Far too many wizards seem to take magic for granted. They proudly elevate themselves far above the muggles, grasping tightly to their magic as proof of their superiority while allowing their glorious gifts to wither and die on the vine. Each day at Hogwarts I looked upon the lax idiocy of my peers, how they never strived to better themselves and struggled with the simplest of spells, content to enjoy the fruits of other’s labor, and I wept at the waste of it all.
For the first seven years of my life, my family feared that I may be a squib, or close to it at the very least. I had one great display of accidental magic as a small child––shattering the wards on my toy box to summon my favorite toy dragon––and then not a single further instance until I was nearly eight years old. Only my quick mind, discipline, and curiosity saved me from getting shipped off to the estate in Spain where my family keeps our squibs, my mother always saying that I was far too clever a child to possibly be a squib.
Though my magic did eventually reveal itself once more, I never forgot my longing for it, the years spent playing with enchanted baubles and wandering the library filled with desperate hope and longing. It was what drove me to study long into the night and practice while my peers lounged and joked, utterly squandering the priceless gift their ancestors had given them. Magic was more than just a tool, it was a beautiful living thing filled with endless possibilities.
In Zatanna, I saw that same spark. She strived for excellence, to learn all there is to learn and achieve what was once thought impossible. She was brilliant and talented, beautiful and clever. I could only imagine how much more I could have accomplished at Hogwarts with a witch like her by my side.
After spending the morning and much of the afternoon learning logomancy from Zatanna, my next several days were very, very busy. Though I would have been happy to stay at Shadowcrest for a time learning about this new world and studying magic and my new Planeswalker abilities, Giovanni seemed very eager to get me out of his home. His associate provided me with a modest apartment in Gotham city and a very, very modest stipend for food and other necessities while I was getting acclimated to the new world and time period.
It was all far below the standards I was accustomed to, but I did not particularly plan to rely on the generosity of an unknown sponsor for long. I would deal with it for the time it took me to acquire superior accommodations, and not a moment longer.
I spent my first afternoon in the apartment using my wand and a large bucket of magically charged black ink that I’d duplicated as much as I could manage to paint the walls with a very generic but thorough runic warding scheme. It wasn’t something I would have ever used in my own world––using wards copied straight from a textbook was just asking a random bored sixth-year to rob you blind––but in this world it had the benefit of not being published in four centuries worth of school books.
It was far from perfect, in fact I would go so far as to say that it was the bare minimum I expected from somewhere I was willing to go to sleep, but it would have to do. Anything more would have to wait until I was no longer living in a building with other residents, and I doubted that Giovanni would look kindly on me rendering his colleague’s apartment unplottable.
Of course if Giovanni thought that removing me from his home would stop me from spending time with his daughter, he was sorely mistaken. It was July, the middle of the summer, and the muggle ‘school’––though I loathed to give it the same title as a proper place of learning such as Hogwarts, Durmstrang, or the other schools of magic large and small in my world––was not in session. Furthermore, Giovanni himself had many tasks that required his presence and attention. Thus, when combined with my ability to apparate and create portkeys (Zatanna was not yet capable enough to teleport herself reliably with logomancy), it was easy enough for us to spend our time together, which we did most days.
We spent some time at my apartment together, particularly while I was working on the wards. We also went out into the city a few times, usually under the cover of a muggle-repelling ward but occasionally without one active, particularly after Zatanna had finally convinced me to purchase a number of muggle garments for myself.
I was very reluctant to do so at first––even my least favorite robe was better than muggle rubbish I thought––but eventually she wore me down. Her willingness to search for new clothing for herself and model them in front of me certainly contributed to the number of outfits she successfully foisted onto me as well.
Zatanna seemed to delight in introducing me to muggle pastimes, inventions, and advancements that I’d never seen before. We visited a movie theater (apparently in my homeland they were called ‘cinemas’) and I did enjoy the movie that she selected for us. It was a rather delightful story called ‘I am Very Evil’ about a tall man with a large body and very skinny legs served by many thousands of house-elf like yellow creatures as they sought to steal the moon.
Zatanna told me it was meant to be a comedy, but unfortunately many of the jokes required context that I simply lacked. Still, it was entertaining, and sitting beside Zatanna in the dark theater with our hands clasped together and a bowl of delightfully salty and buttery popcorn balanced on our legs was an excellent experience. Zatanna laughed so hard she had to stop to lean against a wall when I critiqued the man’s plan after we had left the theater.
Another day, Zatanna and I used a few portkeys I’d prepared ahead of time to travel to Europe, where I confirmed for myself what I had already been told. Hogwarts was gone, as was Diagon Alley, the Ministry of Magic, Beauxbaton, and the ICW headquarters. I didn’t bother looking for any of the other, less notable locations, I just wanted to make sure for my own peace of mind. The trip was slightly disheartening for me––seeing nothing but grass and sheep where once Hogwarts had stood was painful in the extreme and made my heart ache––but at least Zatanna seemed to enjoy the small bits of Europe that we managed to explore.
However, the majority of our time together we spent back at Shadowcrest. It turned out that, for all that the manor possessed some immensely powerful wards, they were bound to the Zatara family and not to Giovanni directly. That didn’t stop the man from adding some of his own defenses on top of those the manor already possessed, but Zatanna’s permission was all I needed to apparate straight through the wards without them notifying her father of my presence.
The library of Shadowcrest was massive. It paled before the cavernous depths of the Hogwarts library, but it was very comparable to the Black library, more than I had expected from a world with far fewer wizards than my own.
I was also surprised to meet the library’s guardian and head librarian, Hassan the Mummy. He was rather different from the undead I was used to. For one, he was relatively intelligent, able to both read and write and answer some questions. Furthermore, as far as I could tell the magic that animated him wasn’t dark magic or anything like it. He was a creature formed of Order magic and bound to his undead vessel with logomancy.
Hassan’s presence sparked some purely theoretical debates about necromancy in this world that left me hopeful that perhaps I may be able to utilize some of Slaughter Swamp’s additional energy in this world without being shunned and hunted for my magic. Necromancy in this world still had a number of negative connotations and tended to be looked upon poorly by many mages, but there were cases where it was considered reasonable. Inferi were probably too obviously corpse-like and would come off as ‘villainous’ but there were other forms of necromancy that I might be able to get away with.
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I had two primary goals in Shadowcrest’s library. The first was familiarizing myself with the many, many threats this world posed to an unprepared wizard. In my homeworld, wizards had either subjugated, driven away, or systematically culled the majority of creatures that could endanger a trained wizard.
Sure there were places where it was still dangerous to go without a team, proper training, and equipment, but those were few and far between. It was reasonable to expect that you’d never run into a nundu, basilisk, acromantula, or any other XXXXX rated creatures unless you were stupid enough to go where they were still known to inhabit.
Here though, that was very much not the case. There were quite a few powerful beasts and beings that preyed on unsuspecting wizards and could even be dangerous or deadly to the highly trained, powerful, and prepared.
Zatanna had previously mentioned Chaos and Order magic, but now I learned about the Lords that existed within those forces. Kent, the older wizard who’d identified me as a Planeswalker, had apparently once served as the host for a powerful lord of Order named Nabu, and it was from him that he had learned much of his magic. Lords of Chaos sounded like an utter nightmare as well, beings with an innate command of magic and immense natural reserves.
Then there were demons, devils, and angels, all potentially dangerous extra dimensional creatures that dwelt in different parts of this Plane, along with countless other threats large and small.
The second goal was to learn about the magic of this world. In this, Zatanna was a huge help. She loved magic almost as much as I did and happily pointed me towards her favorite texts. Though she was primarily focused on her family’s logomancy, she knew a few tricks from other spellcasting systems and I managed to learn a few things here and there as well. I also learned more about those systems, their strengths and weaknesses and where they could be found.
When we weren’t studying together in the library, Zatanna and I explored the rest of Shadowcrest together. Zatanna loved her home and took great pride in showing me her favorite parts of it, though some she was unable to show me as they were protected by their own wards and wouldn’t allow me entry. Both the manor itself and the grounds around it were a wonderful reprieve from the stifling mundanity of Gotham.
On our sixth day exploring the manor, as we sat side by side on the banks of the small pond behind the building, I felt something move over the edge and a connection formed between me and the land beneath me. It came out of nowhere, startling me as a momentary flash of total awareness rolled over my mind, but then it passed and suddenly there was a second bond tethering me to the lands of this Plane.
Zatanna didn’t seem to notice anything. There was no real change to the land, no pulse of mana or hostile action from the earth or wards. I experimentally drew a single mote from the land and found it oddly pale, very much unlike the Black mana that Slaughter Swamp produced. This Mana was Colorless. Neutral. Neither particularly good nor bad for anything, and somewhat aligned with artifice from what I could tell.
I also got the sense that Shadowcrest could theoretically provide me with mana of any color, White, Blue, Black, Red, or Green, but that mana could only be used to cast or empower spells and never to create.
I had already known that there existed colors beyond just Black, but it was good to know exactly which ones. I’d already been aware of Green, Solomon Grundy could be summoned with either pure Black or a combination of Black and Green mana, but it was good to finally have complete knowledge about the types of mana.
Over the next few hours, I drew upon each color one by one, mentally examining them as they dissipated within me. Black was, as I’d expected, the color I felt most compatible with, followed by Blue and White. Blue resonated with my occlumency and the muggle repelling amulet hanging around my neck. White felt a lot like Zatanna’s logomancy and the magic I’d seen Kent use, and reminded me of the sensation of casting a protego spell.
Neither Green nor Red felt overly appropriate, though both had elements that did feel familiar to me. Green felt wild and verdant and smelled like the greenhouses I’d spent five years studying in at Hogwarts. Red reminded me slightly of fiendfyre, raw, vicious, and filled with devastating rage and emotion.
Through it all, Zatanna noticed nothing and Shadowcrest did not respond. Judging from Giovanni’s continued absence, he also had not detected anything through the manor’s wards. That was very reassuring––it seemed I did not need to overly worry about who controlled the land I bound. If the powerful wards here could not detect what I was doing, then I doubted many other locations had defenses that could.
In the mornings and evenings, and when Zatanna was otherwise occupied, I worked alone to hone and understand the abilities my nature as a Planeswalker granted me. I practiced drawing on and using Mana, both to empower my spells and to use the patterns I’d learned to summon Inferi and recreate my wand from nothingness.
From what I could tell, using Mana to empower a regular spell was highly wasteful. I had a feeling that it was possible to cast terrifyingly powerful spells purely using the colored Mana, but I had yet to find any such spells and I was not sure how I would go about creating one. Something to look into in the future.
To my frustration, I had yet to figure out how to use the key ability of any Planeswalker: our ability to move freely between planes. It wasn’t that I wanted to leave––this place was fascinating and I was unsure if I’d be able to return if I did so. It would be a shame to leave Zatanna behind if I disappeared after the amount of time I’d spent cultivating our relationship.
However, the ability to potentially escape any dangerous situation by simply leaving the world behind at will was too tempting to not at least spend an hour each day working on. The ability had already saved me once from a painful death or life behind bars, and I wanted to have it as an option if the worst should occur once more.
In what little spare time I had outside of those pursuits, I also began to focus on acquiring proper accommodations and a source of revenue to support myself. Were it not for Giovanni and his fellows within the Justice League, I probably would have just found a wealthy muggle to control into giving over his wealth. I could certainly put it to better use than some withered old crone.
I did not wish to make myself a problem they felt the need to deal with. Zatanna would probably also disapprove if I did so, just another reason to avoid it. Instead, I focused on other, less legally and morally dubious ways of depriving muggles of their wealth and land. I ran a few ideas past Zatanna, and then on her recommendation, a lawyer.
Some of my ideas were impractical, others illegal. A few however, held real promise. There was no status of secrecy that banned the sale of magical items to muggles. I was no enchanter, but I could manage to imbue a few spells into clothing or make an object virtually unbreakable. There were also no laws against what sort of wards could be put up and where, as well as using magic to heal injuries that muggle medicine struggled to treat.
It would take some time for things to get off the ground, but once they did my new lawyer assured me that I was going to make both of us extremely wealthy. I was fine with that, he seemed like a good muggle, very sharp. I normally wouldn’t trust a muggle to assist me in such a venture, but he proved perfectly willing to sign a magical contract I prepared for the occasion that would cause him a great deal of grief if he ever willingly broke my trust, so I considered it a worthy investment. Either things would work out and we would both profit, or he would fail and I would need to go find a new muggle. I doubted it would be hard––there were a lot of greedy muggles out there and I was certain a fair few were lawyers.
Nearly a week-and-a-half after our first meeting, I was once again invited to dinner at Shadowcrest. To my amusement, I left Shadowcrest behind, waited in my home for less than fifteen minutes, and then Giovanni teleported over to bring me back to the manor. Zatanna’s greeting thankfully didn’t give the game away, though she could barely suppress her laughter as she waxed about how long it had been since we’d seen one another.
As I’d been hoping, Kent Nelson, a man I’d been hoping to speak with again since our first meeting, was once again present. I had high hopes that he may have learned something more about Planeswalkers that I was as of yet unaware of, or perhaps he would be willing to teach me something of his magic. Hopefully I could make a good second impression on him