Our odd group made our way into the hills, and then into the hills. We passed through an external gate into carved halls, much more durable looking than Fluffy’s little tunnels. We had to walk our horses, and my head was pretty close to brushing the support beams of the tunnels, but overall it was much more comfortable as well. By dwarvish standards, they had pretty high ceilings.

It didn’t take too long to reach our destination, where Sir Kalman was waiting with some other paladins and a dwarven militia. “Good, you’re here,” he said as we arrived. He held up a hand. “We’ll have time for a proper greeting later. I was hoping you could help deal with a rogue portal that’s popped up.”

“I know a few things about portals,” I nodded. “Where’s it go?”

“To a bunch of rocks,” Sir Kalman said. “Angry ones.”

“The plane of earth, probably,” I said. “I assume that means you knew about the earth elemental situation, then. We encountered a few small ones on the road.”

“We tried to stop them all,” he said. “But there’s only so much we can do against things that move through the earth itself.”

Sarpedon nodded. “They were small enough town militias should be able to take care of them, if there were more.”

“Alright,” Sir Kalman said. “Now how about we introduce people? I’m Kalman.”

I guess everyone but Midnight was new. “This is Swiss Arms.”

“One of the higher ups in the Power Brigade,” Midnight commented.

“Khithae,” I continued. “She specializes in technology. Zeb was working with us and we ended up with Fluffy. Then these three are Kendrux, Evans, and Warble.”

“Warton.”

“They’re Martians,” I concluded. All eight of us had Translation active because it was impractical to do otherwise with our mixed company. Well, technically I didn’t need it, but it was still two uses of Multicasting either way so leaving people out would have been inefficient. And obviously Fluffy didn’t speak, so he wasn’t counted.

“Alright,” Sir Kalman nodded. “We’d like everyone who can fight to come with me. This group is going to remain here to keep things as secure as we can. There’s another bunch watching the portal and swapping out.”

I felt like the hill dwarves here should have had someone who could deal with portals… but it wasn’t their fault if they couldn’t. It would be the fault of whoever was trying to keep people from visiting.

Khithae, Zeb, and Fluffy were left behind as they had little to contribute to fighting earth elementals. They should be safer with the other group.

We arrived at the portal- a solid fifteen feet across, just hanging out in the middle of a wider cavern that hadn’t been smoothed out yet. Fortunately it wasn’t in the middle of a city, but if I read the signs right we also weren’t far from the nearest.

We were lucky, as it was under assault when we got there. Some bigger earth elementals, clashing with dwarves carrying tower shields and warhammers. Ten foot tall behemoths of earth and stone. I was reminded of the first time I saw Great Girl, throwing a truck at something quite similar. Well, she threw the truck back at one of them, but it was pretty similar.

It would have been nice to have her around to help with them, but then again I would get a bigger slice of the action this way. I aimed for the upper torso of the biggest one I saw, readying a Sonic Lance. The spell exploded hunks out of it and sent it stumbling back, and the dwarves didn’t fail to capitalize. They stomped forward, cracking apart its limbs.

Test successful. Not quite capable of taking out a big one in a single shot, but close enough. The others also found their own targets, though it was more difficult to shoot the smaller ones past our allies. That seemed especially true for the Martians, who were even shorter than the dwarves. Their wide bodies and large shields made them quite difficult to circumvent. That said, the smaller elementals went down to the blunt and spiky parts of the dwarves' warhammers fairly quickly.

As it turned out, having Khithae around would have been handy, as many of the tower shields were cracked from the force of incoming blows. She could have cast Repair… but sometimes, that was how choices went.

“Alright, we’re going to press our way up to the portal,” Sir Kalman declared.

“Should we step through?” asked some of the dwarven militia.

Sir Kalman looked at me, and I shook my head. “I’ll need to start closing the portal right away. We don’t want to risk anyone getting caught.” It wouldn’t be long enough for anyone to get the benefits from extradimensional travel anyway.

As the dwarves stomped forward, more elementals came to stop them, including a truly large fellow who had to duck to get through the portal, his shoulders barely fitting. Well, at least it had a lot of body to target. Taking stock of my mana reserves, I should be able to blast a few more Sonic Lances out while still having enough in reserve to take care of any portal.

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It would have been different if I needed to cast defensive buffs on people, but with so many well armored individuals in front of us it wasn’t a huge concern. Until the big guy sunk into the ground. A bunch of people chopped at it as it did so, since it had to move quite a distance to be fully submerged, but it was clearly quite durable.

“It’s moving this way!” Swiss Arms warned, her hand held up to her face- maybe to activate special sensors? That was useful information, because strangely enough the big guy wasn’t leaving obvious ripples. Instead it was much better at keeping things steady. “Scatter!” she ordered.

Well, I had no reason to not listen to someone who knew things. I steadied Midnight on my shoulder and ran off to one side. An instant later, the earth elemental sprang out of the floor pretty much beneath our back line.

However, our back line included several members of the Martian mob and Swiss Arms herself so they weren’t particularly concerned. Their guns and laser beams worked just as well up close, and they continued to lay into the thing.

Midnight and I peppered it with a lot of Water Blasts- trying to soften it up, especially its legs and lower torso. Sir Kalman had made his way back through the lines of dwarves, and a long hammer he held glowing with light and magic. I had no idea if holy smiting power worked on rocks, but hammers certainly did. The huge earth elemental toppled over with one leg cracked, then was set upon by a dozen dwarves holding it in place.

“Time to close the portal,” I said to Midnight. There were still dwarves watching the opening, and Midnight and I stood off to the side of the portal instead of where it opened to. I suddenly had thoughts about portals as a thing, but I focused on what was necessary in the short term.

Together, Midnight and I channeled mana into Alter Portal. Immediately, the fifteen foot tall opening began to shrink. But even as we did so, I felt something resisting. Well, not like a person necessarily. It was just… heavier? Something like that.

When it got down to about ten feet across, a few more little guys came through. Everyone else could handle that, because as much as I would have liked to fight them I felt I needed all of my mana for closing the portal. One burst wasn’t enough from Midnight and I, which was ten mana each. We took a few moments to compose ourselves for the next push.

A huge pillar of rock reached through the portal- bigger than the arms of the largest before. Great time to test portal safety. As it turned out, since the portal wanted to stay open it was also fairly safe. Which is to say it resisted for a few moments before snapping closed, leaving a ton or so of rock crashing to the ground below. The dwarves smashed it to make certain it wasn’t going to get up and move.

“So do you want the good news or the bad news?” I asked Sir Kalman.

“Just say it in the most useful order,” he grunted.

“The portal will stay closed for a while…” I said. “But it’s already trying to exist again. Also I got another level.”

He sighed. “How long?”

“Hmm…” I tried to sense it. It was a point too small to be visible now. “If it’s like this… a week or a month before you have to worry about anything sizable coming through?”

“You can’t permanently close it?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe with practice?” I shook my head. “This sort of thing would be a ‘natural portal’,” I explained. “Which means it might fade away on its own, or might last forever. But it wants to be here. I might suggest befriending someone who can talk to earth elementals and ask them to remain on their plane.”

“Do you think they’re angry at us for something?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I didn’t get the feeling they were saying anything. They’re supposed to have a language, though.” I furrowed my brow. “Other good news, I don’t currently sense any other portals nearby.”

Sir Kalman sighed again. “What do you think we should do about this?”

“I imagine everyone wants this to be closed. Talk to an archmage. Surely Granbold will do something about this. Or seek out local help. Unfortunately, I can’t stay here forever. I have other duties and it won’t be active often enough to be worth staying around.”

“Do you know any way to make it not ‘want’ to be here?” he asked.

“You’d have to find the cause. Which might require traveling through. Which would affect who you can ask for help, and I couldn’t guarantee people would easily get back.” My Portal Theory book said a lot, but every natural portal was just a bit different. “Could be something on this side too. Find any overly large diamonds or anything?”

“I’ll look into it,” Sir Kalman said. “But I believe these tunnels have been around for a while and were stable.”

We left behind a group to watch the area, to monitor how quickly the portal might reform. I was only extrapolating, after all. The locals would need to make sure.

Along the way, I wondered about a lot of things. Old planes cutting themselves off from the material plane. The Gate here had been pretty difficult to make- was that because of Mars, here, or both? But if there were permanent portals somewhere between here and Earth- which seemed to still be the case even if I didn’t know where they were- then it was odd. Portals were both easy and hard to make.

Someone needed to go to Adrela or Ethus or something. Scrying hadn’t told me that much useful information. Maybe the Order or someone could train up some good mages. Between Earth, here, and Celmoth I was already quite busy with my travels. Hopefully Mars wouldn’t be on that in the near future.

“We need to get back to Earth,” Swiss Arms commented.

I nodded. “Midnight and I will need a bit of rest first, and we should pick somewhere out of the way. Going all the way back to the Order is unnecessary, but we should be prepared for the Gate to be extra difficult. Or we could try it right now and potentially add two hours to our departure.”

“Let’s go for whatever’s more stable,” she said. “... Ugh, we’re going to have to figure out what to do with the mole now.”

“Shouldn’t we just get rid of it?” Kendrux asked.

“Nooooo~” Zeb called out from in the distance.

“It’s part of her power now,” Swiss Arms said. “The issue being it’s evidence of us being on Mars.”

“... Maybe Fluffy could stay here?” I tilted my head. “Zeb too.”

Swiss Arms frowned. “Would it be easier to explain Zeb’s disappearance? Ugh, this is Extra’s headache to deal with. We should just bring everything back.”

“We can at least Disguise Fluffy though,” Midnight pointed out.

“As what, a bear?” I asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“What’s a bear?” Zeb asked, having scurried over during the conversation. “I wanna know! Is it adorable?”

“Some of them,” I said. “You’ll see when we do the thing. Since we’d just waste mana if we did it now.”

Our half-day trip to Mars was turning into more of half a week, but in a way it was less suspicious than being out of the public eye only during the incident on Mars. Whether that would stand up to scrutiny was a question for people whose jobs it was to be actually subtle.