Mage Among Superheroes

A few moments after the whole fiasco with collapsing stairs, Midnight was on the roof of Western Luxury Apartments. He might have taken a moment to breathe a sigh of relief at being back somewhere safe, if it had been. Unfortunately there was a wyvern atop the building, blocking Khithae’s path to the door off the roof. Her path to the fire escape wasn’t much better, and there was the slight problem of half a flight of stairs being missing now.

She held a large wrench in her hands, warding off the creature. It was fortunately one of the ‘smaller’ ones, which still made it around the same height as her with wings that stretched out far to either side. From its position on the ground its claws couldn’t reach her, but it still had toothy jaws and some sort of stinger on its tail.

Midnight charged forward, the speed of Haste allowing him to tackle the creature. Normally he would have been too small to do anything about the situation, but he was now the size of a large dog. A little more magic didn’t help with his momentum, but Shocking Grasp certainly helped throw the thing off balance. Sonic Lance might have been more effective, but any chance of hitting Khithae with it was too risky.

The scaly not-quite-dragon ended up on its side with Midnight clawing and biting at its flank. It was… not really as effective as he would like. He was definitely tearing off some scales, but it simply wasn’t enough.

Then something slammed into his side. As it turned out, the tail was surprisingly flexible. The tip struck him right in the side, causing a jolt of pain. Was this his end, being impaled on the tail of some sort of fantasy creature?

Well, it certainly hurt, but not that bad. Midnight participated in sparring, after all. The attack definitely broke through the ever present Force Armor, but was stopped by something Midnight was quite unused to. As he looked down at his side he realized that he was gray and sparkly, and remembered Turlough had cast Stoneskin. It was new and expensive in terms of mana, but it seemed to work quite well. At least he didn’t have an actual stab wound, though it hadn’t completely negated the impact.

Midnight saw something dripping from the stinger and realized he needed to be more careful about the stinger. He had been lucky. Unfortunately the strike had knocked him off his position, and the wyvern was wiggling to its feet.

There was a loud thunk as metal struck scales, snapping the creature’s head to the side. Khithae followed up with another swing of the heavy wrench. The wyvern flailed about with its wings, sending the two of them staggering away.

“Khithae, run! Leave this to me!” Midnight said bravely. And possibly much too fast, given the look she showed him. Midnight was still getting used to the facial expressions of more standard humanoids, and the lizard-adjacent woman had a different structure and muscles that made her harder to interpret. But her body language told him what he needed to know. She wasn’t going to just leave him.

Unfortunately the wyvern was now directly in front of the door to the roof. There wasn’t any other way down. Certainly not partly missing stairs that were inconveniently see-through, where he would have to look at the distant ground below him with every step. No, it wasn’t possible to run that way. They’d just have to get past this thing.

The first thing Midnight did was tap Khithae’s leg, applying Force Armor. She might have scales of her own, but they would be softer than the well-armored wyvern, and there could never be too much safety anyway. Especially not for friends. Midnight would have used Stoneskin, but he didn’t have little baggies of diamonds. Plus, it was enough mana to possibly knock him out at the moment which was undesirable.

So now Midnight had… what… eleven mana left. That was quite a bit actually. He could totally take down this wyvern. And then what? There were others around. He needed to try to save some mana for emergencies. 5 for Sonic Lance seemed appropriate.

Midnight was glad that his indecisiveness was not so visible with Haste still going. He was still new to the whole idea of having magic, and even if some of the individual spells were just as new to Turlough’s use he’d spent years learning about them.

Should he Enlarge Khithae? Would that help, or just make her an easier target? Should he use Mage’s Reach and Shocking Grasp? Grease? All of those questions were answered simply by Khithae charging forward. Midnight didn’t want to trip her up so he dashed around for another Shocking Grasp. It had worked fine before. He ducked under the incoming tail, finding it almost leisurely with Haste going. Though that wouldn’t last much longer. Instead of striking out with his paw he chomped down on the tail near where it got the smallest- just past the stinger.

The spell happened quickly, sending jolts of electricity into the creature. When Khithae’s wrench smashed onto the thing’s head he briefly worried she might get shocked, but if she did it was only by a tiny residual amount that didn’t hinder her.

Khithae followed up with another swing at the creature’s wings which were in hindsight the most vulnerable target. There was a crack as she struck where one connected to the body, and the creature roared and pulled away. Then Khithae flung open the door and down the stairs.

Right. They didn’t have to stay to kill this thing. Even as part of the Power Brigade, Midnight thought he’d done his duty. Especially now that it probably couldn’t fly, it was neutralized as much as it could be. He ran through the door and Khithae closed it behind him. Midnight felt Haste wearing off, though Enlarge would still be lasting for a while. “Hi!” Midnight said. “Where’s your phone? Turlough tried to contact you.”

“Oh. It’s in my room. I was just up here to fix something real quick so…”

The two were making their way down the stairs, listening for a banging on the sturdy door above them. They didn’t hear one, and it was doubtful that the wyvern could operate door properly, so they were probably safe. They didn’t stop moving until they were several floors down, though.

“Things are pretty crazy outside,” Midnight commented. “I hope Turlough is okay.”

-----

A sharp stinger stabbed directly towards me. It was one of the smaller wyverns, closer to human height. Reaching my arm out, I grabbed it just behind the stinger, tightening my grip to stop it before it reached my chest. That wasn’t a feat I would attempt without Haste, but I still had a few seconds left- and Enlarge made me stronger. Everything felt slow, and I was quite glad to yank the tail and use the creature as a bludgeoning instrument against a bigger wyvern that hadn’t quite gone down. The thing was heavy, but given that it had to fly it couldn’t be that heavy. Dragons had a lot of magic involved with their flight, but wyverns were decidedly less magical and thus had to be at least relatively light.

As a weapon, wyverns were clumsy and unwieldy but had the distinct advantage of crashing into other wyverns in a jumble of wings and limbs. I couldn't aim for anything specific but I also didn’t have to worry about getting his arms gnawed off. Stoneskin was really helping with that part anyway, but I didn’t want to push it any further than I had to. In some places it was thin and cracking already and I really rather preferred my current state of only slightly bleeding.

Unfortunately I really didn’t have much left in the way of mana. I angled a few kicks into the tangle of wyverns and when they pulled apart the smaller one was comatose. The larger still roared and tried to chomp into my neck, but I ducked my shoulder under its jaw and neck, wrapping an arm around the base and then twisting around to its back. I tried to keep the thing off balance so it couldn’t use its stinger while yanking the neck into what I thought was the worst position for it. I wasn’t going to try to strangle something I wasn’t sure used its trachea the same way, but everything had a spine. There was finally satisfying pop and the thing went limp, then I swiveled my head as I looked around for what else I could do.

It was unfortunate the battle had devolved to a brawl, but that was just the way things had turned out. I was really regretting not having some sort of weapons. I should have pushed harder for that gun license, but it was kind of difficult to do as someone who had only been in this world a couple months. A spear might be nice, and even some sort of police baton would be better than being unarmed. There were other wyverns… though it turned out the ones in the immediate vicinity were dealt with. I’d taken care of some, but others were involved as well.

In addition to myself and Midnight some local supers had shown up- even if only a small fraction of people were supers, there could still be many within a few blocks. Plus the Power Brigade was a handful of blocks away, part of the reason I picked this place. Among those involved in the battle was Jim, who was tactically wrapping himself around the wyverns and twisting them in ways I couldn’t even begin to attempt without dozens of fifteen foot long tentacles to grasp onto multiple leverage points.

I didn’t see any more wyverns that seemed to be an immediate problem, and then something caught my attention. Mana. Even on Earth there was a standard background amount, but that wasn’t something that drew attention. Concentrated quantities, however, were quite different. I could practically feel it pouring into me, many times the normal rate even as it happened subconsciously. It came from the portal. That wasn’t terribly surprising as magical creatures tended to dwell in areas high in mana, but I hadn’t really experienced it before.

The topic had come up during discussions about recovering mana more quickly, but it wasn’t something that I could actively do anything about. I hadn’t sensed any areas in the city with exceptionally dense concentrations of mana- or outside the city like when I’d went to see Hammerfist.

I positioned myself outside the portal. It wasn’t a clean opening that allowed me to see through, but instead chaotic and indistinct. There didn’t seem to be any movement from it, but I stood back and to the side just in case. If something popped out I wanted to be ready and not immediately bowled over.

Information began to come in on my comms from the Power Brigade. Combined with sirens heard throughout the city it was clear there wasn’t just one portal but many. Doctor Doomsday was the biggest suspect, but… nobody saw him going around slinging portals open.

As people poked their heads out of the hotel lobby I kept them away from the portal. “It’s dangerous,” I explained. “Stay inside while we contain the situation.” Seeing the bodies of several wyverns nearby, the civilians didn’t seem particularly keen on disregarding his advice.

I felt Midnight coming down the stairs, and he seemed to be much calmer. Obviously there was still some unease, but it was a good sign. Khithae apparently came with him too, which wasn’t that surprising to learn.

“Thank you T- uh, Mage,” she looked around. “One of those was on the roof after me.” She looked around, “Can I help?” she held up a slightly bloody wrench.

“You’d better stay put. Actually…” I looked down at myself. “Can you go with Midnight to get me my gear? I’d really rather have more protecting my vital organs. And I guess my identity.” Not that it was hard to guess who I was even with my mask on.

Power Brigade orders were to secure this portal. I stood with Jim and Midnight and we were able to assure the other supers that we had it under control- they could go search for more trouble to deal with. Just because nothing had come through in the last few minutes didn’t mean this portal was done.

The rate of mana coming from it… it was hard to describe how good it felt. It reached a peak at a rate I could actually feel my mana recovering. It had to be at least five, maybe ten times the normal recovery rate. Unfortunately that meant by the time ten minutes passed and I returned to normal size I was only around half mana, but that was pretty amazing. The portal slowly faded from existence, and after we confirmed to the best of our abilities that it was truly gone it was time to move on. After I got a moment to change my pants. That wasn’t something I was going to discard while standing out in public, and I ran across the street to my apartment for a moment to swap those out. Then we were directed towards the nearest source of trouble, of which there were many.