Chương 16: Finding Magic

"Find a magician?" Diana hung in midair, wind pulling at her hair.

"That whole scene runs deep, and most magicians tend to be loners. They don't love outside interruption." Kaelvorn kept his hand over the pocket against his chest, fingers picking up the faint residual warmth still coming off the apple. A sign the magic hadn't fully settled yet.

"I know. But taking down a goddess of discord had a lot more to do with luck than skill this time. Maybe some of it was just the usual arrogance gods have around mortals. That doesn't mean I get lucky like that every time." His voice stayed firm. Someone who'd been through Viltrum's trials never sat around waiting to see what happened to them.

Diana looked at the steadiness in his eyes and found herself thinking that this unbothered, unshaken way of handling things put him ahead of a few actual League members who tended to act first and think later.

"Fine. I'm contacting Batman." Diana stopped hesitating and activated the encrypted comm on her wrist. The metal cuff lit up with a faint blue glow, and a few seconds later Batman's low voice came through, carrying its usual cold edge.

"What."

"Kael's got a problem. Eris has him on her radar, and he's ended up with her artifact. The golden apple." Diana kept it efficient.

"We need someone who actually knows magic, something on how to counter her once she's back. Wondering if you've got a lead." There was a pause on the other end, then Batman's voice came back, something faintly, deliberately heavy in it.

"The golden apple? Her personal artifact?"

"That's the one. Kael went head to head with her just now, crushed her mortal vessel, but her real body's still in the divine realm and could come back online anytime." Diana filled in the rest.

"We'd rather talk to you in person. Do we need to come to the Batcave?"

"No." Batman's refusal came flat and immediate.

"Don't bring him to the Batcave." Kaelvorn's eyebrow ticked up, catching the wariness in that tone immediately. Diana looked genuinely thrown too.

"Why not? The Batcave's security clears any threshold we'd need."

"During the window when the two of you ran into Eris, my Boston surveillance dropped signal. Four minutes, twenty-three seconds, exactly." There was a coldness running under Batman's voice. He paused, then aimed the next part straight at Kaelvorn.

"And then I heard the whole conversation anyway. Kael. You just showed me a side of yourself that has nothing to do with how old you look." Batman's meaning wasn't subtle. The reasoning, the read on the situation, the way he'd thought several moves ahead. All of it would fit an alien operative's profile without a single edit. Kaelvorn's threat rating had just gotten bumped up again on whatever list Batman was keeping.

"You're going to say that in front of a kid?" Diana clearly knew Batman's temperament well enough by now to try talking him down.

"You really think he's still a kid? He reads more mature than Green Lantern and Shazam combined." Kaelvorn, for his part, didn't seem bothered at all. He spoke evenly, his voice carrying through Diana's comm.

"We've got a shared problem right now. Might as well deal with what's in front of us first." The voice on the other end went quiet. Batman seemed to be weighing something. After a moment, he came back with a different plan entirely. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Meet at the Watchtower. Coordinates are already on your comm."

"The Watchtower?" Diana blinked.

"Didn't you tell me the Watchtower's still under construction?"

"Bring him." Batman didn't explain anything further. He just cut the channel. Diana lowered her wrist, confusion plain on her face, but nodded at Kaelvorn anyway.

"Let's go. You good operating in open space?"

"... Ms. Prince, I'm from a species that runs an entire cosmic war machine. You genuinely never read my file?" Diana was already running low on patience with him. She'd started noticing that Kaelvorn had a specific way of making her feel more cornered with a single flat question than Batman's actual interrogations ever managed, made worse by the fact that he still looked like a teenager while doing it.

"I just heard someone needed help, and I showed up. That's the whole file I need." Both of them pushed into a burst of speed at once, tearing through the cloud layer and out toward open space. Before long, a massive space station holding geosynchronous orbit came into view. The Watchtower sat there in solid silver-gray, built with a hard, futuristic edge, enormous solar panels throwing off a metallic sheen in the sunlight, several energy shields wrapped around it in a faint blue glow.

They passed through the shield and into the station itself. Diana let out an impressed "huh" at the tech on display. Kaelvorn wasn't especially moved. Viltrum ran orbital fortresses considerably grander than this. Wide corridors lined with precision instruments stretched out on both sides, holograms flickering in midair, the whole station running with a clean, orderly rhythm that showed absolutely no sign of being "under construction."

Diana's brow, already up from the initial impression, drew tighter as she followed a guide-bot toward the conference room, muttering under her breath the whole way.

"This guy's been lying to us for how long." Kaelvorn asked, curious.

"What's the problem?"

"Batman's been telling us this station was still in testing this whole time. Not operational yet. Which is why every League meeting's been stuck at the Hall of Justice in New York." There was real exasperation in Diana's voice.

"And you know how it goes. A bunch of superpowered people gathering somewhere as dense as New York, the UN sends over a warning notice practically every time, saying it puts people at risk of panic, among other things." She let out a sigh.

"Everyone else on the team operates under a mask. I'm the only one with an official title, ambassador for Themyscira. Every one of those warning emails lands directly in my inbox. All that pressure sits on me specifically." Talking it through, the two of them walked into the conference room. Batman was already seated at the head of the table, black armor melting into the low light around him, only the bat symbol on his chest catching any real definition.

Seeing them come in, he just tapped two fingers, gesturing for them to sit, without offering a single word about the Watchtower. Diana opened her mouth to press him on it and got cut off immediately.

"Business first. The apple's on you?" His eyes locked straight onto Kaelvorn's chest. Kaelvorn nodded.

"On me. Ms. Prince walked me through how dangerous it is, so I decided against handing it to anyone else for safekeeping. Didn't want to create more variables than necessary."

"You're looking for a magician who can either break it, or find a way to deal with Eris?" Batman asked.

"Right." Kaelvorn didn't dance around it.

"I need a list of people who work magic. Given that you've got surveillance on a fourteen-year-old alien refugee, I'm guessing you're the only one in the League who could actually produce that list." Something settled deeper in Batman's eyes. He didn't deny it. He tapped the console in front of him a few times, and a holographic screen bloomed into view, carrying two separate files.

"You're not getting the full list." Batman's voice stayed cold.

"Some of these magicians are as dangerous as Eris herself. You reaching out to them just multiplies your problems." In short, these two were the manageable ones. The ones Batman had judged might actually be useful. Kaelvorn's eyes landed on the screen. The first file was headed Doctor Fate. Location listed underneath: Salem, Massachusetts. The file noted that Doctor Fate commanded serious mystical power but moved unpredictably, rarely staying anywhere long.

Salem itself had reportedly seen a number of spatial distortion events, which the file flagged as part of why Doctor Fate was so hard to track down. Even so, Doctor Fate had surfaced publicly more than once, using magic to resolve various crises, and was suspected to have some past connection to a now-inactive hero organization. Seeing the name, something clicked in Kaelvorn's head. Doctor Fate had shown up somewhere in the memory carried over from his old life.

He knew this was an extremely powerful presence, and had already planned on making contact a priority. He just hadn't known where to actually find him. Now, with a precise lead straight from Batman, he filed the name away and locked Salem's location into his head instantly. He moved on to the second file. This one was thinner, just a single blurry surveillance still. A small, slight figure in gray robes, build suggesting female.

The file noted she'd occasionally been spotted around Gotham at night, no fixed pattern to her movement, and was skilled at using magic to stay hidden.

"This gray-robed figure. I've been tracking her a long time." Batman explained.

"No real aggression on record. Occasionally steals food. Three separate incidents on file where she helped someone close to freezing or starving to death. Out of every magic-adjacent presence I've cataloged, she rates lowest on threat. Relatively safe." Kaelvorn stared at the blurry still, thinking it over. Gotham. Batman's own territory. If someone could stay hidden from him specifically, her concealment ability had to be genuinely solid.

"These two are enough to get you started." Batman closed the hologram.

"If you hit something you can't handle, contact me again. But remember, don't go provoking other magic users on your own. Earth's magical side runs deeper and messier than you're giving it credit for." Diana finally couldn't hold it in any longer.

"You're really not going to explain the Watchtower situation?"

"The Watchtower can wait." Batman cut her off again, tone leaving no room to argue.

"Priority right now is the apple and Eris. Meeting's over. You're both free to go." Kaelvorn glanced between the two of them, still locked in their standoff, and stood.

"I'm heading to Salem to find Doctor Fate. Ms. Prince, thanks for bringing me here." With that, he turned and walked toward the Watchtower's exit. Diana shot Batman one last exasperated look before giving up and following after him. The conference room settled back into silence, one black shape still seated at the head of the table, quiet enough to feel like it was pressing down on the room.