Mage Among Superheroes

While she didn’t happen to have an exact specific thing I wanted, that didn’t mean Malaliel was of no help at all.

“Creating a generic ‘portal scanner’ would be the domain of super tech,” she explained. “With different portal origins, what constitutes a portal can vary significantly. It is also an unfortunate fact that we’ve had trouble finding Doctor Doomsday’s portals, which if we are correct is the source of our current conundrum.”

“I can sense them if I get close,” I said. Then I frowned. “Or maybe not. Because normally I’m sensing the mana coming through. I can also sense generic power usage but without both components it might be more difficult.”

“You do seem particularly talented in that area,” Malaliel nodded.

“... Which area?” I asked.

“Sensing powers,” she explained.

Was I? “Can’t everyone do it?” I said. “Well, everyone with powers at least.” That of course included a class, which was literally everyone in this world. Except for Malaliel, I supposed. And potentially a couple other weird exceptions. I looked over at Midnight. “It’s pretty normal, right?”

Midnight shook his head. “I wouldn’t say so. I think I picked up some of it from you, and through our connection I can clearly sense how much mana you’re using, but others don’t seem to be the same. Or other people would have been tracking down portals.”

“... Jerome’s pretty good at it, isn’t he?” I asked.

“He should be fairly close,” Midnight agreed. “But I think there’s a fairly easy way to test this. We can just gather the Portal Squad and put them through a few tests. Also you.”

Was that necessary right now? We had things to do. Like sense portals. Which maybe other people wouldn’t be as good at. “We can’t really test non-mana based powers,” I pointed out.

“True, but it still tells us something about people’s sensitivity.”

“I’ve also been a mage my whole life,” I pointed out. “The rest of you have been magic for like a year or two tops.” Malaliel cleared her throat. “Except you, but that’s a different kind.”

“We also have access to Sir Kalman and the Order of the Lion and a whole city full of elves.”

“I don’t know if they would be interested in this,” I said. Was it even that important?

-----

Regardless of whether it mattered, an hour later we had the whole squad together, plus Sir Kalman, a couple lieutenants of the Cleric class, and one mage and one druid from Entheas. Plus Lyklor, the old beastmaster who had been teaching Zeb. Also Malaliel who wasn’t actually part of the Portal Squad. Zeb might not count either, but probably after this it could be more official.

“Alright, since we’re doing this it might as well be done right without being too wasteful,” I said. I held out my hand, gathering the maximum mana available for a Sonic Lance. “This is 5 mana. I’m sure everyone knows that.”

Malaliel was the only one who looked iffy on that. Then again, her magic didn’t use enumerated points of mana.

I released the mana slowly, reabsorbing as much as I could. It wasn’t perfect recovery, since the mana had already been trying to be the spell I had in mind, but outside of a combat situation I could afford the effort and concentration required.

“Next I’ll do two more in a row.” Obviously I knew how much mana I was doing so it wasn’t a great test for me, but I also thought it was fairly easy. “How was that?” I asked.

Boom nodded. “I got it. It was 10 and 15. I’ve also felt 20, since that’s Gate, right?”

A couple other people agreed. Midnight’s tail swished next to me.

“The second one was less, wasn’t it?” Lyklor asked.

Sir Kalman nodded. “That should have been 9, right?”

The cleric agreed. “I believe that was… the Mental Freedom spell?”

“Well,” I said. “Technically it was Variable Freedom. I hadn’t really chosen mental or physical.”

The druid tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

I thought for a moment about whether I wanted to taint the elves with knowledge. Lyklor seemed to already know, but I couldn’t tell if he cared. “The spells can fuse together into one progression if you’re able to advance naturally.” Did these elves really not know? How could they not, with… however old they were. Okay, I didn’t actually know if they were older than me or not. Except for Lyklor who actually showed his age.

The mage and druid exchanged looks. Maybe they thought I was lying or crazy. Or that I needed to be taken down for the sake of a grand conspiracy. But I didn’t care that much either way. If someone sent assassins after me, I’d beat them up and get experience. Though I had to admit that there were probably some very high level people who could kill me easily, even with Francois’ defenses. Maybe I could get some cool magic stuff here to help me out.

Nobody asked more questions about fusing spells together. All of the Portal Squad already knew how that worked- at least as much as I did- and the others didn’t seem willing to ask. Which meant no answers for them, but that was their choice.

We went around casting spells, and while Calculator would have probably had a conniption at the lack of structure we still got a pretty good idea how accurate people were.

“13 mana,” I said. “That’s Regenerate.”

The druid nodded. “Yes. With upgrades, of course.”

“Obviously,” I agreed. “It’s 15 naturally.”

Midnight got that one, but Malaliel and various members of the Portal Squad weren’t that accurate. Twirl was actually pretty close, but Bandage wasn’t always accurate down to the point. Sir Kalman and Lyklor also maintained a perfect record.

Speaking of the beastmaster, we came to him. Everyone had time to determine their answer. “4 mana,” Sir Kalman declared. Everyone echoed the same answer, while I had out my phone.

“Turlough?” Midnight prompted me when I was the last to answer.

“Hold on, I’m doing math. Oh, and it’s like… 4.15 mana,” I commented. That wasn’t what the math was for, though. I just knew that was how much mana the spell used… approximately. After I got the answer I realized I should just have tables pre-prepared in case I needed to look this stuff up. Just like the ones in all the books. “The spell has upgrades, obviously.”

“That’s right,” Lyklor agreed. “Do you know what spell?”

“No idea,” I admitted. “But it should be sixth rank with nine upgrades.”

“That’s not the only option for the same amount of mana,” he pointed out.

“Well, sure,” I admitted. “A fifth rank with four upgrades is 4.16 with the 6 repeating. But this is stronger than that so it’s a sixth rank spell with nine upgrades. Which I guess is technically 4.138 mana,” I said looking at my calculation. “So I was kinda off.”

The beastmaster shrugged. “Not to any significant degree. Now then, what about this?” he asked.

“That’s .95 mana,” I said.

“Close enough. What rank of spell is it?”

“Rank 2,” I said. “But that’s not hard, I already saw you cast Speak With Animals,” I pointed out. “Also I have to say? 22 upgrades is excessive.”

“That depends on how much you care about a particular thing,” he countered. “But a first rank spell with one upgrade would be the exact same mana cost, you know.”

“Yeah, but that one was easier than the last one because I’ve already seen you use that spell. A lot.”

“Oh, me too!” Zeb said. “I don’t have that many upgrades though.”

“Regardless,” Malaliel commented, “You’re the only one accurate to anything more precise than a tenth of a point.”

“Hmm. I guess so,” I shrugged. “I don’t think that changes all that much because we’re all going to be looking for portals anyway. Though if we split up Sir Kalman would be the best option to go with a different group. That might bring us under a proper fighting force, unless Lyklor wants to come along?”

The old man stroked his chin. “I actually might. I have various companions that would be good for tracking down dark elves as well.”

“Are you gonna bring Fang?” Zeb asked, excited.

“Oh no, she’s a tree squirrel,” the man said. “It wouldn’t be comfortable for her at all. Either way, I should come along. With the majority of the Order helping hold things here, I can afford to be active elsewhere and I think your efforts are most likely to bear fruit.”

“I suppose we should have suggested it earlier,” Malaliel admitted. “We would be glad to coordinate with you in that manner.”

-----

Though we learned I was a little bit better at sensing specific amounts of mana than others, I didn’t find that there was any terribly useful things done during that period. But we did have to rest and plan out our next moves, and ultimately since Lyklor would be assisting us we could be a lot more efficient.

I had kind of expected him to bring along a cave bear or something, but instead he brought a bat. A regular bat, not like a dire bat or anything. Though that certainly made her take up less space.

“This is Flower,” Lyklor introduced her. Technically, he used elven words but the name translated just like that. “She’ll be good at detecting anyone trying to sneak up on us.”

That was good. I would very much prefer not to be ambushed. Straight up fights were good, but I didn’t like the idea of being brought down without a fight. And almost getting killed without a proper battle didn’t give nearly as much experience.

We were of course properly prepared with Energy Ward on everyone- though our foes might now be aware of that, the only way they could do anything about it was to change tactics. Which might not actually be to our advantage, now that I thought about it. It would be best if they kept using lasers.

There were a couple small skirmishes over the next few days, but our quarries seemed to be maintaining caution. Perhaps they were waiting for us to go deeper into the caves, where they would have an advantage.

Meanwhile, the same number of attacks on the surface continued, so a single incident hadn’t necessarily made them more timid as a whole. Just more cautious about our forays into the cave systems.

“Fluffy smells some more lasers this way,” Zeb commented. She sniffed. “I can’t do that yet.”

Apparently that was actually something she could pick up, in theory. Aspect Sharing was a beastmaster abilities that let them take on properties of their companions. Lyklor had it, though I doubted there was much he didn’t have if he could afford to spend something like 70 points on speak with animals. That was more than I had spent on Haste! And slightly more than Chain Lightning. And a good bit less than I’d spent on Gate. But it sure was a lot for a very low level ability.

Ultimately, I didn’t sense anything. No portals or unusual magic or powers of any sort. It was becoming pretty clear that we would have to go deeper. That meant making preparations for such an incursion.

If we had too many people, we would be obvious. But not bringing enough would be a risk if we got into a fight. Our movements weren’t exactly subtle already, so our plan was to have a few larger groups from the Order as distractions while we tried to reach deeper.

With the elves having their hands full protecting the surface, that was the conclusion we came to. And as long as we remained together, if things got really bad we could retreat through a Gate. Lyklor was the only one who hadn’t been to Earth, and we could return him home easily enough.

I made a note to pay special attention to my mana reserves. Given a few minutes I could also make use of the best mana crystals I had to recover enough- but that assumed we had a few minutes and meant I couldn’t use them for anything else, otherwise I would risk overuse. Which was very much not fun.

“Look, look!” Zeb suddenly called out. I almost thought we were being ambushed. “Another bat!”

Oh, was that all? We’d seen tons of bats- none of which Zeb had yet convinced to be her friend. Probably due to her overexcitement overcoming the utility of her new Speak with Animals ability. Lyklor was constantly amused.

Then the bat swooped down. Even though I could see in the dark, I hadn’t noticed it before it got close. It was… big. Its wingspan was probably ten feet wide, at least, though it maneuvered through the stalactites and stalagmites easily.

It knocked over Honey Badger before he could even take a swing. As it shrieked, I considered that it might be a problem if its massive mouth tried to bite anyone… but before I could blast it with lightning Zeb was already bouncing up and down.

“Oooh, let me talk to it! I bet we can be friends!”

Well, as long as nobody got hurt too bad. Besides, nobody could deny her enthusiasm.