Young Justice: Poseidonis
September 24th, 2010
When I had said goodbye to Zatanna last week on Saturday night, my first instinct was that it was time to go. Not back home, but away. Out into the greater multiverse. Not for long of course, just a quick jaunt to somewhere new and then back. Find some books, meet some interesting people, perhaps learn some new magic, and then head home. I wanted to be back next week to see Zatanna again, after all.
The allure of new knowledge, new secrets, and new treasures to uncover was almost hypnotic in its intensity. I’d visited just one plane so far, outside of this world where I was starting to build a new home for myself, and it had been a true treasure trove. Aura, huntsmen and grimm Blueprints, a new magic system, two additional lands, and even the potential for a unique power born from my very soul in the future. I’d learned and gained so much in just a single short trip. Even if my next journey was only half as profitable as the one to Remnant, I would consider it a smashing success.
I was half-packed and getting ready to send Zatanna a message about how long I expected to be gone for when I finally sat down and actually thought about what I was about to do. It was walking past my little training room to see Glynda and Raven sparring that made me pause. The two woman were a blur as they exchanged blows, the occasional sparks of color filling the air when someone sneaked in a hit that skittered off their partners aura.
I watched them for several long moments. The way they moved. The way their weapons cut through the air. The way that magically reinforced stone chipped when Glynda struck it with her riding crop and the thin lines left on the walls and floor by Raven’s blade.
For just a moment, I considered a different way that my first encounter with Glynda and her students could have gone. Two strangers emerging from the forest at a too convenient moment. Me, surrounded by a dozen armed huntsmen trainees with unlocked auras and the skills to use their weapons. If Glynda had decided that I was a threat…
Well, I hadn’t known anything about aura yet. How fast it let you move and how hard even a student could hit. Nor semblances, for that matter. How any one of them could have pulled out a trick I’d never known to expect and hadn’t prepared for.
Things could have ended very poorly.
I felt for my aura. It was slow to respond and hard to control, like trying to grab a handful of sand. I could manipulate it somewhat, but I was far, far from the ease with which my new summons were using it.
I looked down at the bag in my hands, then back into the training room. I’d done some work with my aura since I’d returned from Remnant, but not that much. I’d also only scratched the surface of what I could do with Ozpin’s curious form of magic, barely had a chance to study the one Grimm whose Blueprint I could already manifest, and not even started experimenting with the magic I gained from watching Blake use her semblance.
…perhaps it was better to put things off a little longer. I itched to travel, yearned for the secrets of another world, but at the same time, I was in control, not my urges. I had barely digested the gains of one trip, and here I was already preparing for the next. There was hunger for knowledge, and then there was reckless glory seeking. I was no Ravenclaw, but I certainly did fall into the first camp. The second…it was something I would rather avoid all together.
What harm would an extra week do? Perhaps a few weeks? None, really. The multiverse wasn’t going anywhere near as I could tell. But if a week of extra training ensured that if something happened, I’d be fast enough to get away? That was priceless.
And thus began one of the busiest and most exhausting weeks of my life. Glynda was absolutely thrilled when I approached her for help. She’d apparently been getting rather bored cooped up in my home, and even requesting that she help me get my muggle affairs in order and introducing her to my lawyer the previous week didn’t keep her nearly as busy as I would have expected.
There was no denying that Glynda was a good teacher. She not only had a deep understanding of aura and how to apply it to combat, but also more than a decade of experience training young huntsmen and huntresses. She’d turned hundreds of talented beginners and barely trained idiots into elite, lethal fighters, and that experience showed. She often knew problems I would have before I came across them, knew just the right way of explaining concepts, and generally proved her worth as an instructor time and time again.
However, she was also a ruthless taskmaster, a perfectionist, and happy to drive me exactly as far as I was willing and capable of going and not an inch less. Sure I could have stopped at any moment, but I didn’t want to. There was something thrilling about getting pushed to my limits and the results spoke for themselves. The short sessions we’d had back on Remnant had been helpful, but there was a big difference between focusing on a specific skill and briefly trying something out.
Five days in a row I went to bed sore in places I didn’t know could be sore, bruised, and exhausted. Each morning I woke up rested and healed, my aura taking care of such minor issues in a single night of sleep and leaving me all the better for it. I could feel myself improving each day, and Glynda seemed genuinely impressed and slightly shocked by my rapid growth. I attributed that to my Spark. Aura was just another type of magic, after all, and I’d already discovered that becoming a planeswalker had given me an innate talent for all sorts of magic that I had lacked during my time at Hogwarts.
Of course, while our primary focus was training my aura, that was not the only thing we did. For one, I needed time to let my aura recharge between lessons. Furthermore, aura was far from the only tool in my arsenal and I would never truly fight like a huntsman. My abilities and needs were simply too different from those that existed on Remnant.
Fortunately, Glynda was adaptable. She had never taught a proper wizard before, but she had seen thousands of Semblances throughout her life and knew how to teach students to properly utilize their unique skills in combat. My magic was much more flexible than even the most versatile of Semblances, but some amount of the knowledge carried over.
By the end of the first day, I had realized that my little training room was far from sufficient for our needs. I needed more space to practice, preferably in a space I didn’t mind thoroughly damaging and somewhere random people would not get caught up in our training. Thankfully, Kent and Dr. Fate were happy to oblige me, and so Glynda, Raven, Blake, and I spent much of the next five days in several of the Tower’s myriad ‘natural’ landscapes.
After some discussion with the experienced huntresses and some input from Kent, we ended up focusing on two distinct aspects of aura. First of all was speed. It was something I’d noticed several times now and thought little of at first, but having seen the blistering pace at which huntsmen and even some people on this world fought, I knew that I needed to be faster. No amount of magic would save me if I never had a chance to cast a spell before there was already a blade buried in my skull.
I did not need to hit like a huntsman, but moving like one could only be a benefit. There was an old adage in dueling circles back home that the most important spell wasn’t the most powerful or esoteric, but rather the one that hit. Even a great wizard could be taken by surprise by an instantly cast stunner or disarming charm.
Second, and the aspect of our training that I personally prioritized, was durability. While I hoped to primarily protect myself with charms and enchantments, aura was my last line of defense. As long as I wasn’t taken out before I could react, I could always either apparate or planeswalk away from danger. Thus, I needed to get aura to a state where I could keep a shield permanently active rather than requiring constant thought to maintain.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Of course that was not all we practiced, but it made up a majority of what I worked on with Glynda. Self healing, sensory improvements, and all sorts of other aura skills were fascinating, but those could wait. My safety came first. It was why I’d prioritized mastering shield charms like protego horribilis before focusing on offensive spells.
In my limited free time, I did not slack off either. I read through all the books of magic Ozpin gave me and slowly began to move beyond the basics he’d shown me and onto more advanced and fascinating magics. I also made sure to keep up with my practice of hydromancy, logomancy, and Order magic, not devoting much time to any of the three but ensuring that my current level of skill did not lapse.
Furthermore, I continued to work on other projects as well. I summoned a pair of Geists and, after ascertaining that I could both directly control and give them long-term commands, I began to incorporate the Grimm into the defenses of my new home. There was already a small army of inferi hidden in expanded rooms throughout the building, but inferi were not subtle in the least.
Meanwhile, the geists came with the ability to hide in plain sight. Taking inspiration from the tomb where I’d first found them, I set up two ‘decorative’ sets of armor, one in the library and one in the entryway. Instead of relying on the durability of simple metal however, I enchanted each piece of metal with a number of powerful protective spells, than applied a number of powerful and insidious curses to their weapons.
By the time I was done with them, I’d transformed two creatures that Blake could have dispatched with a single blow into genuinely dangerous foes. I had to swiftly dispel and resummon the young faunus when one of the geists nicked her with his sword and the Black-mana enhanced withering curse I’d imbued into the blade immediately went to work.
Thankfully her newly recreated body was fully intact as I’d expected it would be, but I’d gotten worryingly close to finding out what happened to a legendary Blueprint if the summon in question died. I was pretty sure it would be nothing good, so I was glad to leave that experiment for a later date.
I also finally tested out the spell I’d gained by observing Blake’s semblance in action. Blake called her semblance Shadow, and it was both powerful and versatile, but also limited. She could summon fragile clones of herself that pushed her away as they appeared. She was rather good at utilizing her semblance, able to maneuver rapidly by creating clones to push her away in various directions, create clones to extend her reach or take a hit, and could apparently use dust to imbue the clones with elemental abilities of their own.
However, while her clones looked like her, they ultimately were just shadows, as the name implied. They did what Blake intended them to do when they were created, then vanished a moment later. They had no minds, no wills, and only ever existed for a few moments before vanishing as quickly as they’d appeared
My ‘copy’ was called ‘Something from Shadow’ and, in some ways, functioned much like Blake’s ability. It created short lived, fragile clones. In others however, it was incredibly different. For one, I could use it on more than just myself. Both my other summons and even the real Kent proved to be valid targets, though the clones always appeared within a few feet of me instead of next to the person I was copying.
Furthermore, my copies weren’t just shadows. Instead, they were more like a limited version of my more permanent summons. I could still give them limited instructions as I created them, but they had a level of creativity that Blake’s shadows lacked. For instance, if I simply commanded a copy of myself to attack something, it wouldn’t just try to punch or stab the target. They could cast spells and even had enough time to apparate if need be. Similarly, my short lived copy of Blake actually spawned a half-dozen clones of its own in the handful of seconds before it vanished.
It was a fascinating and versatile ability, easily worth the two mana it required to cast. It certainly wasn’t always optimal, but it was a very, very valuable tool to add to my arsenal. I was certain I’d be finding new uses for it for a long time yet, and I could already see plenty of times it could come in handy.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was mentally and physically exhausted, but also absolutely thrilled by my progress. On Sunday, Blake and I had sparred five times and she’d had me on the back foot the entire time. She was fast enough to dance out of the way of spells with a visible component, able to close the distance between us in an instant, and her accursed clones could appear inside my shield charm.
On Friday morning, I soundly defeated the girl seven times in a row without trouble. She was still slightly faster than I was, but only slightly, and even without a supersensory charm I could keep track of her rapid movements.
We only trained for a few hours on Friday before I called it a day, not wanting to be completely dead on my feet when I met up with Zatanna in the evening. I headed back to the Pub––I really needed to think of a proper name for my home soon or else that one was going to stick––and spent a few hours curled up in an armchair with a pile of books and a pot of tea.
By the time that Zatanna got out of school and headed down to Poseidonis, I was already in our room at the Conservatory waiting for her to arrive. I was excited to see her. I’d been too tired to exchange more than a few short messages with her each day and was greatly looking forward to seeing her again. I really hoped that Giovanni would relax his guard soon, because I was getting very, very tired of being separated from the girl I was courting for so much of each week.
I heard the door click open and Zatanna stepped into the room, still dressed in her school uniform. I stood up, my arms open to catch her, but instead of rushing towards me, Zatanna paused when she saw me.
She took a deep breath and took her backpack off, setting it down by the door. She licked her lips, looked down at herself, then looked up at me. “Hey Hydrys,” she said softly.
Something was wrong. “Hey Zee,” I answered, smiling warmly. “No hug? I’ve missed you.”
She bit her lip, then walked over to me and wrapped her arms around my chest, allowing me to pull her into a hug. Her body felt stiff and the way she was holding me was all wrong. Too loose. Too hesitant. I tried to lean down for a kiss but she buried her face in the crook of my neck,
“Zatanna?” I asked softly. Aura rippled invisibly over my skin, ready to catch a blow I really hoped wouldn’t come. Had someone hurt her? Blackmailed her? Bewitched her?
I licked my suddenly dry lips. If someone had touched so much as a hair on Zatanna’s head, they would rue the day they considered crossing me. I would not take such an insult lightly. Perhaps she was not a Black by name, not yet, but no one touched my family and lived to regret it. We Blacks knew how to hold a grudge and never forgot an enemy. History was littered with the corpses of those who dared to act against us, and I was ready and willing to add as many bodies to that mountain as was needed to get the point across.
“What’s wrong? Talk to me, Zatanna.”
Zatanna mumbled something into my shirt but I couldn’t make out her words.
“What was that?” I asked softly, “I’m sorry Zee, I couldn’t hear you.”
She pulled her face back, and there was a hint of red in her eyes. “Hydrys, do you love me?” she asked, her voice cracking.
My grip around her tightened. “Of course I do, Zatanna. You’re amazing.”
She laughed weakly. “That’s…that’s good. I uh, I…” She paused, gnawing on her lower lip and her hands bunching up the fabric of my shirt. “I think uh, you should sit down I guess?”
I was slightly confused, but complied. Still holding Zatanna in my arms, I shuffled awkwardly backwards and sat down on the edge of the bed. Zatanna fidgeted around and eventually sat down in my lap, her arms also still wrapped around my chest. It didn’t look particularly comfortable, but she seemed to draw comfort from the proximity.
“I’m sitting. What’s wrong, Zatanna?” I asked again. “Did someone do something? Did someone hurt you? Tell me who it was and I’ll––”
Zatanna laughed again, her voice slightly stronger this time, and pulled one arm back so she could lay a finger vertically against my lips. I fell silent, staring down at the witch in my lap with concern.
“It's not that, no. Nothing happened. I’m fine. Totally fine. It's just… I’m just…” her finger dropped from my lips to lie flat against her stomach.
I realized what she was about to say a moment before she finally said it.
Zatanna squeezed her eyes tightly shut and took a deep, shaky breath. Then the words all came out in a jumble like a volley of spells finally punching through a powerful ward. “Hydrys, I’m pregnant.”