Mage Among Superheroes

It was quite possible that we would have been able to continue altering the curses in the same way with only minor precautions, but I had the feeling that Malaliel's injuries would have been far worse on anyone else. Since we couldn't exactly ask her to sacrifice herself over and over, we had to be ready for some nonsense from the sky.

I sighed. "This whole place is a rollercoaster." I had been led to believe those went up and down a bunch. "First we come up against an undefeatable foe in The King of the Many-Colored. But we don't need to defeat him." Midnight listened as I complained. "Then the sky tries to kill us!"

"Some local god," Midnight commented.

"You can't prove that!"

"You were the one talking about countering divine energy."

I shrugged. "Divine energy could come from a lot of places. Even Spot. Or Bandage."

"Powerful divine energy, seemingly of a similar wavelength to angels but still enough to hospitalize Malaliel. That sounds like-"

"If it doesn't have a face it's just a dumb natural phenomenon. Anyway…" I shook my head. "We have to deal with it."

We basically had the same setup as before, minus Malaliel. Aidura probably had more powerful individuals, but they were focused on things like protecting the border. And potentially grabbing the rest of the heroes. That wasn't a solved issue just yet.

For now we had to focus on what was in front of our face. And what would be raining divine lightning upon us.

-----

I stared at the ritual setup. "I don't understand how it's a sphere."

Riala shrugged. "A sphere is the easiest shape to form."

"But these pillars! They're almost tangenting the top hemisphere!" Shouldn't wards at least vaguely follow the shape of the structures they came from. "It should be a cylinder."

Riala made a face. "And take direct force from vertical attacks? Absolutely not." She was the one helping me with this because The King was busy. Also probably tired. He had been taking care of the majority of the power for the ritual before he had to fight off the divine lightning. Afterwards… he no longer felt quite at his peak.

It was probably some kind of taboo to mention that he had seemed a little bit tired, so I didn't say anything. Either way, we had to check out what we could do with enchantments and determine whether we needed Malaliel. It would be preferred to have her as a backup, but hopefully not necessary.

Apparently, Extra didn't have any equipment rated for defending against high ranking divine power available. Whether that meant we couldn't have it here in this world or they were still trying to figure out how to produce such a thing or that other branches wouldn't share with New Bay… it was difficult to say. I knew that New Bay was quite influential because it was one of the hotspots on Earth, but this wasn't the only thing going on in the solar system.

I didn't know if Mars had much in the way of weird extradimensional intrusions besides sometimes me, but they were heavily involved in the extraterrestrial stuff. Extramartian? Eh, the word was probably different between languages. Aliens from a different system. Many of them were not friendly and had to be appropriately handled.

I thought about space age materials and which ones might work… but ultimately I just needed to make what was already here have more to it. "If I'm understanding this right, it's mostly focused inward."

"That's right," Riala said. "We weren't expecting to be attacked. Obviously we'd notice an approaching army, and there aren't any people that can slip by our wards. They picked out all of you properly."

"... Did Fort Seire have anything like that?" I was just wondering how quickly we had been compromised.

"It would take too much energy. The wards here are mostly powered by the volcano."

"Ah…" I nodded. "That might actually make things easier. If I can draw on that, we probably just need a few materials to add on to hold the spell. Something divine, maybe?"

"That won't be easy," Riala said. "Maybe The Six have something. They have to catalyze their summoning somehow. But…"

"Did Malaliel drop any feathers when she got hit?" I asked, looking around. They could have easily blown away into a corner. A little divination should answer the question if there was anything around here.

I didn't need a fancy catalyst but I used my phone out of habit. A compass appeared on the screen, though it wasn't pointing towards anything magnetic.

"Aha!" There were some. Burnt around the edges, yes, but still quite angelic. "Hmm, this would be enough for once, but I don't think these are reusable." They'd be more of a consumable than a focus, which meant we'd need… thirty-five times this much.

"Hmm." Turning towards Riala's noise, she answered my implicit question. "Your magical tools are strange. I can't even feel anything from them until you activate them. Actually, there were some of the other things you had that I never felt."

"These ones aren't magic," I pointed out. "They wouldn't remain functional here for long, though." Not without a charging spell of some sort. That would be very specific, though. "Also, I mostly just used a spell. I used this," I held up my phone. "Because it's reflective."

"So you're saying… that you simply had a spell to find angel feathers."

"Don't be silly. I improvised." She didn't seem to believe me. "You've used flexible magic in front of me. I'm sure you could do it with practice."

She still seemed a bit doubtful. "If you say so. I don't mean to pry too much, but do you have multiple strong talents?"

This, I could answer… sort of. "The humans said I had an advanced spatial proficiency," I commented.

"Ah. Thus why you were interested?"

"Those are unrelated. I'm just aiming to improve in various fields. Anyway, I don't know if it was right."

"... why wouldn't it be?"

"Because," I said. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't reading talent. Or it's a huge coincidence. Do you happen to have better detection options? Because the humans couldn't even determine the kid's secondary proficiencies."

"Ah… that's probably on Zuresh," Riala commented. "It's likely they grew complacent with their mediocre summons over the past couple of generations. Some of the humans have better options. And of course, we do as well."

"Can you show me?" I asked. "I have a theory."

-----

"This will be the first time we've tested the talents of a cat. A feline," Riala corrected herself before Midnight could. "Why is Deepest Night going first?"

"Because it's a test," Midnight commented.

Midnight got it. Best to start with the weird option so that it couldn't adapt and repeat the same results after me. Would it do that? Probably not.

Rather than an orb all on its own, Midnight stood on a small platform that was connected to some sort of platform with a slate. It looked a lot like a display.

Riala activated it, and then…

"I can't see it," Midnight said. "What does it say?"

Riala gestured for me to step forward. "It's a bit rude to pry into people's personal details."

I wondered if this recorded the results so she could snoop later. It was fine if it did, because they already had seen most of the things I could do. Including Gate. I doubted I was going to defeat their king with the Knock spell.

Though maybe that would be good for sieges? I could probably unlock a portcullis, but it probably wouldn't lift it up. Based on that one time, though, I could open a bunch of nearby locks.

The readout was underwhelming, but informative.