Chapter 8

Luz groaned, sat up, and rubbed her jaw, while Aiden and Thirsha knelt down next to her.

“Wow,” Luz whispered. “I ... swore I had just gotten hit in the face by- holy shit Aiden you have bat wings!” She said, excitedly, her language shifting almost at the same time she forgot any lingering pain from being whacked in the face and sent flying across the room. Aiden craned his head backwards and looked his wings over. He let out a little sigh.

“Yeah, I think I have wings,” he said.

“Well, you were getting my powers,” Thirsha said, sounding matter of fact about it. “Come on.”

She slid her arms around Luz and his waist, walked to the window, kicked it open with a grunt, then leaped out of the apartment building. Luz squealed in excitement, while Aiden realized that having two different modes of flying – Kryptonian style ‘just do whatever’ flight and big bat wings emerging from his shoulders flight – made for an extremely confusing place inside of his brain. And so, rather than sweeping the two girls into his arms, he simply allowed himself to be carried as Thirsha cut away from Dimension City and into the rolling hills beyond. There she swept down, landed, and placed both of them on the edge of a hill that looked out over a glittering forest.

Luz panted as she stepped away. “Haha! Flying!” She threw her arms up.

“You fly every day with me,” Aiden said.

“And I do this every day toooo!” She bounced on her feet.

Aiden had to admit she had a point.

Thirsha, meanwhile, had closed her wings against her back and stretched her arms behind her. The fact that she had not even bothered to get even slightly dressed again after sex didn’t seem that shocking. In even this relatively tame, temperate wilderness, her pale, long limbed body seemed to be utterly at ease. Her long, batlike ears twitched as she took in the sounds of the forest, her finger touching the bracelet around her wrist. “Now,” she said, simply. “If you have my powers, you need to understand how to use them.”

“Yeah,” Aiden said, trying to stand normally. Not like he was naked too. He didn’t manage to handle it as gracefully as Thirsha did.

“My abilities are to draw on the flows of mana through the world,” Thirsha said, looking outwards. “By focusing my will, I am able to turn that mana into a constructed entity – summoning the people of my land to my side. Unlike my siblings, I ... don’t use it to construct ... buildings. Beyond a few mystic wards and loadstones.” She nodded. “Loadstones being the most important part. Without a loadstone providing energy to you, your mana ceases to flow and you cannot make anything.”

“Got it,” Aiden said.

“Can he learn to make buildings?” Luz asked, curiously, the buttons on her top popping free as she slid her fingers down from her throat. She slipped her top off, exposing her cute, perky chest to the bright sunlight. At Aiden’s confused expression, she gave him a sheepish grin, then jiggled her tits, as if to say: Well? Duh?

... she had a point.

“I suppose,” Thirsha said, in the same way she would have responded to the question of ‘can I eat bugs.’ Actually, wait, no, Thirsha would be down to...

Before Aiden’s eyes, she plucked a bug off a nearby tree and popped it into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed before continuing: “Now, first, we need to acquire you some loadstones. The thing to look for is Kandarian ruins.”

She put her hand over her eyes, shading them. “There,” she said, pointing, then took to the air with a beat of her wings. Luz frowned as Aiden bundled her into his arms, then tried to take to the air in the classical Kryptonian style. This meant his wings dragged behind him awkwardly. He tried beating them, but that got his brain to stop flying Kryptonian style. He wobbled, trembled, then fell to the ground beside Thirsha, who had found a ... a ... a collection of standing stones, centered around a glowing crest set into the grassy ground like a cap over some ancient source of power.

“I need to fix these wings,” Aiden muttered as Thirsha gestured to the cap.

“This is the site of power,” she said. “There are others, but this will be your first.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Luz said, holding up her hands. She made a T with them, for time out. “Time out! Hold on! We’re in another pocket dimension entirely, separate from the fantasy world you’re from. So, like, these aren’t ruins! They’d just things that got build, like, a few months ago. And why would they even have magical energies or ley lines or anything? This place was thrown together by overworked bureaucrats! They didn’t know nothing about nothing!” She kicked the capstone. “This is just a prop! For the isekai fantasy!”

Thirsha shrugged.

“So, he’s just gonna make a useless prop!” Luz said.

“I mean, when I got Hyperman’s powers, I got actual super strength,” Aiden said. “Why shouldn’t this capstone work too?”

“ ... because ... it’s...” Luz frowned. “I guess!” She threw her hands up.

They all looked at the capstone. It throbbed gently.

The branches and brushes rustled nearby and a pair of men came jogging out of it, cutting across the edge of the clearing. Thirsha, Aiden, and Luz all looked over at them. One of them was a haggard looking man with thick sideburns and a bristling mustache, who’s lips were seemingly permanently affixed in a kind of half-grimace, half-rock star glam smile. He was dressed in a black jacket with a rumpled fedora, and was carrying a boombox in his hand. Behind him was a faintly concerned Asian man with a pencil mustache in a poofy bombardier’s jacket that had been bright orange when it had been new and was now faded to a dull orange.

“Detective, where-” the Asian man gasped. “-are we going?”

“Trust me,” the haggared man said, his voice sounding like if a lizard had gargled glass for this entire life. “I have paranatural abilities. This way!” He ducked back out of the clearing, not even noticing the three naked teenagers.

The Asian man glanced over. He frowned. “Is school out already?”

“Yeah!” Luz said, blushing brightly.

“Okay then,” he said, then shook his head.

“Kim! Kim! My senses! They’re tingling!” The haggared man shouted from a shockingly far distance, considering the appearance of his physical fitness. He could really jog. The man in the orange jacket sighed, then jogged after him.

“ ... who the FUCK were they!?” Aiden asked.

“They seemed nice,” Luz said, nodding.

Thirsha, turning away from where the two men had vanished, said: “Now, let us begin with some basic summoning practice...”

The actual mechanics of summoning was a lot more complex than Aiden would have expected. Luz hung on every single word as Thirsha detailed the correct gestures of the hand, the correct position of her fingers, the correct words that needed to be incanted, spoken, or woven from whole cloth to produce even the beginning of an effect. As she showed him the final gesture of the first pass, Aiden whistled softly. “This is ... harder than I thought it would be.”

“I did have an immortal lifespan to learn it, in my old world,” Thirsha said, her voice quiet. “Now. Show me your own take on the pass.”

Aiden cracked his knuckles. Breathed in. Ruffled his wings. He looked back over his shoulders, frowning. “Is there a way to get rid of the wings?” he asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Thirsha said, shrugging. “If you didn’t want wings, you should have gone for Lokken.”

Luz made a noise like a chewtoy being vigorously worked by a nymphomaniac in a nunnery.

“I’m not bi,” Aiden said.

“Or ... are you?” Luz put her finger to her temple, pointing at him. “You got my powers when you actualized me!”

“Being bisexual is not a superpower!” Aiden said.

“Or ... is it?” Luz wiggled her eyebrows.

“It isn’t!” Aiden said.

“It is most definitely not,” Thirsha agreed.

Aiden’s superhearing picked up the faint, raspy hiss of the mustachioed man: “I told you Kim! The homo-sexual underground.” Aiden slowly turned his head and saw that the two men were back, peeking from a nearby bush.

“Detective, that’s bisexual.” Kim whispered.

Thirsha prodded his temple with her long finger. “Cast the spell already.”

“I’m going to cast the spell once people stop distracting me,” Aiden said, shaking his head. “Stop trying to make me bi, Luz. That finger wiggling isn’t going to work.”

“Aww.” She dropped her hands.

“They have spells now!” The mustachioed man hissed. Aiden wasn’t sure if he was excited or appalled.

Aiden breathed in and centered himself. He began the first pass, whispering under his breath. To his utter shock, magic had a flavor, a texture, and a feeling that all merged at once. It came from within his breastbone, tugging outwards and spreading through his body like the inverse of anxiety – warm and tingling, rather than cold and numb. It tasted like the future on his tongue, teasing along the roof of his mouth and gumming into his teeth as he whispered through the increasing taste of magic in his mouth. It was like trying to talk through leafy greens and gum. But he kept it up, fingers twining and drawing the shapes again and again and again as he spoke the words ... and before him, purple haze began to gather out of thin air.

“Whoa!” Luz exclaimed.

The purple haze started out as indistinct – just a fog of particulates swirling around the capstone of mana. The particulates focused, growing more and more coherent with every second. Between passes, Aiden could see the shape of a heavy gemstone suspended in a complex matrix of wires and cables and leather lashes, connected to a skull of immense size that glowed with an inner light. When he said the last word and thrust out his palms, the entire lattice flashed with purple light and there, standing upon the capstone, was a full on loadstone. It throbbed with an inner light, like a vast, beating heart.

“Good job,” Thirsha said. “Do you feel magical energies coursing through your body?”

Aiden blinked. He did, actually. It was like a nest of snakes in his stomach. He put his hands on his belly. “I feel like I have indigestion,” he whispered.

“That’s normal,” Thirsha said. “You get used to it.”

“Oh great. Now you tell me.” Aiden closed his eyes, breathing shallowly as Luz hurried to his side, her hand on his shoulder. Aiden gave her a weak smile, while Thirsha began to instruct him on the process of his first summoning. The upside to this instruction was apparently it was involved enough and dull enough to get the two men who had been spying on them to withdraw – either out of boredom, confusion, or because the more responsible of the two had repeatedly pointed out that spying on naked teenagers wasn’t in their job description.

Once Thirsha was done, Aiden nodded. Then frowned.

“So, question,” he said. “When you say summon a Huntress...”

“Yes?” Thirsha asked.

“Is that ... a person?” He asked. “Like, am I making a person?”

Thirsha shook her head. “No. You’re summoning a construct that has the superficial externalities of a person.”

“Okay,” Aiden said. “So, in other words a ... P-zombie?”

“No, Lokken summons zombies,” Thirsha said.

“A P-zombie is someone who, outwardly, seems like a person but has no inner self-ness!” Luz said, leaning in helpfully. “The P short for philosophy! Philosophy zombie!”

Thirsha grunted. “How can you tell what is and isn’t a P-zombie, if you’re not the person you’re talking too?”

“That is what Aiden wanted to know.” Luz threw up her hands. “We kinda settled on people have to be treated like they’re not P-Zombies or else you go crazy.”

“Great,” Aiden said, putting his hands over his face, and sighing. “I just wanted some backup for when I go after the Chathurian, and now we’re in this exact same fucking position as last time! Making fake people to throw at bad guys!” He groaned into his palms. Thirsha’s ears drooped and she turned her head to look at the loadstone. Her hand touched it for a moment, then she drew her fingers back.

“ ... well, there’s my step-brother,” she said. “Kind of.”

“Step brother?” Aiden asked, sliding his hands away from his face.

“Can you have an ideological step-brother?” Thirsha muttered.

“Absolutely not,” Aiden said at the same time Luz said: “Probably!”

School had already let out by the time that Aiden, Thirsha and Luz had gotten dressed and arrived at the front of the campus. Students were streaming out and Aiden had to admit ... it was just a dizzying sight to see everyone going to his stupid isekia school. For every few faces he did recognize (and cringed mentally away from the thought of them being put into this world specifically for his libido) there were dozens that were just completely baffling, a testament to the mad dash that it had taken to construct this place.

“There he is,” Thirsha said, pointing her finger at the hissing spray of steam that was wafting above the crowd. Boys and girls parted and Aiden blinked as he saw that ... well, among the many different kinds of people attending the Academy Of the Multiverse, he supposed robots had to be counted. This robot stood at about six foot something, and was made of gleaming steel plates, rivited together around a roughly humanoid form. One arm ended in a blunt, slowly spinning tuning fork, while the other ended in a complex aparatus that looked as if it could unfold into several different kinds of deadly weapon. School colors of purple, gold and black had been painted on various highlights of the robot.

The steam powered robot, considering the puffs of white smoke emerging from the back.

To the left of the robot in question was a handsome, serious looking teenage boy with raven black hair and a slight frown, as if he was considering intently whatever the robot was saying – while to the right was a buxom, blond haired girl with large glasses, who was standing next to another, slightly less buxom, equally as blond girl. Also with glasses.

“And that’s why, at the end of the day, you can’t trust magitech,” the robot said, voice booming. “It always turns out to be less effective than just using magic, and magic cannot be trusted.”

“Hold up!” The first blond said. “You can’t just toss an entire, uh, magisteria like that.”

“I can and I will,” the robot said. It didn’t have a head that could shake – and ... Aiden’s brow furrowed as he realized that the head had a slitted visor. And the voice was coming from within the visor. That wasn’t a robot! That was a suit of steampunk Iron Man armor! “Magic is what led to the madness of Garicaus’ children. It must be spurned as a matter of course.”

“ ... wow, even your ideological siblings are huge dinks,” Luz whispered.

“HAH!” The second blond laughed. “Hah! Oh! Hah! Yeah. Sure. Only magicians would eeeever go mad. Yes. Absolutely. That’s definitely a thing.” She shook her head. “Meet half of the loonies I’ve had to run into.”

“That’s different, Agatha,” the armored man huffed.

Aiden started forward. “Uh, hello!” he said, waving. “Hi! It’s me, Aiden. Uh ... and you are...”

“Ag-” Agatha started.

“Jean!” The blond girl exclaimed, springing between her and him, taking his hand, her eyes bright and shining. “Wow! You’re buff and hunky. I mean, blue and ... hunky and...” She looked him up. And down. And up. And down again. “ ... and ... uh ... wow.”

“This is Jean Biggers,” Agatha said. “I’m Agatha Heterodox. That’s Giacamo. That’s Manny.”

“Hmm?” Giacamo lifted his head. “Oh! Aiden. Good day. I’m sorry, I was just considering the new construction possibility as provided to me by Manny.”

“That’s you?” Aiden asked, looking at the robot suited boy.

“I am Menalos, Twenty Seventh Sage of Creon,” Manny said. The chest of his armor couldn’t puff up, and yet, somehow, he managed to assume a posture of arrogant confidence. “I am head of the steampunk club.”

Jean giggled. “We technically do all kinds of technology. Aggy has really hooked on submotonic physics, which I picked up from...” She paused. “Where’s Whispers?”