Mage Among Superheroes

I gathered 15 mana for Teleport. I was a very, very tiny sliver of self control away from the line of gathering just 5 more mana and casting Meteor Swarm on Faceeater instead of Teleport. But while I personally would love to keep fighting, there were two innocent griffons, Tylissa, Zeb, and I was pretty sure one more squirrel than before.

Besides, Midnight would be sad if I died. Or got myself maimed. So I cast Teleport.

It was terrifying. I'd never felt so off balance since I first stumbled into negative mana around the time I was saving Midnight from his abduction. I was pretty sure we ended up inside solid material… until we were pulled into Extra's teleportation nexus. That had been my target all along, but my accuracy hadn't been great without the proper balance.

I either needed to use more huge spells when in negative mana… or not do it at all.

Assessing the damage, it seemed to be only the griffons that were injured. I had thought they were in pretty good shape, but maybe I missed something. They weren't going to be doing a lot of bear hunting in the near future with a broken claw or two. I think Mrs. Rocky had a snapped wing. Wolf- Tylissa- was fine, as well as Zeb and somehow all of her squirrels- even the 'flying' ones directly involved in attacking the dragon.

So it was just the griffons. I wondered if Ceira was busy. No, of course she was. I should talk to Angela and tell her that Rocky needed help. Ceira could still heal them later, even if they healed poorly right now.

Neither stone griffon was enthusiastic about being inside, but Zeb managed to explain things to them. They really wanted to go back to their forest, but that wasn't feasible right now. I certainly wasn't going to Teleport back out there and be out of mana.

Plus, there was the dragon. It was a bit far for New Bay to send out a proper dragon hunting squad, but the part of the Great Sequoias that was public would have to be closed for the near future. Prepared hikers would have bear spray- I doubted any of them would have dragon spray.

What would you make that from? Would dragons be vulnerable to whatever mechanisms bear spray had? Unfortunately, my knowledge about dragons didn't indicate many weaknesses. Either they didn't have any, aside from often being quite visible and easy to track down, or such knowledge had been well hidden.

I asked Sir Kalman if he had any advice for fighting a green dragon. I considered who else I might know that could help, and considered Lyklor the elven beastmaster as well as Archmage Wrickle. Probably some of the other mages wanted me to contact them about such things, but I only had a limited amount of mana. Those three points of contact took a couple of hours to replenish the mana for.

Sir Kalman suggested a large brigade with ranged weapons- preferably magical bows or crossbows. Earthbind would be good, if there were any mages with such a spell. I would have gladly chosen such a spell, but I had the slight problem of having accidentally spent most of my points. I supposed I had wanted the best form of Ignis I could get, so accidentally ending up with Summon Major Elemental wasn't incorrect. It did make me wonder about the limits of spells, especially ones like that.

I could scale spells up with mana anyway after I broke magic. Had I subconsciously determined that the higher tier version was better somehow, or was there some other rule I didn't know? Maybe I would have just summoned a stronger version of Ignis without a tophat for the same cost- I really didn't know what difference that would make, though. I didn't really have a way to answer that in the near future.

Lyklor's advice was basically to let Rocky rip apart the wings. He didn't know about Rocky, he just suggested any flying combatant. He acknowledged it was more difficult than it seemed on the surface and the risk of approaching a dragon so close was high.

Wrickle of course suggested a spell that wasn't previously listed anywhere, including in the book she'd given me. She called it Full Spatial Lock, and apparently it could hold something in space while we… draped heavy things over its wings? Still subject to magic resistance, and apparently it made the target invincible for the duration?

I was confused about how that worked, but I supposed that any sort of damaging interaction would have to move the target in space. But also, I wasn't sure if that included locking them in space relative to the planet or not. Presumably it was, because she didn't mention being flung off into space at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour. Or if we compared to things at the scales of galaxies, some hundreds of miles per second which was around a million miles per hour. Everything was relative. Maybe there was an absolute somewhere, but it surely wasn't Earth.

It was probably easier to tie something to a gravity well though. Like it was easier to Gate between them. Space was complicated like that. Teleport was pretty much only functional inside a gravity well. The specialties were quite different. If I ever got to Advanced or Master Spatial Magic, maybe I'd understand how to do something in between.

Anyway, I didn't have the capability to improvise that spell and it was another twentieth rank spell which I could have purchased before accidentally spending the points on Summon Major Elemental. One more level would be enough but that was still a while away, even if the skirmish with a dragon had been something like a quarter of a level.

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

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I spent a good three hours meditating to recover to maximum mana. That was from basically empty, which would have taken me almost eleven hours at one point. I wasn't counting the double mana and double mana recovery from having broken mana- just empty to full. However, active meditation more or less doubled my mana recovery rate once I got used to it if I was somewhere appropriate like at the top of a tower, and the higher ambient mana levels were also about double. So three hours was pretty much 'expected'.

It wasn't something I could do several times per day, though. Active meditation for mana recovery wasn't as easy as it sounded. Relaxing, certainly, but not restful. But it was sufficient that I could go out once more today, in the evening, because waiting longer than half a day would be rather risky.

Great Girl's team ended up on a double shift with me. They were just the most appropriate for dragon related trouble. Even if it wouldn't give any publicity to the Power Brigade to do stuff outside of New Bay, the state of California was quite incentivized to pay the Power Brigade to resolve the issue. They liked powered stuff to stay constrained to a couple geographic regions if at all possible so that they could live 'normally'.

I really had no idea what that meant. A world without classes or powers of any sort would be weird. I'd passed through a couple such areas while on Earth, but I'd never really been there.

Since Faceeater was a real problem, we also snagged Acid Man and even Telescope. The Power Brigade executive wasn't one I'd been on missions with much. She didn't look particularly dangerous, but I knew she was. If she could make people walk around a corner and never actually get around the corner- without me even sensing anything- I knew she could do a lot more.

Maybe she would be able to make Faceeater slam directly into a tree. Or the ground. Or throw her into space.

Assuming her powers worked on anything that big. If not, she would mostly be useful for scouting purposes. One of her best known abilities was telescopic vision. I wasn't sure if that was an actual power she had or if she just actually made things closer to her eyes.

One unusual thing was that we brought Map with us. She was part of the squad, of course, but she normally remained… elsewhere. With good reason, because her powers were best that way. They didn't help her fight, but instead provided battlefield awareness which she had trained to helpfully share with others. Occasionally she had to show up in person, though. Like the angel and vampire incident.

I teleported us out into the forest, vaguely near where we had last departed with Faceeater. Only vaguely near because I didn't have the area locked in memory.

"Alright everyone," Telescope took control, which made sense given her status. "Once we find the site of the battle, we'll spread out and look for clues of what Fleshmelter did afterwards. If she was bleeding as we believe she might have been, Great Girl has expressed her ability to track her via scent."

Wolf was better at the job, not because her werewolf nature was better but because of her scout class and ultimately her specific training afterwards. However, she wasn't supposed to be in combat zones. She wouldn't take people into a hidden base, but at most nearby. If we'd expected to be attacked, we would have had a very different arrangement of people.

Zeb wasn't with us because she was helping keep the griffons calm. I had heard from Angela that Ceira would be coming to heal them soon enough, so if Faceeater was dealt with we could send them back home. Probably tomorrow or something, because I'd also need to rest before doing too much more teleporting.

The journey was… strangely short. Telescope made that certain. Each step we took covered hundreds of feet, as long as we walked along a path she determined for us. There was just a section of the world that was closer. I was fairly certain we didn't need to be able to see it- the first trick I'd seen Telescope do with the corner indicated as much. However, it was far more comfortable to see where we would be stepping when the ground wasn't entirely level.

We got back to the battle quickly, obvious from the scarred trees. Draconic acid was not nice to whatever it came in contact with. We sorted through the few small patches of blood, finally finding some that appeared to be Faceeater's.

"Distinguishing between bird-lions and… reptilians… is pretty easy," Great Girl commented. I would probably agree, but my sense of smell wasn't strong enough to detect either except when they were right next to me. Though even I could smell that the blood was wrong, and mostly missing. Because it was also highly acidic, and acid used itself up as it dissolved things.

"I can sense a few hollows that might fit a dragon," Map commented as we went along. "Some in the trees. Some in the ground."

She always took a moment to orient herself when we skipped some space. It seemed her powers did recover instead of getting totally confused, though. Presumably Telescope was already aware that they would be functional together.

Mono's steps didn't make any noise. It wasn't that important because the rest of us still did, but I still marveled about how well he used what were officially some of the lowest tier sound powers. Not like Rocker, who could attack people directly with sound. It wasn't like they were so different, either. Mono was just 'weak'. But he found a way to use his powers that worked. Instead of amplifying, he attenuated sound to nothing, providing stealth capabilities- while still allowing him to maintain a high muzzle velocity with his sniper rifle.

Grasp was constantly looking around. She would use her telekinetic abilities to grab one of Faceeater's wings once the dragon got even vaguely close. Only Great Girl and Acid Man would approach, after I gave them Fly. Acid Man might not be able to harm a dragon easily, but in turn he was actually pretty resistant to anything she could do. Cutting? He could turn into liquid. He was resistant to other acid, so her breath wouldn't matter.

I thought we had a pretty good setup. And if somehow things went wrong, we could Teleport away again. That sounded boring, though.