Fortunately, the urgent need for a shower delayed Serenity enough for Rissa to organize the reporters into a miniature press conference; he only had to go through the questions once instead of once per reporter. Once that small slice of pain was over, he was actually able to get with Ita and Azav and find out what happened in the parts of the battlefield he hadn’t seen.
It wasn’t pretty. More than half of the Sterath were killed blocking escape attempts from the centaurs. Most of the centaurs were, as well; while there were some survivors, they’d all been captured and taken away by humans. Serenity was just as happy to not have to deal with them; there wouldn’t be any above Tier Three, and it was likely there wouldn’t be any above Tier Two, so he shouldn’t be needed to contain them.
It seemed like the attacks had mostly been centered on the locations of the Sterath. In a lot of ways, this made sense; the Sterath were located on the best approach paths to the centaurs’ camp, since they were intended to be the shock troops. It did make the assault that came directly at the reporters seem a little odd, but that was easily explained by the fact that they were more or less between the camp and the mountains.
Serenity wasn’t quite satisfied by the explanation, and he didn’t think everyone else was, either. No one had any better insights and the centaur leader and all of his direct subordinates were dead, so there never would be a better answer.
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He’d barely had time to figure that out when a message came from his father: if he thought the situation was under control, there was a problem in Oregon with hordes of murderous rabbits. It vaguely rang a bell in Serenity’s mind - hadn’t he seen a story about that a few weeks ago?
When they went up there, Serenity was expecting to find rabbit-like invaders, but what they found were literally killer rabbits. Fast and toothy, but surprisingly solitary, the rabbits were a threat mostly because they were a surprise and would happily attack people who weren’t ready for battle. Serenity’s team had no trouble with them at all.
The surprise was that each one had a tiny monster core; Serenity could feel it whenever he checked the bodies. They were the first true overland monster Serenity had seen on Earth, so they invested the time to find where they came from. It might not have been possible for anyone who couldn’t simply map the ley lines, but for Serenity it was simple to find the nexuses; they just had to visit all of them to find out what was there.
When they found a dungeon called the Naked Snake, Serenity was expecting something risque, but it was instead a dungeon full of puns and what Serenity could only call “slapstick comedy”. It wasn’t very coherent if you simply powered through it, so at first it seemed more like a psychedelic expedition, but Rissa recognized what was going on after a few references to the more well-known skits and they started to work their way through in what was probably the intended manner.
Serenity couldn’t believe he’d missed it. The Killer Rabbit was definitely the first clue.
The Killer Rabbit turned out to be the final encounter, and the only one that actually required combat. It was no stronger than the ones they’d fought outside the dungeon.
When Serenity Identified the reward, he couldn’t help but laugh.
Holy Hand Grenade (Imitation)
This “grenade” should be thrown three seconds after pulling the pin. It is especially effective against rabbits and other unholy beings.
It would probably have been useful against the djinn (demon?) that Serenity had killed to save Rube, but he doubted it would have been even close to fatal. After Katya examined the grenade and called it “interesting only in the way it defines its targets”, Serenity decided to donate it to whoever in town ended up getting stuck dealing with the rabbits; it simply wasn’t worth the time to Tier Three people.
The problem with the dungeon was simply that it hadn’t been found; it was at a triple nexus point and needed to be cleared routinely. Without that, it was releasing a rabbit a day to deal with its overflow problem.
The dungeon core was happy to work with Gaia, and even happier to hear that it might be cleared more often. It said it had a great number of jokes to share and was working on more.
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The next destination was in Canada; they’d already managed to close all but one of their invasion portals, but the one that was left simply wouldn’t close no matter what they did, even though it was otherwise unattended. There had been no known trouble in the area, which was worrying but at the same time common. Still, the fact that it wouldn’t close was weird; every other portal would close fairly easily with the appropriate application of high explosives, but this portal didn’t let anything through and didn’t even seem to react to the explosives.
It was possible that someone who knew explosives might have been able to figure out where something was wrong if they’d examined the room early on, but by the time Serenity was there, everything seemed damaged; what was going on wasn’t obvious from the damage, at least to him. They’d tried to minimize the damage to everything other than the portal.
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The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple: the portal didn’t seem to work or close because it wasn’t the portal. When Serenity examined it, he understood the problem; even to his eyes, it looked just like a portal, and there was no use of Mind-Affinity magic.
Even Katya and Ita were fooled.
The only way he was able to tell that it wasn’t a portal was the fact that the mana was wrong. It was present, so someone with Basic Mana Sight would still be fooled; only Serenity’s ability to determine Affinities told him something was wrong.
It was a true illusion, and a good one. Serenity thought it actually used Illusion Affinity, as well; finding that was unusual at low Tier, and Serenity wondered exactly who had come through the portal. He searched the area; since he could feel the portal, it was obvious it was nearby, but it was invisible.
It turned out to be in a supply closet that was only accessible from a different room - on the other side of an ordinary interior wall, but not accessible from the room with the apparent portal. It was clever, especially since the portal was concealed behind an illusionary false wall and protected on both sides with wards. The wall between the two areas was damaged by the efforts to destroy the portal, but the actual portal was not.
When Serenity touched the spell to dismiss it, he realized yet another difference between this invasion portal and all of the others he’d handled: it was being maintained by a person (or more likely a group of people) instead of being cast by an item. Worse than that, he recognized the way the spell was formed.
“Caessus Imperium,” Serenity muttered. “What the hell? They know they can’t-”
They couldn’t invade for about ten years, until Earth came out of its protected time, but did that mean they couldn’t send agents?
Voice? Why is there a Caessus Imperium invasion portal? They’re a Great Faction.
[The portal does not belong to the Caessus Imperium, nor is the person who came through it a citizen of the Imperium or under their control or employment]
Then why -
[There are Imperium-trained mages who are not affiliated with the Imperial government]
So … rebels? Or catspaws? Deniable spies?
The Voice didn’t answer; Serenity wasn’t surprised. It had already let some information slip out that it probably shouldn’t have when it talked about the person who came through the portal; it told Serenity that it was a sapient individual, rather than a group. It probably also wasn’t something like the Hegemon Worms, though that was less certain.
There was little Serenity could do other than close down the portal, then make sure to warn his Canadian liaison and his parents.
It made the other ‘abandoned’ portals seem even more sinister, but Serenity was confident that there were already people looking for whoever had come through them. His parents were careful about what they talked about, but he knew from what stories his parents did tell that there were people who were concerned about everything.
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Lex Rothmer unexpectedly met his son at the small airport they landed at in Portland. It was unexpected for Serenity, at least; he hadn’t been told his father would be there. He was led to a SUV with only his father - in the back - and a driver, while the others were led to a different vehicle.
Lex seemed stressed. To an outsider he probably looked calm and collected, but Serenity knew his father. It was something about how he held himself and his tone of voice; Serenity had never been able to pin it down, but he knew his father had work issues that were bothering him.
He’d never talked about them with Thomas, so Serenity was stunned when the first words his father said after “It’s good to see you, Serenity,” once they got into the vehicle were “I don’t expect to be the Secretary of Defense for much longer. With luck, I won’t end up in prison.”
Lex leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “I don’t think I will, but it’s entirely possible I’ll have to deal with a court case.”
Serenity took a moment to figure out what he was thinking. His father had always been so careful; why was he talking about prison? “What happened?”
“I authorized the destruction of the second-to-last portal within our territory and changed the rules of engagement to designate the giant starfish that came out of it as enemy combatants. Under any other President it would be fine, but under President Stewart …” Serenity’s father shook his head, with his eyes still closed. “I’ve been expecting to be fired at any time since the events near Denver, but I couldn’t wait any longer for him to make up his mind. Another ship was lost to the starfish this morning, and this time we didn’t manage to rescue everyone.”
There was pain in Lex’s voice as he continued, but also acceptance. “It’s my job to prevent that. I knew it was possible, but I put off doing anything until it was too late because I knew what it would cost. Well, it’s worth it now; there’s only one more thing I need to do before I’m fired.”
Serenity wanted to comfort his father, but didn’t know how. He knew his father had been tremendously pleased when he was chosen as Secretary of Defense, and now he was losing that. Probably at least; Serenity hadn’t heard anything about it yet, and he knew that either Aide or Janice would bring it to his attention if such a thing were announced. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he took the breadcrumb his father had left. “What do you still have to do?”
Lex opened his eyes and turned to look at his son. “I have to ask you to do something difficult, maybe impossible. I need you to tell me if it’s impossible. If it is, I have a solution. It’s one that I don’t want to take, but I will if I have to. It’s better than sending you into an impossible situation, or even one that’s overly dangerous. I wouldn’t even consider this if you hadn’t shown…”
Serenity’s father stopped and shook his head while a small smile formed. “If you hadn’t shown yourself to be more capable than I’d ever imagined.”