Mist of Shadows
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Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 13
🕑 Added 2023-08-29 04:37:44 +0000 UTCTaylor stepped out of the portal that led to an alternate version of Scotland and found herself in the Great Hall during the middle of a meal. "Huh…" she trailed off when she looked up and noticed the enchanted ceiling filled with stars. 'Hogwarts!'
"What is the meaning of this?!" snapped a short woman sitting at the teacher's table.
Taylor pulled her attention off the enchanted ceiling and glanced at the grumpy looking woman that looked like a toad. 'Someone looks unhappy to see me,' she mused as she glanced at the rest of the teachers, noticing that none of them matched the actors from the movies though they certainly matched the book descriptions.
"How did you get here?" Umbridge demanded as she pulled her wand out of her robe and pointed it at the strange girl.
Taylor reached out with Telepathy and skimmed Umbridge's thoughts, not surprised that she was already planning on finding a way to steal whatever spell or device she'd used to open a portal. "I think I took a left when I should have taken a right, dreadfully sorry. If you'll excuse me, I'll be on my way."
"You're not leaving until you explain how you got here!" Umbridge snapped as she pushed back her chair and stood up.
"Magic," Taylor replied sarcastically, not seeing a reason to play nice with someone that made the teachers in Winslow seem competent.
"I believe she already explained, she took a left when she should have taken a right," Dumbledore offered, doing his best not to laugh at the look of fury on Umbridge's face.
"Exactly…" Taylor trailed off as the woman shot a red bolt of energy at her and it went wide without even having to dodge or nudge it out of the way. She snapped her fingers and teleported Umbridge's wand to her hand. "I think your wand is defective," she offered as she made a show of studying the wand.
"Give that back!" Umbridge demanded. "Do you know who I am?"
"A woman with a defective wand?" Taylor replied, causing most of the students sitting under the read and gold banner to laugh. "I was standing less than thirty feet away and you couldn't hit me with a spell, that's either equipment error or you're a horrible magic user. What are you supposed to be teaching?"
"Defense," a pair of red haired twins called out from the Gryffindor table.
"In that case, I'll assume it was equipment failure," Taylor replied as she snapped her wand. “Yes, has to be equip failure, this was very flimsy.”
"I'll have you tossed in Azkaban for this!" Umbridge shrieked.
"For disposing of faulty equipment? That seems a bit harsh," Taylor replied as she used the mental image of the minister in Umbridge's mind to find him with Clairvoyance. She snapped her fingers and teleported the minister from his office to the Great Hall then dropped Clairvoyance. "You'd think the ministry would have better wards."
"What is going on?" Fudge demanded, trying to cover up how terrified he was to find himself in the middle of the Great Hall without any of the familiar sensations of magical travel.
"Arrest her!" Umbridge screamed as she pointed at Taylor.
"None of that," Taylor replied as she used Telekinesis to lift Umbridge off the ground and Sound Manipulation to silence her. "I took a wrong turn and your minion decided that she'd rather curse me than be civil."
"You can't use spells on ministry officials," Fudge sputtered.
"Obviously I can," Taylor replied. "She tried to hit me with a curse, I have a couple of hundred witnesses that can testify. I'd like to press charges."
"She's a ministry official," Fudge argued.
"Are you saying that she's above the law?" Taylor asked, thinking about Sophia and Emma.
"I'm saying you could have cursed the children to lie," Fudge snapped. "Did Dumbledore put you up to this?"
"She ended up here by mistake and Umbridge overreacted and attacked her,” Dumbledore offered dryly.
"At which point she broke Umbridge's wand," Snape added.
"Arrest her," Fudge ordered Dumbledore.
Dumbledore sighed. "I'm afraid I no longer work for the ministry, which means that you'll have to arrest her yourself. Of course, you'll also have to arrest Umbridge for attacking her."
"I'll have you arrested for plotting to overthrow the ministry if you don't arrest her," Fudge snapped, glaring at the teachers.
"Let me get this straight, you think you're above the law and you can do anything you want, correct?" Taylor asked.
"I am the Minister of Magic!" Fudge declared, figuring she'd see sense when she realized who she was dealing with.
"Okay," Taylor replied as she opened a portal to a saloon on an alien world under Fudge's feet, causing the minister to vanish with a shriek and half the students to gasp. She floated Umbridge over and dropped her through then closed the portal.
“If you are taking suggestions we have a dark lord and his lackeys that I’d be more than happy to see the back of,” Harry offered hopefully.
“I have time, oh Chosen One,” she said solemnly, making him wince.
“I’m not-” Harry began when Ron and Hermione quickly placed their hands over his mouth and hugged him tightly, preventing him from speaking.
“What the Chosen One meant to say is he would be honored to have your assistance in removing those with the Dark Mark and their Dark Lord from this world,” Hermione said while Ron nodded Harry’s head.
“Not a problem, I’m happy to help,” Taylor said cheerfully, trying not to laugh as she opened up a portal above a lake somewhere on an Earth where mankind seemed to have died out somehow, considering the number of buildings covered in vines.
The next ten minutes were spent watching her summon various witches and wizards about fifteen feet above the portal and watching the shocked looks on their faces as they fell through.
“I need him,” Dumbledore quickly said as Snape fell through the portal.
There was a splash and Taylor gestured, returning a soaking wet Potions Master to his place at the head table.
“Thank you,” Dumbledore said quickly, ignoring the boos from various students and Severus's sputtering.
“This is fun,” Taylor said, gesturing and summoning a large snake that hissed out something that made Harry wince as she fell through the portal.
“I’m surprised none of them have managed to apparate back up through the portal,” one of the Ravenclaws muttered.
“Can’t apparate on Hogwarts grounds,” Hermione replied absently.
“And for the grand finale,” Taylor said, teleporting a naked Voldemort, covered in soap from the shower, directly above the portal and dropped him in, closing it behind him.
Harry hissed and clutched his forehead which bled black smoke and ichor.
Taylor gestured and granted him regeneration, having to do it several times before it sank in.
Harry sighed in relief as Hermione fussed over him and wiped at his scar.
“It’s gone,” Hermione said in disbelief.
“Yeah, soul anchors require you to be on the same world for them to function properly,” Taylor said as she gave Harry flight and started going through the list for him and Luna just for giggles to see how many she could give them before they noticed.
“Truely?” Dumbledore asked hopefully.
“The mark,” Snape said, exposing his arm, “it’s gone!”
“Yep, the soul doesn’t like being separated that much,” Taylor assured him, spamming her powers on several of her favorite characters and feeling them sink in.
“What the!” Fred exclaimed as he and George became quadruplets.
“Oh, I’m having a nightmare,” Snape said. “I’d almost regained hope that the monster was gone but it's all a dream.” He sighed heavily.
Taylor quickly gave him flight and a couple of other powers while Dumbledore tried and failed to convince Snape that he was awake.
Snape levitated off his seat. “You see? I could only do this in a dream. Hey, Harry, want to go fly over and firebomb your relatives house?”
“Do I?!” Harry asked excitedly. “How?”
“Just will yourself to fly,” Snape suggested. “We can go firebomb Tuney and then go moon the ministry or something.”
The pair took to the air and then teleported away before Dumbledore could stop them.
“Are you sure we are awake?” Ron asked Hermione.
“Yes, I am completely sure,” she replied, worried about where Harry had disappeared to.
Ron grabbed her and snogged her only to get slapped in the face. “Huh, guess I am awake.”
“You will take me out on an actual date before trying anything like that again,” Hermione told him firmly.
0o0o0
"Who the fuck are you?!" a bandit blurted out as he walked into the room and saw an unfamiliar teenager examining the enchanting table.
"Genie," Taylor replied as she pulled her attention away from the threads of magic woven into the Arcane Enchanter that she was trying to figure out how to reverse engineer and turned to look at the lizardman that was glaring at her and holding a sword. "Huh."
"Where the fuck are my men?" he demanded.
"They left," Taylor replied as she used her Power Detection to check to see if the lizardman had any abilities worth copying, since she'd forgotten to check the rest of the bandits. "I should have checked the rest of the bandits for special abilities."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he demanded.
"Your Amphibian ability increases your ability to learn to use a restoration staff and increases your swim speed by fifty percent," Taylor explained.
"Not this shit again," the bandit complained as he tightened his grip on his sword. "I don't give a fuck about healing people! How did you get in here?"
"Does that mean you don't have a restoration staff?" Taylor asked as she tried to figure out the best way to activate the lizardman's various abilities so she could copy them.
"Are you fucking dense? I'm going to kill you if you don't answer my damned question you stupid bitch," the man snapped as he shook his sword, wanting answers before he ran her through.
Taylor snapped her fingers and teleported the bandit's crappy sword to the forge area. "Let's start over, my name is Genie and if you don't answer my questions and help me out with a couple of experiments, you're not leaving this tower alive."
"You killed them, didn't you?" the bandit asked warily, wondering what the hell he'd done to deserve running into an insane mage that could teleport things with a snap of her fingers.
"Just the people in charge," Taylor replied as she used telekinesis to lift the lizardman off the ground. "Think about what you know about restoration staves," she told him as she used her telepathy to skim his surface thoughts.
"They can heal you if you hit someone really hard but I'd rather cut people and watch them bleed so I never bothered learning more than the basics," the bandit admitted, wondering what happened to the leader's restoration staff.
'So much for joining the bandits out of desperation or something.' Taylor walked over and pulled the restoration staff out of the pile of loot that she hadn't finished sorting through and tossed it to the lizardman. "Okay, I'm going to stab you then you're going to heal yourself until I can copy your ability."
"Are you fucking insane?!" the bandit demanded. "Our abilities are natural talent."
"It's worth a try," Taylor replied as she stopped using her Telepathy and used her Manipulation ability to push the skill acquisition half of his Amphibian ability as high as she could while dropping the swimming ability down to nothing. She picked up a dagger off the pile then walked over like she was going to stab the bandit.
The lizard swung the staff and hit Taylor in the face as hard as he could, not wanting to get stabbed because the insane mage wanted to run an experiment.
Taylor smiled as she felt the bandit's ability activate. "Perfect," she said cheerfully as she reached up and grabbed the bandit's wrist and activated her Absorption power, copying the modified training ability. "If you don't drop the staff, I'll crush your wrist," she lied as she squeezed his wrist.
"What the hell are you?" the bandit blurted as he dropped the staff, surprised that the girl hadn't even flinched from the solid hit.
"Just a mage," Taylor replied as she used her Telekinesis to catch the staff and float it over to her hand, "that wants to run a couple of tests. If you cooperate, you'll be able to leave the tower alive, if you don't, I'll beat you half to death and leave you chained in the sun to starve the rest of the way."
"What type of tests?" the bandit asked, trying not to think about some of the leader's experiments and the screams he'd heard coming from the man's lab.
"Your Resourceful ability should activate when you drink a potion and feeding you poison should let me copy your Resist Affliction ability, thankfully your previous leader had a disturbing amount of poisons stashed away for a rainy day."
"Why should I help you?" the bandit asked, fairly sure the mage was going to kill him either way.
"I don't have to pour the poison down your throat, I can stab you. Drinking the antidote is entirely optional," Taylor replied as she walked over to grab one of the bottles of poison that the bandit leader had brewed.
"Fine, use the red bottle, it just puts people to sleep," the bandit suggested, figuring it was the least horrible option in Olgar's collection of poisons.
Taylor checked the red bottle with her detection ability then tossed it to the bandit. "Works for me." She smiled when the bandit drank the sleeping potion and his Resist Affliction, Resourceful and Quick to Mend abilities activated. She quickly used her Absorption ability to absorb the new abilities, figuring she'd have plenty of time to min/max the abilities later.
"Did you get what you wanted?" the bandit asked, hoping they were done and that she'd let him go. "Are you going to let me go?"
"Surprisingly enough, yeah," Taylor replied as she opened a gateway to the testing world behind the bandit and shoved the idiot through the portal. "Best of luck," she lied as she closed the portal.
Taylor turned her attention back to the Arcane Enchanter and activated her detection ability, causing the otherwise invisible lines of magic imbued in the table to glow. She spent a couple of minutes studying the magic before admitting that starting with something that was extremely complicated was probably a bad idea. 'Learn to walk before you learn to run.'
"Or cheat," Taylor mused as she focused on the type of power she wanted her new elf to have and activated her duplication ability, creating a naked elf. "Any luck?"
"Yes and no," the elf replied cheerfully. "I got an interesting power but it's not a detection ability. I picked up the ability to mess with aging. I can increase the rate that they age or reduce it, make people age backwards or even stop them from aging completely."
"We're going to need a test subject…" Taylor trailed off as the elf used her new ability on herself. "That's a really bad habit."
"I'm a duplicate and I'm not really planning on sticking around more than a couple of hours anyway," the elf replied with a shrug, not particularly worried about the fact that she'd tested the power on herself.
"Point," Taylor admitted as she used her absorption ability and copied the elf's Bio-manipulation power, excited about having a power that would let her give people biological immortality. She gave the elf power manipulation. "See if you can change my Restoration ability to something that boosts Enchanting then I'll deconstruct everything on the enchanting table."
"Sure," the elf replied as she focused on what she wanted and used her Manipulation ability to test Taylor's new power to something that would boost the speed that she learned Enchanting.
Taylor checked her new skill with her detection ability and froze, wondering if her power was on the fritz. "That's fucking broken."
"What?" the elf asked, wondering if she'd screwed up.
"I forgot to check the ability when I grabbed it, it jumped from fifty percent on the bandit to five thousand percent after I grabbed it."
"Meaning your skill growth will be five thousand percent more than it should?" the elf asked.
"That's what it looks like," Taylor replied as she set the healing staff against the shelf then walked over and used the enchanting altar to disenchant the dagger, picking up the 'pattern' and learning an insane amount about enchanting weapons to be sharper than they should be. "It's like I have a PHD based on enchanting weapons to be sharper."
"How much do you know about enchanting in general?" the elf asked.
Taylor stepped back from the table and gave the elf a copy of her Enchanting Boosting ability. "More than I used to but less than I should for the amount I know about making blades sharper."
The elf glanced at the pile of magical items. "That just means we'll have to take apart a bunch of magical items."
Taylor gestured towards the enchanting table. "Go for it, I gave you a copy of the skill boosting ability and I want to see if there's a point in boosting the ability."
"Sure," the elf replied as she grabbed a ring of feather weight off the pile and walked over to the enchanting altar. She used the altar to deconstruct the ring and pick up knowledge of the enchantment, suddenly having a much better idea what she meant about having a lot of knowledge about one extremely narrow subject. "How much do you think the percentage would drop for a power that boosted every skill?"
"I'm not sure it's worth it," Taylor replied as she used her absorption ability to copy the elf's ability that boosted her enchanting skill. "My eidetic memory ability should keep my brain from leaking out of my ears but I don't need to be a master of a bunch of random and useless skills, just because we heard someone talking about how to do something on the radio."
"I'm pretty sure you'd need to actually practice, the Arcane Enchanter is a bit weird because it's magically imprinting knowledge," the elf argued.
"Considering knowledge is the one thing that Taylor keeps when we vanish, I'm not particularly interested in pushing things until we can test it on some lab rats, especially considering we can always make a bunch of magical rings when we want to learn a new subject in a hurry," Taylor pointed out as she tossed the uglier looking expanded leather bag to the elf. "You might as well deconstruct the bag, I want to see if your brain melts."
"You're an asshole," the elf replied with amusement as she deconstructed the expanded bag, picking up a lot of information on making expanded containers and using the feather weight enchantment with the expansion enchantment to create a better bag. "Now what?"
"That depends, how's your head?" Taylor asked, curious if there were any negative side effects of using the magical table.
The elf considered the question for a couple of seconds then shrugged. "Fine."
Taylor glanced at the elf's ears. "We might need to use an actual human to test the effects of stuffing too much information into their heads."
"Probably," the elf replied. "Do you want me to deconstruct the rest?"
"Nah," Taylor replied as she dismissed the elf, getting all of her knowledge and skill. She spent a couple of minutes reviewing everything her duplicates had learned, wanting to make sure the memories and skills transferred. She created ten elven duplicates and started giving them copies of her skill boosting power, along with Enchanting, Resistance to Magic, Invulnerability, Power Manipulation, Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Teleportation. "Let me know if you have any abilities I need to copy."
"I have a fantastic voice," one of the elves piped up, rather happy that her hypnotic voice was weak enough that it barely counted as a master effect.
"Kinetic bolts," one of the elves said cheerfully while another said, "Magnetism!"
"Empathy…" the elf trailed off as she turned and looked at one of the other elves that was radiating smugness. "Why do you feel like you just won the lottery?"
"Reality Alteration," the elf replied smugly. "I can alter the flow of time in an area or on people."
"That's almost better than my X-ray vision," one of the other elves teased, knowing the girl with Reality Alteration had her beat.
"Regeneration, nothing new," one of the elves said as she looked at the elf that hadn't said anything. "What did you get?"
"The power to communicate with animals," the elf replied with a shrug.
"Sounds useful," Taylor said, thinking about Hellhound.
The elf shook her head. "Not particularly, it doesn't boost their intelligence."
"That's less useful." Taylor grabbed a pair of filthy boots and deconstructed them, picking up a water walking enchantment. "Let's get everything sorted then we can head to town."
One of the elves scowled as she looked at the pile of clothes they'd picked up when they walked through the keep. "We need to find a cleaning spell or power."
"It's on the list," Taylor replied as she grabbed the next item off the pile of magical items to deconstruct. "Get dressed, you're not going to be around long enough to catch anything."
"Good," several of the girls complained, less than happy about dressing up in dirty clothes.
