been directly shared with me,” Sir Kalman harrumphed. “As if the Order of the Lion wouldn’t need to know such things. Then again, I suppose this isn’t the only thing kept secret.”

“Right, well. If I can get to any of these portals I can probably close them. However, I’d imagine the people here can also do that just as well. So you probably don’t need me for that.”

Sir Kalman stroked his beard. “Aye, as long as people actually want to close up the portals.”

“... Why wouldn’t they?” I asked. “I know why Doomsday would want them open. To bring through monsters or an army of orcs or whatever. And probably mana. But I don’t know if there’s any benefit in the opposite direction.”

“Indeed,” Sir Kalman nodded. “What benefit would there be? Except, perhaps, this ‘technology’ of Earth.”

“Fair enough,” I agreed. “Except that most of it won’t work without the infrastructure Earth has. At best, it will work until it runs out of power.”

“Which is an excellent way to keep people indebted to you if you’re some sort of supervillain,” Midnight said. “If they require constant replacement of things. That’s just speculation, though.”

I nodded, “It’s not the worst idea, though. Perhaps he’s working with people on this side. Not just those he brought through. The orcs and dark elves and the like we’ve seen had to come from somewhere, and it would be a pain to contact new villages and make new arrangements forever…” I shrugged. “Though so far there have only been a few hundred or so involved, which is both a lot and not that noticeable on a global scale.”

“Right. So, the point being,” Sir Kalman said. “If we discover any portals, you’re the one the Order can trust to shut one. And New Bay and this ‘Extra’ are motivated to assist you in this process, so we won’t have to make do with just what we have here.”

“Isn’t there anyone outside the Order of the Lion you can trust…?” I asked.

“That’s mainly what I’ve been working on. I’m not going to assume other paladin orders are working to good purposes. Don’t get me wrong,” Sir Kalman said. “I believe more people in this world are good than not. But it only takes letting in one wrong fellow to find everything sabotaged. The stronger they are, the more we want them on our side… and the more they could ruin. So you can understand us taking things slowly.”

“Right,” I nodded. And to be fair, he’d only been back where he could manage this for a few weeks. Half of the time we’d known each other had been spent cross dimensionally on Earth. “So, anything practical I can do while I’m here? Or are we just going over things you don’t want overheard?”

“There is one thing. We’ve set up a Scrying mirror. I was hoping you could find some of those portals.”

“Well, you see, Scrying only focuses on people so I don’t think-” I stopped myself. Because not only was that not always true in my experience, I was even less sure about that given the fusion of several spells into ‘Advanced Divination Magic’. That didn’t mean that my talents were necessarily advanced, just that it was much higher level than things like ‘Basic Light Magic’. Then again, it had a good number of upgrades from Scrying and then the fusion afterwards. “Well, we can try,” I said.

“Good,” Sir Kalman said. “I’ll take you to the room, then. It’s nothing fancy, but getting large mirrors isn’t so easy. Not like that big glass cube you’ve got on Earth.”

“Diamond,” I said.

“Hmm? What?”

“The cube is made of diamond. Apparently.”

“Like hell it is,” Sir Kalman crossed his arms. “This is the world with magic, isn’t it? And even our diamonds don’t come so big.”

“Well, it’s artificial.”

“So it’s a fake diamond?”

“It’s a real diamond made outside of the natural processes. Which mostly involves a lot of heat and pressure.”

“Right, so… if it’s made clear like glass, is it really any different?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know that one is very effective. Could be the shape, though.”

“Well, I doubt we’re getting a cube of glass that size here either,” Sir Kalman shrugged. “Here’s the room. Not particularly spacious, and we don't have anything fancy. The lack of windows isn’t a problem, right?”

“We can see just fine in the darkness,” I confirmed. “And if there’s anything to see on the other end, it’s best that it be the only light source anyway.”

“Right. So uh, portals.”

“Any idea where they are?”

“Not a clue,” Sir Kalman admitted. “But I’m sure some exist.”

“Uh, just as confirmation. On the Material Plane? Because this is a significant step harder if not.”

“Should be some,” Sir Kalman frowned. “But that’s just my supposition.”

“Time to start trying things, then,” I said. Portals. They should be quite easy to pick out, with strong magical signatures. I’d seen quite a few, as well. Both Doctor Doomsday’s portals, and my own Gate spells.

I focused on tracking down not a memory or image of a person, but the feeling of a type of thing. It was encouraging to me that the magic didn’t immediately fail as I poured a similar amount of mana for a Scrying into the spell. 11 points, which should be the maximum. Probably. That was something I could fiddle with later, however.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I felt something. I got a vague feeling of direction. West? Southwest? I didn’t care about that as much right now as actually making something happen. Swirling mists on the mirror slowly resolved into an image of a grand city. “What’s this?” I asked.

“That’d be Granbold. The city, I mean,” Sir Kalman said. “Is there a portal there? I don’t see anything.”

“Hmm,” I frowned. “Well, there could be. It might also just be a concentration of magic. As for this particular point, I think…” I tugged on the magic slightly. It was a different feeling from Doctor Doomsday’s Scrying anchors, but I could certainly feel something pulling me to that point. “It’s just a distraction. So really, all we know is that there’s some sort of magic in the capital.”

“Well, interesting as that is, it’s not of much consequence. The capital’s one of the places I could think of legitimate reasons to have a permanent portal.”

“Or just some sort of large, continuous magic,” I added. “Since we haven’t actually found a portal yet, I might not be that accurate. I’ll try again. Maybe I can… avoid this place?”

Another chunk of mana invested, and I determined that at the very least… I could direct my attention away to find nothing instead of the capital. Which wasn’t that useful. Distance wasn’t usually relevant for Scrying, but that was with a specific target.

“Ugh, that didn’t really work,” I said to Midnight. “I think it might be better to let it lock onto somewhere and nudge it away. Were you able to feel it when it worked?”

“More or less,” Midnight said. “I can make an attempt now, if you’d like.”

“Maybe you’ll pick something out I wouldn’t,” I said. And if not, it was still enough time to recover a point of mana or more. The ambient mana here… well, it was at least above average.

Midnight remained on my shoulder as he cast the spell, looking directly at his own eyes in the mirror until the image was replaced. A short time in, there was a flicker of the capital- but then the angle changed. “I’m guessing… the mages live there?”

“From the towers and the draw of magic…” I nodded. “I’m surprised they don’t completely block Scrying. We should probably let it fade so as to not draw their attention, though.”

Midnight did so.

“If you want my opinion,” Sir Kalman said. “It seems easier to misdirect someone’s scrying, does it not? And they might want people to look at their big, fancy towers. That way, it’s doubly effective.”

“Hmm,” I nodded. “Good point. Still, best to avoid the area entirely. And we still don’t know if there’s portals or… something else.”

Given our relative mana pools, it was my turn next. Midnight and I would have to rest some before heading back to Earth, but I wasn’t even certain if that was going to be today or not. We’d taken the time to come here, after all. Then again, we didn’t have to ride again so it wasn’t actually that inefficient to just leave and return every day. Still took a good quarter of the day’s mana, of course, but it could have been worse.

How to focus on not the capital? Rather than specifically ignoring that direction, I opted to filter out those magical signatures we had felt. I had learned a bit about that stuff from Uvithar’s secret notes. Was that intended for a scenario like this, or was it just generally relevant? The secret text did appear only for me, after all, so there were more than a couple ways to use such things.

I had the feeling that without the upgrades and boosting the magic to its limits, tracking down portals or whatever with magic like this would be almost impossible. And it still wasn’t clear if we were finding that.

I concentrated on staying away from what we’d discovered so far, and the spell slowly took form. When it revealed a new area, I found there was at least some success. I realized just now that the view of the previous Scrying spells had been far more distant than it should have been- we should have barely been able to recognize a single building, like this. Even boosted to its limits, I wouldn’t expect a view wider than twenty feet or so. Kind of like this.

“That architecture,” I frowned. “I should probably know that.”

“Ethus,” Sir Kalman said.

“Hmm. I see. But the problem here is, this isn’t what I was trying to pick up. But I got pulled into it.”

“Another Scrying anchor?” Midnight asked. “No, not just that.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Familiar, isn’t it?”

“Doomsday.”

“And not his older ones, either. This one I can wriggle away from.” More than that, the image faded more quickly than it should have, leaving us with very little information. Except that there was something to hide in the area, I supposed.

“That’s a bit of a problem,” Sir Kalman said. “How can I say this… it fits with some of the information we have.”

“Ethus is a desert, right?”

“Something like that. And they have more than a few orc tribes.”

“That was a proper city, though,” I pointed out. Then I had to add more because otherwise Doctor Patenaude would bug me about it later. “They… probably have different architecture than that. It looked like a human style, and from what I remember the main cities in Ethus are human centric.”

“Certainly,” Sir Kalman said. “But it’s not like they’re exclusive in any of that. There might be a good amount of historical conflict about such things, but they can’t completely deny orcs entrance to their larger cities without causing more trouble.”

It was a good thing we had someone who knew this stuff, because I honestly hadn’t delved deep into the history of other nations. Or Granbold, for that matter. Then again, I was aware that some was likely intentionally missing.

“So,” I said. “Doctor Doomsday is working with Ethus. But we can’t just pop in and wander around the city. Not least because I don’t think I can actually get us there.” I’d seen very little of it, and I could imagine that Doctor Doomsday might be motivated to redirect Gates going near any of his work.

“Don’t need to act immediately,” Sir Kalman pointed out. “Just gaining this information is useful. Something is happening there, and that will let me figure out who knows things and isn’t sharing based on their reactions. Can’t exactly go around asking people if they’re part of some big conspiracy to prevent people from gaining levels and attaining ‘natural’ upgrades, but I can ask if they’ve heard about some sort of funky business in Ethus. Gives an avenue to pursue.”

“We still don’t know what’s there, though. Just that they have something to hide.”

“That’s good enough,” Sir Kalman said. “And maybe the two of you can find out more…?”

We did have enough mana for a couple castings between Midnight and I. Then we could figure out what Extra and the Brigade needed to know.