Mage Among Superheroes

The magical development goals I had were simple. I wanted another advanced form like Divination. It would allow me to do so much, and show me that it wasn't just a fluke and a giant diamond scrying 'orb' that got me that mastery. I didn't necessarily want to be good at Divination, but I did want to be good at magic in general. And especially combat magic, because that was one of the biggest ways I would grow overall.

I had Basic Spatial Magic and Basic Energy Magic, and enough higher level spells that theoretically I could get the Advanced versions of either. Both categories had one spell that didn't have any natural upgrades- whether getting a single upgrade in that one remaining spell would be sufficient was another matter. I had a total of 15 and 11 upgrades for the basic versions, and that would actually be the case for energy… if all the upgrades added together fully and an even bigger if Stoneskin counted. Then again, 'stone' had worked before, so I just had to hope.

Ultimately, I wanted to improve both Fire Shield and Summon Moderate Elemental. Rather than choosing one or the other… I figured I could just do both.

"Do you think Fire Shield getting destroyed would help improve mastery?" I asked Midnight. "Or do I need to damage something with it?"

"Are either of those strictly necessary?" Midnight asked. "You just have to get better at it. To make it more fiery, I guess."

I nodded, "That doesn't really change my plans. Ignis will be a good training partner either way."

I could also call upon Shockfire, and I knew the Power Brigade had other pyros, but for double training this seemed perfectly appropriate. Furthermore, to not run cross purposes, Midnight and I would each be casting one of the spells. If I wanted Ignis to destroy my Fire Shield and also keep it in place, it was quite possible I would accidentally manipulate one side or the other. Technically I wanted to manipulate them somehow, but on purpose.

It was weird to cast a spell with no upgrades. There was no leeway on what amount of magic was natural to use. The minimum was the maximum. Though I could undercast it if I tried to make it weaker. Midnight could do that too, because it was pretty natural- though sometimes the spell would fail entirely if it was too little to form something real. Using more mana was… riskier. However things worked, magic didn't like that. But I could still do it- I just had to be conscious about it to not cause trouble.

I was happy to settle for what was natural, at least in terms of cost. I didn't want to make things better by spending extra, I wanted them to be more efficient. To improve my understanding.

I summoned Ignis first, and Midnight used Fire Shield. I asked him to dismantle the spell, and he was fairly happy to do so- pulling away chunks of flame from the shell of flame around Midnight. Ignis was quite happy in his default fiery form with no accessories besides his moustache indicating he was the Moderate version.

The results were pretty expected. Ignis took more mana and couldn't be hurt by fire, so he pretty easily eradicated a Fire Shield. So while we still had him… "Any idea how I can become better at Summon Elemental?" I asked. Ignis just shrugged. Well, that was about right. I was the manager and he was just the worker. Why would he know how summoning worked? "Do you get extra energy from eating fire? Do you want to use that energy?"

I knew he could do it- it was a pretty efficient way to put out fires- but I wasn't sure if he came out net positive.

Ignis nodded. I felt it was a yes to both.

I had the training room form a target- not one meant for accuracy, but solidity. Basically a boulder. "Melt that boulder!" I commanded. I tried to do something magic about it without spending more mana. I wasn't sure if that meant anything.

What I had in mind was a big cone of flame. Ignis knew better than that, it seemed. He walked up and placed a hand on the small boulder. Ignis was still waist high even in the Moderate form, so of course the hand was small too. Where Ignis touched, the boulder began to glow, and slowly it began to ooze out as Ignis leaned in. Eventually the little fire elemental squashed into the opening and then came out the other side.

Ignis wiped his forehead as if he'd done a hard day's work- which he had, though it had only been about a minute- and then disappeared.

I had kind of been expecting something more monumental, but on the other hand melting solid material wasn't that easy. There was a hole around six inches across through something, so I couldn't say it didn't work out at all. I wondered how well the training room could reabsorb the material… but they frequently dealt with all sorts of damage, so fire wouldn't be new.

No upgrades. Though exactly one attempt would have been too easy.

Next, I defended against Ignis as directed by Midnight. I tried to hold onto my fire shield without using any extra mana or doing something weird like making it cold. I didn't want to hurt Ignis, even if a summoned being couldn't take permanent damage. Though perhaps that was precisely the sort of manipulation necessary to get mastery. On the various websites I had read, there were frequently versions of cold Fire Shield.

Just because something wasn't naturally the way things worked in my reality didn't mean I couldn't do it. After Ignis predictably devoured my shield, I asked him a few things. "If I summoned a cold version of you, would you be able to absorb cold?"

Ignis gave me a thumbs up. I wondered if that was somehow normal in his world because it wasn't part of mine. But he was from elemental planes that weren't the ones I knew. Or one weird multi-energy plane? There had been multiple portals but that didn't mean they had to go to different dimensions or whatever.

A cold fire shield was blue fire. No, I didn't know why because usually that was pretty hot, if it involved real fire. However, when Midnight made a cold Ignis, Ignis was not blue fire. Instead, Ignis was holding a rock again. Previously Midnight had managed that because Ignis standing in snow seemed problematic. This time, it might have been the elemental's choice.

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Ignis pressed the rock against my cold fire, and frost began to form around it. Ignis continued to rotate it as it began to be covered by layers of ice. I wasn't sure if there should be this much water in the atmosphere, but it kept layering up. Maybe it wasn't real ice but magic ice, which didn't have to be made of water.

Ignis set the stone on the twice-melted boulder. It hadn't completely cooled, and it suddenly cracked. Ignis clapped before fading away.

It took a couple more rounds, swapping out energies as we kept summoning Ignis. It was hard to say how we could train that particular thing without specific resistance, but sending 'alterations' seemed like a good move. Acid and lightning shields worked pretty well. We didn't get to the point of desperation where I had to try something funky like a stone shield- would it be better or worse than Stoneskin? Probably less flexible or mobile and less capable of retribution, but maybe able to take a bigger hit. It didn't matter, though, because one after another I felt progress.