Mage Among Superheroes

Everything was perfect. We had the team, we had the plan. A dragon was going down, and Faceeater wouldn't bother anyone ever again. Actually, were we supposed to capture her? Dragons were people.

Eh, that was somewhere in the 'if feasible' realm of things. In theory, Great Girl was going to be grappling the dragon anyway. We wouldn't have great restraints, but she could just dislocate a few things. Surely it would work out.

Relatedly, being a person would get Faceeater in a lot more legal trouble with Extra, because she should know she was invading sovereign territory and committing crimes. While in some ways animals got off worse, Extra was never really upset with them. Magical beasts wandering through portals because they didn't know better could be dangerous… or they could be like Rocky. Fully capable of killing people but peaceable enough to not do that.

The trail of blood was getting more fresh. Faceeater had likely flown away from the scene rather quickly, but we were skipping a lot of distance because of Telescope. We didn't know precisely where Faceeater might be holed up, but it was highly probable that Map could reveal it before we got too close. The actual details of her power were unclear to me, but she did know things about the terrain and how people should route around things so that was good enough.

"Large claw marks ahead," Map said. "Bigger than bears." We hadn't seen those, but it probably fit into her power if the marks were significant enough. "I suggest we prepare ourselves for Fleshmelter."

Which meant having me prepare people. Great Girl might shift to a different size, but that wasn't something that required much forewarning. Nobody else had powers that had a particularly limited duration or affected others.

Everyone got Energy Ward. Normally I would have used Multicasting because of the mana efficiency- triple price for five targets. However, for something within the realm of Basic Energy Magic it was a difference of five upgrades. 20 points of mana for maximum power versus 12 was significant, but with six of us it was actually 24 vs 16. Fifty percent more cost for a third more power wasn't efficient but it was good. Fighting a dragon wasn't the sort of thing where we could afford to skimp on the costs.

I could have left Map out of the costs, but she was close enough to the battlefield that she might be an incidental target. Energy Ward was what she needed most. Stoneskin, however, was somewhat closer in total upgrades and the difference between spending 27 and 47 or 54 mana was… huge. I would drop into the negatives before the battle if I did that. So Map didn't get stoneskin, I used Multicasting… and I didn't quite maximize the power. Because I couldn't manage 27 mana on a single spell by myself for like 5 more levels.

Maybe if we got into a really good brawl today… no, it was extremely unlikely to get over 170 experience in a single battle. It would have to be a far superior opponent and I'd have to have a major contribution. Faceeater might not quite hit that level of superior. She was a big dragon, not a legendary dragon. For one thing, she fit in a building, between the floors. She barely even knocked down any walls.

The truly big dragons had necks that were more than ten feet across. In theory. I hadn't seen one, which was probably why I was still alive. Because I had neither friendship nor gold to give to such a dragon. Maybe praise would work. I feel like I could give pretty sincere praise to a big dragon.

"The burrow begins among the roots on the far side of that tree," Map pointed. "I would suggest proceeding with caution. It slopes downward and turns into a chamber forty feet across at the widest. You might be able to trap her, but you won't have much room to maneuver either."

We crept forward. Suddenly we were looking at the entrance, without having even rounded the tree. I would have said that was a risk, but Telescope was very good at hiding the signs of her power usage. I couldn't sense it, though I wasn't sure how good a dragon's magical senses might be.

Great Girl led the pack, with Grasp just behind her. Then it was me, with Telescope and Mono at the back. Mono's footsteps were silent. He might have been able to extend that courtesy to us, but he wasn't quite as subtle as Telescope. Maybe that was why she was an executive. Plus her experience, and quite possibly the public perception of such an ability. It looked very useful and not at all scary.

I wondered if she could be closer to the inside of something than the outside. I hadn't figured out a good way to ask without forcing her to reveal too much- or lie. So I would just assume she could do it to me and not our enemies.

The den smelled awful. I was pretty sure I had never smelled dragon before that moment. Not really. Great Girl was very obviously holding a hand up to her face. Hopefully she could stop being wolfish?

We rounded the final bend, and she sprang forward. There was one problem we hadn't considered- it was dark. Maybe Great Girl's night vision sensors weren't working, because her lunge didn't take her towards a dragon. How could it?

There wasn't one.

I was very certain of that as I scanned the area. It was open, with nowhere to hide behind. Nothing dangling from the ceiling or tucked away in weird corners. "... Maybe she went out again?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Great Girl bent down to look at the ground. "No, this blood is the freshest! She shouldn't have had any way to stop it… and there wasn't anything outside."

"And yet…" Telescope said. "It appears that Fleshmelter is not here."

"Yeah…" I tilted my head. "She shouldn't have any healing spells…"

Great Girl spun around. "Spellcasting dragons? They still do that where you're from?"

I shrugged. "Some of them, of course. But I haven't seen anything from Faceeater to indicate that she is one of them."

"Well… find her," Great Girl pointed to the puddle of blood.

I sighed. "I need to get a big mirror." I wondered if I could fit a standing mirror into Storage. Maybe with a bag as a focus. "Phone screen it is."

If I consumed the blood, it should boost the spell. It probably wouldn't be as good as the Scrying cube still, but maybe I could do some other sort of divination. Where is she now? Where did she go? These questions I had. But the biggest was 'what happened here?'

When Faceeater appeared on my phone, I almost yelled at Great Girl to lunge forward. But I realized what I did.

I saw her lying in a small puddle of her own blood. Small compared to her bodily proportions, at least. She was licking her wound. Did dragon saliva do the same thing as dogs and cats?

No. Or at least, that wasn't what she was going for. Some sort of residue stuck, covering the gaps between her scales.

"Nothing, huh?" Great Girl commented as she peered over my shoulder.

"Darkvision," I commented, holding up a finger. Apparently my magic wasn't tuned to get what goggles needed. Just my eyes.

So she licked her wound closed with some sort of dragon mucus. Maybe. Then what? My question was answered as I continued to slowly pour mana into the spell. It was getting pretty expensive now, but since it didn't come all at once…

A sudden movement. A silent roar. An arm extended into the scene. Indigo blue. Something was pulled out and then-

I recoiled as my magic hit a sudden wall. I wasn't done, though. I slammed my head both physically and magically forward. It seemed I missed something, as I only caught Faceeater's tail slipping out of frame. Why wasn't it following her?

I let the magic lapse, reeling on my feet as I realized I went too far into the negatives too quickly. I really didn't want to tell people I could divine the past now. Someone else had to have that power so nobody wanted me to use it, right? Well, it fit under Advanced Divination Magic just fine.

As I recovered, I had a very good guess why it didn't follower Faceeater. Because it wasn't targeting her. It was targeting here. I asked what happened here, not what happened to her. That might have been the reason it worked at all, because I didn't really feel her magic resistance like I should have.

I had some suppositions about what happened. I spoke them as if they were fact. "A member of the Neon Void here came with a device. She left with them."

"Are you certain?" Telescope asked.

"As certain as can be."

"She won't be coming back," Mono commented. When people looked to him for reasoning, he shrugged. "If I was a dragon, I wouldn't want to live in the dirt. Don't they have nice caves? A good warehouse might be close enough, and it could have proper luxuries. Surely the Neon Void has access to some. They might try to ship her into New Bay or another city."

Telescope pondered for a moment. "We'll see if Calculator has the same speculation as you. I do agree that she won't be coming back, though. We should check for scents on the surface." Immediately, I could see daylight. So she could make a connection there, but she had to know precisely where it was going? Or she hadn't wanted the daylight to alert Faceeater- though it could have been a good trick to blind her.

Great Girl gagged after we stepped out and she began to transform her face once more. "Please cut off that connection," she waved towards it. Telescope did so. "Ugh, the scent that came out is still way too strong." She sort of bent over, sniffing. Then she sighed and got down on all fours. "No, sorry. I can vaguely pick out another scent, but I don't think I'd be able to track it." She scurried around, checking the perimeter. "I can't pick out anything I would say conclusively is Fleshmelter leaving. She might have flown off. But I'm not a proper scout so I can't do any more than this."

"Unfortunate," Telescope said. "If we had been a bit faster…"

I shook my head. "I don't think this was all that close. We would have had to come back as soon as I had mana for a single Teleport and hoped I ended up on target. Then we would have shown up with me useless and without buffs."

"Terrible raid coordination," Great Girl said. "Yeah, it probably had to be this way." She stretched. "Eh, it will probably be fine. If she comes to kill you in the city again, call me."

"I'll let the whole Brigade know," I said.

This time, even on low mana, I was pretty sure we were never inside any solid material on the return Teleport. Obviously Extra's teleportation hall still made things accurate regardless.

-----

"I really wanted that fight," I told Midnight when he returned.

Midnight just rolled his eyes. "Of course you did. Seriously, I go away for a couple days and you run into the dragon again?"

"Good point," I said. "Anything else you need to do on Celmoth?"

Of course I was joking. I would always prefer to have my best buddy with me to back me up. And Faceeater would probably come find me since she had a grudge.

Now I had another reason to look into the Neon Void. I could counter a lot of their specific tricks, but I didn't know everything they could do. Maybe I needed to bump into their territory some more in the near future. If we even knew where they operated precisely enough to get a patrol route, anyway. New Bay was big, and while the Power Brigade usually operated throughout the city they didn't cover it all evenly. Heroes and other mercenaries had their own preferred stomping grounds that we had to have reason to go into. I didn't want to annoy anyone… because then the Brigade would be annoyed at me and I liked working for them.