If the portal had just disappeared, chances were that any magical residue would be gone fairly soon; waiting would simply make it harder to find. If it was regularly used, that wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but they didn’t know what was there at all.

If it was created by a person, that person might still be there. Probably not, but who was to say?

There was only one way to find out.

Serenity hopped out of the van. “I’ll be back shortly; this shouldn’t take long. Yell or call me if something attacks.”

Three people really wasn’t enough for this, but they’d have needed a second vehicle to carry more; the portal-detector was spread out over the rest of the van’s interior.

Serenity realized he knew which direction was north-north-west. It was convenient but also a little strange. It wasn’t worth more than a moment’s concern.

Serenity jogged in that direction. It was unfortunate that he wasn’t armed in his human form; he’d been more concerned about possible legal issues inside the city than actually running into Sterath, but it looked like he’d guessed wrong.

Serenity passed several houses, then reached a church. If he was looking for somewhere where he wouldn’t be seen easily, a church made sense; there were times when it was unlikely anyone would be around. It was worth checking out.

Serenity pulled up his manasight as he walked around the church building. It slowed him down a little, but what really slowed him down was that he was looking for signs that might be faint.

He didn’t find anything on the main building, but when he went to the other side of the parking lot, there was a smaller building that looked like it had once been set up as a home. It clearly wasn’t a home anymore; Serenity could see where additions had been tacked on and the entrances had all been retrofitted with the same sort of glass door he was used to seeing in a convenience store. No one would put that on a home.

The windows were boarded up, and when Serenity reached the back of the building, the glass door had been smashed. It was probably recent; at least, no one had cleaned it up. Instead, it had all been swept to the side, both inside and outside the building. That was enough to tell Serenity that something was unusual here.

He hesitated for a moment at the doorway. He still hadn’t seen any sign of magical residue, and this could easily be completely unrelated to the Sterath. Still, this was in more or less the correct direction. Serenity absently wished they’d kept driving and narrowed down the position more accurately, but there was nothing more to be done now that the signal was lost.

He still needed to check into it. Serenity walked through the doorway; with only a few shards of glass left in the door, it was easy to enter.

Ahead of him was a short hallway; there was a large double-door to his right, two doors to the left, and the hallway continued to a turn ahead. It felt almost like being in a dungeon, except that Serenity didn’t want to touch anything he could avoid. As much as he hated the chance of leaving something behind himself, the odds were good that if this was Sterath, they’d have left only one route open and it would lead to what he wanted to see. If things went really badly, well, he could probably go through a wall. It wouldn’t be easy, but he could do it.

There were no magical traces in the hallway, so he walked past the closed doors and around the corner. The continuation of the hallway led to rooms that weren’t closed off. To his right, Serenity could see a fridge so that room had to be a kitchen; just past that opening, the hallway led into what seemed to be a larger open room. An old, cheap table reinforced the impression.

Serenity walked past the kitchen and into the dilapidated “multi-use room” beyond. That had to be what it was; there was even a stack of chairs toppled in a far corner. Serenity’s eyes brushed over the chairs and the tables shoved against the walls; what grabbed his attention instead was the magical residue in the middle of the floor.

Space-tinged mana covered the room, but it was strongest in a pair of circles painted on the floor. Serenity didn’t take long checking out the circles before he felt the mana level start to rise. It wasn’t just residue.

He didn’t want to leave; he wanted to see what was about to happen. He didn’t want to be seen and hiding had never been one of his stronger skills, but he knew that looking like you belonged was often the best way. Even someone who was poor at the stealthy stuff would eventually learn some things if they tried.

There was no way a human could hide, at least not a human as poor at stealth as he was, but the entire room was blanketed in shadows. Serenity doubted they’d be looking for someone who could turn into smoke, so he should be fine. He looked up towards the ceiling, picked out a darker corner, and shifted before drifting upwards.

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He barely had time to reach the area he’d selected before a portal blossomed into existence in one of the two circles. Moments later, an unexpected figure emerged from the portal. While it was a Sterath, it wasn’t a scout; instead, it was a Sterath mage. Serenity stared at the markings on the Sterath’s carapace in shock; there was no way they were dumb enough to not scout the other side of the portal, was there? Someone could have gotten in exactly the way he had and be prepared to kill the mage!

The mage knelt next to the second circle and started chanting. Long moments passed as Serenity watched the spellform take shape. It was positively bursting with Space affinity, so Serenity wasn’t surprised to see that the unknown casting was creating a spellform very similar to the one Serenity had discovered using the Messenger’s Magic book.

It wasn’t until the second portal formed and the mage tossed something through the portal that Serenity understood what was happening. The first Sterath to step through the portal after the toss had the markings of a different polity than the mage.

There were caste differences in Sterath society, and mages were generally of fairly high caste; however, there were exceptions and one of those exceptions was individuals captured in battle. No matter their native caste, captives were always expendable. There were a few other reasons for members of two polities to work together, but being a war captive was the most likely reason that someone who should be valuable would be risked for no apparent reason.

Serenity concentrated; if he was careful, he should be able to figure out the differences. Sterath polity markings were always clear. It was easier to make out on the Sterath who poured out of the first portal and into the second. While they weren’t there for long, there were about a dozen of them.

Curved line, two strikes at the back. Kaelitha. I should have known.

Kaelitha wasn’t a strong Sterath polity; if anything, they were well below average. What they were was a heavily militarized polity ruled by an individual who had achieved more than most, then decided he wanted to rule. He’d named his nation after himself: Kaelitha. It meant something like “nimble knife,” and it was a fairly good description of the way his people fought: flexible and dangerous. They didn’t charge for the throat, but they were very good at striking where their enemy wasn’t.

Serenity was pretty sure he’d killed them as Vengeance by sniping at the edges, taking one then another and turning them into his minions. Once they were taken, he sent them back and they were accepted for long enough to take out more, which Vengeance then raised as undead to do it again. It took a very long time, but it worked - first on Earth and then later on their homeworld. They never saw him as an enemy until it was too late and he could simply smash them.

He’d need to use a different strategy this time. He didn’t have time to spend a year taking on a single invasion. He didn’t want to use the same method anyway; he simply wasn’t that angry with them. He would if he had to, but he’d try other ways first.

The portal mage seemed to have a hard time holding the portal spell. His voice shook as he chanted the maintenance words and he seemed to shiver as more mana was pulled out of him by the spell.

Serenity concentrated on him and was surprised to realize that he wasn’t a male; she was female. She was unusually tall for a Sterath female; they averaged a foot shorter than the males, but she was the tallest one there. That was common only in the Sterath rulers’ line; Serenity wasn’t certain why the difference existed, but he knew that it did.

He scooted across the ceiling; none of the Sterath were looking up and he wanted a better look at the portal mage’s markings. Her markings were damaged, probably from when she was captured, but he recognized them anyway.

She was Unkaa. The Unkaa were famous among the Sterath; well, infamous really. They had inhabited a world “one step” away from the Sterath homeworld and lost it to invaders. Supposedly, they’d all been killed - and if Serenity had his timeline right, that should have been about five or ten years before the Tutorial came to Earth. Something smelled fishy.

Perhaps it was an opportunity.

Serenity flowed down the wall behind her, carefully watching the last few Kaelitha warriors troop through the portal. Once the last one stepped through, the portal mage started chanting again; she was clearly closing the portal. Serenity knew that closing it down properly would take time; properly cleaning up a spell always did.

Of course, from the surroundings it was very clear that someone had repeatedly been less than careful about ending portal spells properly. Anyone with even a hint of sensitivity could have felt the magic; it was bad practice to just let it spill, but many mages were lazy. Serenity didn’t need the time this portal mage was taking to do cleanup; he built it into the original spellform and used it to reduce the casting cost. It was one of many ways he built extremely efficient spells, but that level of efficiency wasn’t possible with Path Skills or chanted spells.

Actually, given how long it had already been open, Serenity suspected the first portal was built using a Path Skill by a spellcaster who didn’t otherwise know what he was doing. It would explain the spillage with such an apparently stable spell. The Voice didn’t see any reason to help people who didn’t know what they were doing be efficient.

Serenity used the time it took the portal mage to properly close down her spell to shift into his chimera shape. The moment she cut off the spell, he took a step forward and wrapped his arms around hers, trapping them both. A moment later, he pulled her backwards off balance against him, held her arms with his right, and wrapped his left arm across her throat. He allowed one of his claws to prick her at the spot where her chest armor met her neck; he didn’t break the skin, but it was enough to get her attention.

“Surrender.” Serenity spoke in Sterath; there were things he could imply in the language that weren’t so easy to say in Bridge. He used the mode that indicated he had the right to command her to surrender. It wasn’t a question.

The mage shivered, but didn’t immediately fight back physically. “What will you do if I don’t?”