Whoever decided that urgent situations should make people feel bad should be fired. Because they over tuned it so much that I was getting close to nonfunctional instead of focused.

  Midnight was gone and I had been chained to a medical bed. Not because the Power Brigade was going to stop me from saving Midnight, but because they were stopping me from killing myself in the attempt.

  Pretty much nobody I wanted was available to help. That was no fault of theirs- in New Bay, villains were a dime a dozen- and dimes weren’t even worth anything these days. Great Girl was fighting Mummy Man, who tended to win battles by either not dying or swarming people with hordes of zombies. So far, nobody had proven that they were from actual people, but he couldn’t die and he also didn’t stay in captivity well.

  Shockwave had finished a long shift sometime during the ten hours I was knocked out, then I’d been shackled to the bed for a few more hours reading. But ultimately it meant that they weren’t going to be active for a while. Even speedsters- or perhaps especially speedsters- needed rest.

  Most of my first squad was also occupied, and also the Portal Squad. Honey Badger was the only one I could get. Twirl and Bolster would be available in a couple hours- but I didn’t feel like I had hours. Zeb was out of state on a squirrel hunt.

  But at least I had Kick. Cyborg ex-member of the Mod Squad, he had less experience with Flasher than Iron Shell, but he had been undergoing improvements that might help.

  I wasn’t enthusiastic about running off to another plane with a small squad again, based on what had happened with Mided, but I wasn’t going to not do that if I could find Midnight. So I had the two of them which might become one of them if we went to the wrong place.

  I had complaints. “How did they get Flasher there?”

  I didn’t expect anyone to have answers.

  Kick frowned. “Why couldn’t he be there? I mean, if someone could make portals or whatever.”

  Honey Badger answered that. Which was good, because I didn’t want to do many things besides complain. Even if it didn’t help.

  “That dimension is sealed off from people who don’t have matching powers,” he explained. “So he shouldn’t be able to get there.”

  “Well…” Kick shrugged. “Maybe he got portal powers.”

  I grimaced. “No. I refuse. He was already so much trouble. Besides, power exclusivity…”

  “Isn’t absolute,” Kick reminded me. “It would be extremely unlikely, though. More probably, he just got an upgrade. One that says he’s magic.”

  “How?” I asked. “Who could even do that?”

  “Someone with access to magic and tech, I guess,” Kick shrugged.

  In my current state, I didn’t want to spend so long on even such important speculation as that. But I had to do something on the elevator ride down. Despite my significant failures, Scrying was still the best option. I couldn’t feel the bond with Midnight right now, but I had a bunch of Midnight’s hair from around his apartment and several cans of his favorite tuna.

  Maybe it was crazy, but I was grasping for straws. Anything that could make a connection. I was so close to going to Celmoth and grabbing his family, but that would take more than half of my mana. Even if I found Midnight after that, I wouldn’t be able to do anything after making a Gate. Aside from shooting people with a gun.

  My staff was gone. It was unique, made by Vilhelmiina in the way only tech supers could. Asking them to replicate things like that was bound to be expensive if it was even possible. And I didn’t have the important core material which had given it the dispelling properties.

  Comparatively, I wasn’t upset at all to lose it- except that it would have helped retrieve Midnight. In normal circumstances, I’m certain it would have been a serious emotional blow but it was so insignificant in comparison.

  Some people might have thought I was calm. That was just because moving my face took too much emotional strain.

  As of late, I was under the impression that magic liked excess. It seemed to work better to those who had a certain sort of flair. Or I could be making it up. Either way, I arranged the cans of tuna and the baggy full of hair atop the Scrying cube.

  I gathered mana for Scrying. I kept my pace slow and steady. I was aiming for 11 mana. Simple. I’d naturally hit that point in a moment, and I would get the most potent version of Scrying I could manage.

  For some reason, it felt like it was taking slightly longer than normal to resolve into a spell.

  “Hey, uh-” Honey Badger was saying something.

  I should have gathered something like twice as much mana as I was intending by now. Maybe I’d caused lingering damage? Nothing hurt though, which was weird. Normally when I screwed myself up with magic it hurt.

  Oh, there it was. Some part of me said I’d gathered 23 mana- my fatigue limit. Another part of me said that pain was bad and I should hit the brakes. A third part of me shook its head and tried to explain that actually, I hadn’t used that amount of mana at all. Because I couldn’t use more than 11. And a fourth part said that I was off on my mana amount… but in the other direction.

  The brakes part won, I think. Or maybe I properly hit my fatigue limit. Either way, I felt mana leaking out of me as I toppled forward. My vision went black before I hit the corner of the Scrying cube.

  “Hey! Hey, Mage!”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Honey Badger was shaking me. You weren’t supposed to shake people with concussions. But I probably didn’t have one, so maybe it was fine. My head hurt.

  “Hmmn?” My eyes focused on him. “Hey.”

  “What the hell was that, man?”

  “I think my magic might be broken. It didn't work.”

  “Uh huh. So, Mage. You didn’t happen to suddenly double in level, did you?”

  “Nah, I just got a single extra,” I said. It didn’t make me happy.

  “I’m not the most accurate judge of mana amounts,” he said. “But you used like, 40 mana.”

  I looked at my hand. I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe it was the easiest part of me to look at as I held it up. “No way.” It couldn’t have been nearly at much. “Maybe 5?” 10. Some weird part of me said 10. Unlike the barbarian next to me, I was accurate at judging mana. How could I be off by 100%?

  “I think you recaptured most of it?” he frowned. He was still holding me upright by my shoulders. “But you definitely gathered way more.”

  Kick’s face appeared in front of me. “Listen… I know things are stressful right now but if you rest more-”

  I stood up under my own power. “I’m fine. I should be fine. It’s magic that’s broken. Not me.” Maybe at the time I believed that. And it wasn’t entirely incorrect.

  Honey Badger grabbed my tusks to angle my face down. I looked directly into his eyes. “Fine. One more attempt. But if anything funny happens, you’re stopping.”

  Whatever happened, it wasn’t going to be funny. But I also wasn’t going to die. Because then I couldn’t save Midnight. I gathered mana.

  11? Already? Maybe I had broken my mana sensing, because it didn’t stop. I did, however, take tighter hold of my mana gathering process. If it didn’t stop on its own, I needed to tell it when to do that. I called upon the correct proportion of my maximum mana. 11. 22.

  I stopped. “Come on! Become a spell!”

  Normally it just happened. But I had to make it. I wanted Scrying. I got… something.

  There were no mists. Maybe there should have been, because the barrage of lights and colors was anything but pleasant. I was pretty sure I saw the hells, which weren’t the most visually disturbing part of things.

  I jumped when one of the cans of tuna exploded, flames bursting upward. But I held onto the spell. It was both easier and harder than before. Nothing was right. Then again, if it had been I wouldn't have to look for Midnight.

  Bits of hair- technically fur- began to float. A second can melted, including the insides. I saw aluminum goop around like mercury, which was fine. It was much more concerning that the tuna became liquid.

  Was I going to have to clean that up?

  Midnight. I looked into his eyes. Where was he? I zoomed outward. I couldn’t be distracted by the fact that I could see too far. I needed something. Strange architecture. Orcs, through a wall. Then, a dog. Several dogs.

  The image collapsed far before ten minutes were up. I reached out to try to hold onto it somehow, but it was fully gone before I even had a response.

  “What was up with those dogs?” Kick asked.

  I didn’t answer, because I was already doing something.

  My brain was, quite possibly, already broken. I forgot important things like that magic doesn’t work that way. And that I couldn’t open a portal here. And how much mana it was supposed to take.

  Near my limit. So I stopped slightly before it. It refused to open.

  What was it even supposed to look like?

  An oval. My hand traced a shape in the air, crouching down to the floor and then standing to my full height and reaching above my head. For some of the hours I’d been shackled to the medical bed I only read Dimensional Magic, because my body hadn’t wanted to sleep after ten hours of forced unconsciousness.

  It might also have been from Portal Theory, and I was just understanding it now. Maybe even better would have been chalk on a wall.

  The edges were precisely where I had traced… which was not as smooth of a line as I had thought. But it should go directly to Midnight… except it didn’t open on the other end. I hadn’t used all of the mana I’d gathered, though. Half to open this end… it should be enough to connect to the other end. I couldn’t call upon the bond, but I knew the spot. Lingering traces of magic still connected to it.

  “Let. Me. Through.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was talking to barriers of some sort, or reality itself. Either way, I pushed my arm through the portal, feeling a sudden change in temperature. I swiped it down, tearing open the area.

  Midnight. I stepped through.

  “Should we actually-” Honey Badger commented. “Eh, whatever. Come on dude.”

  We stepped into a room filled with all sorts of arcane tech. Which was a funny thing to say, but that was how words worked. And it wasn’t entirely wrong, either. Some of it had mana flowing through it. And the rest was tech I didn’t understand.

  Alarms blared.

  Kick was already breaking things. I wanted to get Midnight disconnected safely, and the only thing I could think of that would help was to stop the weird magic stuff.

  I gathered far too much mana for a Dispel. I wasn’t concerned about going into negative mana, because I was already broken and some of the stuff might explode if I didn’t stop it.

  Honey Badger pulled a bat off his back and transformed it into an axe. All of the Portal Squad were getting cool weapons. I missed my staff exactly right now because I wanted to dispel things.

  I shoved my arm into the middle of the majority of the magic stuff, and told it to go away. Just… anywhere else.

  And it did. Specifically, it rushed back along the wires and tubes carrying it, crashing into what was already there and causing numerous explosions around the edge of the room.

  I was vaguely aware that the portal had closed. My magic didn’t have any stability to it. But it didn’t matter, because it was doing things.

  Our barbarian chopped. I pulled Midnight out of a mess of wires. He seemed barely conscious. Probably drugged. And magicked.

  “Hey buddy. We’re getting out of here.”

  Just not through a Gate. Because either interpretation of mana I had in my mind indicated that I didn’t have enough, not if there were spatial restrictions in place.

  “This seems important,” Kick commented, gesturing to a shiny puddle of some sort contained in a glass cage. He smashed it.

  It was good to have proactive allies in times like this. I needed that.

  “Oh, that’s Midnight’s suit,” I realized. I held him towards it… and it jumped onto him.

  Cool. I heard yelling. And barking.

  “We have to go! Gather around me! Hold on!”

  Teleport? I both did and didn’t have enough mana for that. Dimension Door it was. I didn’t need to go that far.

  I gathered exactly enough/twice what I should have. What if we were underground? Normally, I shouldn’t end up inside things, but now-

  We went up at an angle. Then we were in the air. High enough I might have time to calculate if I had enough mana left for a Multicasting of fly.