Some people might have said that of the three heads on the inappropriately sized necks, the wolf or bat heads were the dangerous ones. I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d seen angry ducks before, and I did not want to make the mistake of underestimating it. That neck was also longer than the others.
A good Chain Lightning might have been my response, but that would use up most of my remaining mana. “Midnight, split a Chain Lightning with me.” With the spells we had both used, he should have enough mana left for Alter Portal at full power, same as me.
“Got it,” Midnight said, gathering his six-and-a-half mana as I did the same. I continued down the slope, angling away from the bridge and the portal under it as Strife flung quills at the various heads poking out of the portal. Fortunately, the full thing couldn’t fit through just yet… but the portal seemed to be expanding slightly as it pushed against it.
The first target was the duck head. Among other things, it was the least damaged, having avoided most of the quills from Strife- or deflected them with its bill. It was also the closest to us physically, with the three heads being arranged perpendicular to the path beneath the bridge as they came out of the portal. Lightning arced through the air, changing its course as I directed it to reach my target. It struck the head pretty much dead on one side, and I pushed it through towards the bat head, and then finally the wolf.
There were horrible sounds that came from the mouths of the creature(s). I still couldn’t tell if the heads were connected or not, and I wasn’t going to get to such an angle. Regardless, none of the sounds fit natural creatures- not that I expected something with a duck head and random scales on its neck to be natural. And the tentacles in the bat’s ears were probably not normal either.
“Get behind the portal!” I called.
Midnight didn’t need to acknowledge that, he just needed to hold on as I did that. The duck head tried to bite at us, but it was only capable of bending a bit further than ninety degrees to the side as it pressed against the edge of the portal. Which was… too far, really. I’d kind of been counting on them following some rules of anatomy. Soon we were placed between the slope of the bridge and the portal, with about five feet of standing room.
Strife had joined us, but she bore a look of concern. “I will not be able to assault the monsters from here.”
“Same for them, right?” I asked. Fortunately the portal did have a back side that was not spewing out more Scouring. “Also, you can totally toss some spines around that,” I gestured to the vaguely visible flailing heads. “Or stab the little guys crawling around towards us.” Too bad the three large heads didn’t fully block the gap. “We’re going to close this portal.”
It had worked pretty well last time something I didn’t want to fight was coming through one of these portals. I just hoped they hadn’t learned from the experience. I had no idea how intelligent and cooperative The Scouring were.
They did seem to have the ability to physically bully the portal wider, though hopefully that had something to do with their supernatural presence. With Midnight and myself, we should be able to handle it. I began to crack skulls, some of which weren’t in the correct place at all, as beasts continued to crawl around the edge of the portal.
With two people using Alter Portal, we should have been pretty effective… but I could feel we were wrestling against the three heads. We did manage to visibly stop the growth and shave off a few inches almost right away.
Long necks turned at unnatural angles, eyes from the heads looking towards us as they continued to howl in pain and anger. They actually managed to get parts of them over the line of the portal, past the ninety degree angle, and I actually had to smack away the wolf head with my staff and take a half step back to stay out of its reach. The good news about that was that Strife was able to better target them, and they were getting a whole lot of magical rainbow quills in them.
She continued her habit of targeting the eyes. A bit odd for someone with an eyepatch. An eyepatch that she didn’t need, so that probably changed the circumstances significantly. Her depth perception seemed fine enough regardless. Eyes were weak, and there were somewhere around ten of them between the three heads.
I kicked away some sort of snake as I twisted the edges of the portal, trying to force it to close even as I struggled against the three heads. Only two of them could effectively push against the edges of the portal at once, but the third was caught in the middle and provided a sort of stabilizing force as the portal shrunk to around eight feet.
I remembered some fancy tricks from before. I’d closed off portals from the center, and that had worked fairly well. The problem was that there was a whole bat head with a horrifyingly long neck there.
… Was that a problem? I didn’t care what happened to it. And even if I needed an ‘empty’ location to begin my work, there should at least be the inside of its throat. “Hold the outside steady!” I warned Midnight.
Then I mentally yanked from the middle. I was careful not to go beyond my limits… though exactly which limits I was uncertain. I brushed against the edge of consciousness as my mana drained to near empty. I felt something hit the outside of the middle section of the portal, but it was far less durable than the rest of the bat. It hung for a moment and then… the portal snapped outward.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The two outer necks were caught on the edges of the remaining ring for a moment before their efforts were hindered by a rapid flurry of impalements by Strife. Probably not enough to kill them even with The Scouring’s seeming magic weakness, but sufficient.
The necks lost a bit of supernatural tension, and the two sides of the portal decided that they were finally willing to move closer together, with the obvious results of that. I wondered if the magical girls here in Earth #2 needed blood cleaning services… since their enemies rapidly dissolved into horrifying smoke it would only be for their own blood, though.
I continued to whack the remaining beasts that were biting and clawing at me. Stoneskin was good, but they’d be through it quickly if I just let them. I didn’t have much magic left, but Strife rather efficiently impaled most of those that remained, including those that I had wounded but not managed to kill.
“Well,” I said. “I’m fully out of mana. I can help bash anything left on the bridge if Fried Shrimp hasn’t annihilated the rest of them, but I can’t really get you guys back to that other battle.”
I wanted more mana. Was going into the negatives even that bad? I felt the presence of Midnight on my shoulder, and restrained myself from further considering that path. If I was going to break magic, it wasn’t going to be today. Especially not when we were… mostly victorious.
After we climbed back up the slope, I helped take out easy targets near the back, and Midnight sniped some with his suit’s lasers. As predicted, most of the enemies had been turned to ash. Well, or at least burned to death before the rest of the Scouring thing happened, whatever that was.
“Excellent job, Mage,” said Shield. “Finding this portal and getting us here quickly likely saved many lives. However, some fiends have probably gone into the surrounding area. Could you help us track them down?”
“Only in mundane fashions,” I said. “I have a pretty decent supernatural sense, but no mana left.” I focused on what was going on around us. The strongest magic was in the magical girls, then my staff, then the lingering effects of defensive magic on myself and Midnight. More distantly I sensed what I was certain was the other magical girls finishing their battle. “I think there might be a few that way?” I pointed down the street. “But I can’t guarantee that, or that it’s all of them.”
“We’ll split up,” Fried Shrimp said. “Guide Strife there, we’ll check for any others.”
Wand nodded. “Any injuries?”
I looked at myself. “A few punctures.” A wave of her wand and the skin was sealed up with pink magic. I wouldn’t say I was fully healed, but not bleeding was good. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll also split off and listen for any trouble. I can take a handful of the weaklings,” she explained.
That shouldn’t be an issue. There at least wasn’t anything particularly powerful or in large concentrations.
We ran off with Strife towards what I had sensed, and there were indeed a few monsters terrorizing civilians. One woman tripped as she was running. Strife tossed a quill like a javelin, accurately striking her target from afar. Her subsequent attacks were slightly less accurate, but the primary target had been taken out and Midnight helped blast some of the others while the woman scrambled to her feet.
“Thank you!” she yelled as she continued to run away. Not a useless civilian, just an unfortunate one.
We were faster, and we caught the last few beasts, one of which was just a lump of slimy which left a weird gray trail on the ground. Maybe we could have followed that, but I hadn’t noticed it from afar.
-----
Everything quickly calmed down, and we met up at the nearest safehouse with the other magical girls. Since I was fully out of mana, I was actively absorbing more. It was worth the effort, though it wasn’t a perfect meditation environment. After ten minutes or so I noticed something interesting. “Hey, Midnight. The mana here feels a bit…”
He waited for me to say what I was going to, but it would be leading him to an answer, and I wanted to know if he thought the same or if it was just in my head. Just indicating something was weird might be too much, but he came to the same conclusion. “Stronger, isn’t it?”
“Right?” I said. “It’s still lower than the current New Bay, but it was pretty close to standard, wasn’t it? Maybe a bit above?”
“Certainly,” Midnight agreed. “I’ll add it to the log.”
“... That’s a great idea.” I had a number of data points that had made it into writing of some form that I had referenced a few times, but if we intentionally kept observations we could be more accurate in the long run. “Oh, there was something else.”
“Those beasts were… physically tearing open the portal.”
“Metaphysically, maybe?” I shrugged. Normally, that meant something different. Superphysically? Whatever. “But that wasn’t what I meant. When I was looking for the portal… something pushed away my Scrying. Or someone. Not from the portal but from… them, presumably.”
“That is odd,” Midnight said.
“Right? I guess I could have accidentally locked onto a magical girl. It’s somewhat instinctive to resist Scrying, though it’s usually not that effective. That’s why we have Nondetection active all the time.” It lasted pretty much all day, so it didn’t need Contingency or anything. It kept most of its potency until the very end when it rapidly unraveled. Which was why it was odd that it was at less than half strength now. “Midnight, how’s your Nondetection?”
I had a pretty accurate judgement of the strength of effects on others, but Midnight should be better at judging his personally. Or at least similarly effective.
“I think it’s all normal?” he tilted his head. “Do you think there’s something wrong with it?”
“Mine’s half depleted.”
“Do you think one of those beasts ate magical effects?”
That was… actually a pretty good possibility. However… “I still have some flecks of Stoneskin active. They were clawing pretty aggressively, so if it was being directly weakened I think I would have gotten more than a few punctures.” Or at least my suit would have. “I think… it’s something else.”
“But what?” Midnight asked.
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?” I just had to figure out how to answer it. I’d probably need mana no matter what.
