Mana Mirror: Chapter Forty-Four (Patreon)

When we landed in zone three, the woman who was in charge of that zone had us put our brooms down in a designated charging spot, designated Ed our supervisor, since he was a Spellbinder, then sent us down to the shore.

As we trudged to our positions, I passed by all sorts of interesting people. I wasn’t the only one in a suit, and there was a woman with red and gold tattoos, a man with a large snake-bird creature on a shoulder, a fellow with a bright red beard that had gemstones woven throughout, and more.

Once we were in position, we chatted a bit as we watched the beach, gossiping about some new jobs that Liz’s guild had gotten, and when she was thinking about ascending to Spellbinder herself.

The first estragon appeared a few minutes after we’d arrived.

It looked completely different from Ivy’s dragon form, to my surprise. It had scales, but that was about it. Even the scales were much smaller, more like a shark or betta fish’s pseudo-smoothness than the more distinct scales of a lizard.

It was about the size of a medium dog, and was a deep blue color, with a robin’s egg blue underbelly, and stripes of navy so deep that they were almost black running along its horns, which looked more frill-like than horned. Its wings were much more finlike than his had been, which made sense for an aquatic dragon, and it had a wide tail like a mermaid’s, rather than a sharp tail that Ivy had.

It was…

It was…

It was cute!

“Aww,” I said.

“They are rather cute, aren’t they?” Liz asked as she used an ingrained water spell to gently push it back towards the ocean.

I lifted the wand and tagged it before it got away, and Ed nodded.

“Definitely cute. Maybe I should get an estragon!”

“What type?” I asked as we looked around the beach for any more.

“Well, I could get a sea estragon,” he said seriously. “Offer a bonding chance to one now. They’ve got a lot of water, pressure, and other ocean stuff. Mixing with my telluric mana would probably make some of the pressure stuff better, and it’d make my gravity spells likely develop a pressure component.”

I lifted my hand to glance at the cavern dragon enchanted ring I wore. Was that what it did? Add a gravity aspect to my magic?

That was unlikely. I definitely would have noticed something like that. But it could be some sort of additional aspect to my magic. I did need to get it identified…

Another estragon slipped out of the water, and Ed pulled it back into the sea with a gravity spell, Liz tagging it while I was lost in thought.

Another one emerged a few minutes later, and I paralyzed it with Fungal lock, then gently pushed it towards the sea and released it.

“You know, given that they’re lesser dragons, I kind of expected them to put up more of a fight,” I said as it contentedly swam off. “They seem all too happy to go.”

“They’re not aiming to go ashore here, we’re just in the middle of their migratory pattern,” Liz said. “They’ve no real desire to stop here, so when they do…”

As she spoke, another one emerged from the ocean. She sent a pulse of water at it, but this one drew back its head and let out a breath of condensed water that hit her wave head on, neutralizing it.

Liz’s legacy activated then, a second crescent of water emerging from her fingers, but it was again pushed aside.

Ed cast his gravitational spell then, trying to pull it back, but a wave of pressurized water fought against the pull as it spat at Liz.

This time, I stepped in, blocking with the arm of my suit jacket and putting a lock on the estragon to drain it. Ed let out a surge of mana, slowly pushing it back into the ocean. The estragon fought hard, pushing out second gate mana like an arrow from a bow, but Ed drew out power to match it in equal measure, and more.

It thrashed around for a few moments as we held it in place, Liz tagging it with her wand, before it turned to leave, and I dropped my locking spell.

“Well, most of them are content to just go back,” Liz amended.

I laughed and looked at Ed.

“You good on mana levels?”

He glanced at me and blinked.

“I’m fine, why?”

“I mean… You used a lot of power?” I said.

“Nah, not that much,” he said, shaking his head. “I just refilled it from my third gate.”

“Huh,” I said. I knew that a Spellbinder had a lot more power than me, but it was weird to see in person.

We spent a long while chatting and sending estragons back into the sea. Most of them, true to what Liz had said, were happy enough to be sent back into the sea.

A few of them, however, took a more aggressive approach. There didn’t seem to be any real rhyme or reason to the pattern – some of the aggressive ones were so weak that I was able to send them back alone with an ungated levitation spell, and others were close to third gate, requiring us to cooperate to send it back safely.

For a short while I thought that maybe the powerful ones, or the ones with the greatest potential to become powerful were aggressive, but after an estragon that was on the border of third gate went back in without protest, I had to revise my theory.

They may not be as smart as a dragon or a human, but estragon were still clever, at least as much as a cat or a dog was. Was it really so odd that some just had more aggressive personalities than others?

After about three hours of catching the odd estragon, there was a change in their frequency. One came ashore, and then another, and another. As quickly as I could, I locked them down and tagged them, waiting for Ed and Liz to push out to sea. There were even a few non-estragon creatures that got caught up in the surge: I saw ordinary fish, a few sharks, and even a bright orange shark with bulbous yellow eyes.

A voice rang out over the beach, amplified through the use of some sort of spell.

“A shiver’s inbound! Tag as many as possible, but focus on sending them back out to sea! If we let too many land, the rest of the school will follow suit. Hold out, we’re sending a squad to reinforce!”

I wasn’t able to catch them in my Fungal Lock spell much faster, but I leaned down to start pushing them back into the sea with my hands. A few of the creatures nipped at me, but I caught it on my suit since none of them were powerful enough to push through its protections.

It wasn’t very efficient, nor very dignified, but I did still manage to get a few back out to sea before the new squad arrived.

All three of the members were women, but they couldn’t be more different if they tried.

The first member was tall, almost as tall as Liz or Ed. She wore a black suit with a red shirt, had unnaturally pale skin, and hair that was snow white, with dark black eyes. She moved with a sharp, almost feral speed, picking up and tossing estragon back into the sea, tagging them in midair with her free hand. When one sent a blast of water at her, her shadow rose up in the shape of a wolf and took the blast for her.

I frowned. To my newly enhanced mana sense, the shadow had felt strange. Definitely second gate magic, but there had been a lot of life mana in it – probably more life mana than there was lunar. Maybe to animate the shadow? Creating living shadows was a strange, but interesting, magic.

The second member of the group was a short, larger woman in a white, flowy dress, who moved with a certain grace and elegance that surprised me. She was also pale, with long, fiery red locks of hair that fell to her waist, and bright green eyes. She waved her hands in complex sequences, her mana tracing behind her. It wasn’t sketching, though. She was layering spells together, like I had to defeat the troll, but rather than using the same spell over and over, she was combining multiple spells to create a greater effect.

I couldn’t see anything she was doing, but I could sense the third gate creation and mental mana, and I could definitely see the effects.

All around her, Estragons turned and fled back into the water. Since I wasn’t much use compared to the second and third gates, and lacked a way to push the estragon back into the water, I tagged as many of hers as I could before they got away.

The third member of the group was a middling height, with a slight tan, blonde hair in a short bob, and a ripped pair of black pants and a sleeveless leather jacket. She had long, swirling red and gold tattoos that ran up her arms and met in complex knots that somewhat reminded me of the life-energy flows that Ivy had possessed. She moved by far the fastest of the group, a second gate physical spell burning around her in a bright red aura. She didn’t try to get as many estragon back into the water as the others, but instead drew the attacks from the more aggressive estragon, targeting them and sending them back with a pulse of force.

Ed and Liz had cut loose at this point as well, sending out gravitational and water spells without concern for their mana levels, and within minutes, the five of them had pushed the estragon shiver back out to sea, leaving me feeling rather inadequate.

“Thanks for the help,” I said with a small, embarrassed smile.

“No problem at all,” the mind mage said with a smile. “My name is Diana. This is Mallory, and this is Qwin.”

As she spoke, she gestured to the suited woman and the one in the torn jacket respectively.

“Malachi, Ed, and Liz,” I said in response.

“We should go,” Qwin said. “We’ve got our area to defend.”

Mallory nodded and gave us a nod, then turned and began to run back to her area. Qwin lit up a bright red aura again and streaked off, and Diana shook her head and sighed.

“It was nice to meet you all,” she said as she turned to leave.

“You too,” I said with a smile.

This sort of pattern continued for several days, with it mostly being catching the odd estragon that came ashore, interspersed with occasional surges. Sometimes we were near enough to the surge that we were sent to reinforce the people handling it, but often we only caught the edges of them.

On Cretday, however, one of the surges was stranger. Alongside the estragon, far more of the rest of the ocean life came with it, including a huge number of the bright orange sharks with yellow eyes.

A moment later, the reason for the strange surge became apparent as a huge creature that resembled a yellow jellyfish rose out of the sea, its tentacles lashing out to try and grab at the sharks and estragon.

“Hungerjelly,” came the calm voice of the manager. “Lightwatch and Guilded to me, everyone else back up to the barriers and stop things from escaping.”

I gave Ed and Liz a quick nod as they turned to go to the manager, and I headed for the barricade.

Just as she’d suggested, estragon and the orange sharks were pushing at the barrier. The team who we’d worked with at the very first surge was running up to the barrier as well, but before we could get there, one of the larger sharks flew backwards on the beach, then rammed forwards with a shocking amount of momentum, crashing through the enchanted barrier.

“I’ll catch it!” I said, “I have a locking spell. One of you come with me as backup, the other two, hold down the fort!”