Mage Among Superheroes

A giant winged creature tackled Zeb, sending her tumbling across the forest floor. Tensions were high as people gathered together defensively. Miss Flutter was flying towards the aerial intruder.

Lightning could have come into play from several sources, including one of Ceira's bodyguards. However, I was feeling perfectly relaxed. After all…

"Rocky!" Zeb rolled around in excitement after the impact with the stone griffon. A few stone feathers clattered onto the ground around her. "I thought you were gone forever! Actually, you were supposed to be gone forever." Zeb ran around the griffon, sniffing. "You smell like the trees here. Are you living here now? Why?"

Ceira waved off her bodyguard. Lightning Person was the only one that seemed to be a problem at the moment. Normal Person was somewhere further back, though maybe she would also have become a threat in a moment. Random humans could still be somewhat threatening since guns existed, even if she really was a normal person in terms of offensive powers.

"We've met this griffon before," Ceira explained. "Rocky simply appears to be enthusiastic to meet us again."

Lightning Person just shrugged, but didn't return to being a non-lightning person. I wasn't one of the people with animal affinities, but I did wonder if Rocky recognized me. He nuzzled Ceira as she approached. When he looked over at me, he gave a sort of caw and slightly unfurled his wings. Maybe a wave? It wasn't an actual language so I was just guessing.

Izzy looked up at the griffon. "I think I missed hearing about Rocky."

"Well," I shrugged, "We only met him for less than an hour, during Halloween. I opened a Gate back home for him." I changed the topic slightly, "Does he need me to send him back again?" I was of course asking the people who could communicate with animals. Because I sure couldn't, and Izzy's class at most lent itself to hunting or avoiding them.

While the two of them endeavored to answer that question, Rob was beeping energetically in Jerome's arms. If we were going to take Rob along on future hikes we probably needed to get some sort of carrying pack. The little robot was heavy and awkward enough Jerome couldn't easily carry him the whole time. That said, he was getting by alright with Enhance. I was pretty sure he was behind on mana, but it was good practice for him to take care of the foolishness of his own familiar.

"What's up with him?" I asked Jerome.

"Rob wants to meet the 'cool bird'."

"We'll see if our outdoors types can arrange that," I promised.

They were pretty soon finished with getting their summary of the situation. Ceira explained what she understood to us.

"Rocky came through another portal," Ceira explained. "This time, however, he brought his mate with him. He plans to stay here. Also… the portal appears to still be around."

I frowned. "That's odd. Well, I mean, I sensed it but it shouldn't last long."

Midnight pondered for a moment. "It would probably be worse if this was another unrelated portal in a similar area."

"True," I agreed.

We introduced Rob to the griffon, which seemed quite confused at the beeping mechanical individual. However, Rocky was smart enough to know that Rob wasn't food. Also people. Even when he'd been confused and scared on Halloween, Rocky hadn't hurt anyone.

"Extra will probably want to send him back still," I commented. "Since I could."

Zeb protested, "But they have a nest here!"

"... I'm certain that will be taken into account," I replied. "Sadly, we can't just not tell them. Before that, we have a portal to look at. Before we go… has Rocky noticed anything dangerous around here? Since he lives here."

"Only small things," Ceira relayed after she asked Rocky. "Nothing bigger than… a bear." She made a face, "What sort of bear?" It took a few exchanges to get useful information. She tried to pull out her phone to show pictures but she didn't have good signal. She did eventually manage to have Rocky trace out the dimensions. About two to three feet tall and something like five feet long. "Black bears, probably," she said. "And larger brown ones like this," she gestured. It was maybe fifty percent bigger in each direction… which was going to be at least triple the mass. "Maybe brown bears? Grizzly?"

Izzy had an answer there. "Grizzlys used to be here at the park. I learned that when I worked here."

Oh right. She did work here for a while. Unfortunately, it was a bit far from New Bay for a day job. Also, I think I dragged her off for some adventure or something but she hadn't complained about moving on to another job.

"I want to see a Grizzly!" Zeb declared.

I shrugged. "If we run into one, you can talk with it. But make sure to protect yourself properly."

"Don't worry! I have squirrels for that."

I did notice a lot of squirrels watching from the nearby trees. They mostly fit in, at least from my perspective. I was able to spot them mostly because of the power they held. Otherwise they should be pretty good at hiding. At least Douglas had previously lived here, hadn't she?

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

We hiked onward, with Lightning Person finally settling down after the giant bird lion was clearly peaceful for a sustained period. Angela had displayed mild surprise at the encounter, but one would presume she was fairly used to supernatural stuff by now. She'd been a hero for a long time, after all. Even if she mostly saved kittens from trees and walked old ladies across the road, she did it a lot. Even before Doctor Doomsday's advent, there was a high occurrence rate of supernatural stuff.

Rocky led us along, though we weren't fast enough to keep up with his normal pace so he circled around occasionally, making sure we were going the right direction. He really fit into the forest well, big trees spread far apart fitting a giant bird lion like him.

It was nice. We didn't really have to worry about forest creatures bugging us to begin with given our group size, but having two giant flying creatures made that even more likely. Hopefully Rocky wouldn't wreck the local ecosystem too much. Miss Flutter didn't live here and was quite subdued during the day, though I wasn't sure if dire bats were actually nocturnal. If they lived in proper cave systems it probably doesn't matter.

A polite shriek came from Rocky. "He says we're close," Ceira commented. "Though I suppose you can probably tell. I can kind of feel the portal myself."

I nodded. "It's just up there. Can't quite see it from this angle but I'm certain. Midnight and I will go take care of it."

"I want to see it!" Zeb said.

Rob beeped. "Rob and I would like to as well," Jerome said.

Ceira nodded, "I didn't get a good look at Rocky's home before. Can you include me?"

Once Ceira was included, we suddenly crossed the threshold. After all, her bodyguards would want to be able to follow. I wasn't sure about Lighting Person's ability to fly, but the other one probably couldn't. It would be rude to leave out Izzy and Angela, so we used Multicasting twice for Fly.

The squirrels were ecstatic. Most of the animals were. Even Miss Flutter liked magical flight for some reason. Only Fluffy didn't seem that enthusiastic, sort of air waddling and sniffing at tree branches.

The portal was… more like a rift. It wasn't nice and round, or really any shape. It was jagged and weird. Wrong, I briefly thought. However, that was just my sensibilities. It didn't actually feel… unnatural? I was just used to things with even sides. It was huge. Approximately thirty feet wide and ten feet tall, though the jaggedness made it a bit less than that overall.

I was the first to see anything through it but a different sky. It was awful. At no fault of the rift, probably, what I saw beyond was no good. Stumps and scorched land were most of what remained, it certainly couldn't be called a forest.

Midnight felt uneasy on my shoulder. It wasn't from the heights this time- as long as he was on my shoulder he was fine, with flying neither significantly helping nor hurting. "It wasn't like this at all last time."

"Right," I said. "It certainly wasn't."

"Doesn't look safe," Lightning Person commented. She immediately flew through the portal, having once again turned into actual lightning. A few moments later, she came back out. "It's pretty much the same in all directions."

I frowned. "How did you do that?"

"Do what?" She tilted her head. She held up her crackling hand. "This is my power, obviously. And the flying thing is your power, unless you forgot."

"How did you go through?" I asked.

"I just… went?" she tilted her head.

"Hmm." Were lightning people not subject to the interdimensional barrier? Or was this not my old world? I thought it was, as that seemed to be the most connected world right now. Maye I was wrong. "You, Normal- actually, Angela, could you go through?"

She did just fine. I also went through to feel things out. I called upon the idea of Gate. I just wanted to know if this dimension was the one with which I was familiar for most of my life. It certainly seemed to be.

"Well he can't come back here," I commented. "Alright, everyone out. We're closing this thing off. If Extra needs me to transplant him somewhere else, we'll figure that out then."

People had all sorts of expressions. Fascination at the rift was one. Displeasure at whatever happened to the forest was clear on many.

"Wait!" Zeb called. "I see a squirrel!"

"I'm not casting fly again!" I yelled after her. "You'd better get back within five minutes!"

I would, of course, absolutely cast fly and/or open a Gate to another dimension for Zeb if I needed to, but it was better to try to get her to behave. She hurried along at my words, flying as swiftly as she could. A couple minutes later she came back holding a squirrel in her mouth.

"Mmph mrrm! Mmrml grr."

I couldn't understand a word. However, I still got the gist. The squirrel looked… burnt. Ceira was already acting before I did. She cast a full powered Regeneration spell. I whispered to Midnight, "How expensive do you think that was?"

"So expensive," Midnight whispered back. "Based on the crazy rates she charges. Enough that I don't want to think about it and I don't think she does either."

"Fair point," I agreed.

Squirrels were probably more important than billionaires anyway. Though maybe they were harder to heal, because the squirrel didn't look like it got any better. Except for the part where it started wiggling frantically and squeaking angrily, so at least it was energetic.

While Zeb and Ceira landed to try to handle that, I stayed flying with Midnight to close the rift. Everyone else went with them or just had fun flying about. "Alright, time to seal this guy. Work with me. As much mana as we can, it's quite big."

I rather wanted sealing a rift to be stable, so we both ended up using 10 mana. Nothing overly complicated. I reached out for the rift, starting to zip it up, and felt resistance. That wasn't too abnormal. Stable portals were actually effort to undo, whereas unstable ones just needed someone to give a little tug and they would unravel. If this one had been around for… days? Weeks? It was difficult to say, actually. It could have been months, since we hadn't come out here and nobody really asked Rocky.

As I put more effort, I didn't feel good about closing the portal. "Stop," I told Midnight. "I… don't think we should."

"... Why?"

It was difficult to explain. "It's just instinct. I feel like… this is meant to be here? If that makes sense."

It didn't have anything to do with it being convenient for smuggling supers into my old world if we needed to. I didn't even think of that until later.

Midnight shrugged. "You're the boss. We still have to report it to Extra, though."

"Yeah…" Hopefully they would agree with me. If not, it wasn't going to be my fault when something exploded. As for Rocky, they had to agree with me that he didn't belong in that burnt hellscape. He even had a nest here! Somewhere. I hadn't seen it yet.