The person who asked the first question managed to speak again before anyone else. “Why should we trust anything you say? You’ve already given up your humanity, how do we know you haven’t also given up your-.”

His voice stopped suddenly.

Serenity started to respond, but felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for the mute, Karen. Please limit your questions to ones that are relevant. Serenity’s loyalty has already been discussed in other forums and is not appropriate for this one.”

Serenity wasn’t sure what to think about that. They’d spent time discussing his loyalty?

There was a pause, then someone else on the teleconference spoke up. “What can you tell us about magic? Right now, all I have is that it can melt buildings and be used instead of a gun. That’s not very helpful. How long can it last? How much damage can it do, and how can we stop it?”

Serenity smiled. That was the sort of question he’d expected and was prepared for. “If you can think of it, magic can do it. Mostly, though, people don’t. Most magic is very straightforward. If someone’s using it to melt buildings - well, that’s probably all they can do that day; that’s a really big spell, and magic is limited. There are no hard and fast rules, but anyone over a certain power will be limited because there just isn’t enough mana here yet, so I can make some estimates.”

Serenity had a hard reminder that people would be limited; he still felt tired and drained from his own mana and essence leakage, but the only way he knew to stop it was to find a higher-mana area.

“The most common attack magic is fire. It’s definitely not the only one, but it’s by far the most common, probably because it’s easy to make fire destructive. Once it’s out of the mage’s control, though, it’s just fire - anything you can do that would stop fire can stop it. As for other magic, anything really is possible. The easier it is to think of, the easier it usually is to do, and you have to understand something in order to do it well.”

It would’ve been nice if he could say something like “a fireball spell covers this much area”, but that wasn’t how they worked. Well, it might be for someone who relied completely on their Path Skills, but even then there were a lot of Path Skills. Was there anything else useful he could say?

Targeting!

“Magic has to be aimed. It’s possible to disrupt a spell while it’s being cast by removing what the mage is aiming at. Some spells can be cast on areas, those are hard to block visually, but they also tend to cost a lot more mana. Speaking of interrupting spells, that can be done too, depending on how the spell is made. A mage that’s speaking or gesturing is probably using a learned pattern; those can be interrupted a lot more easily than Path Skills, which tend to be triggered and then go. Path Skills are usually preferred in combat, but they’re not very flexible. Once you know what a Path Skill does, that’s it.”

The man who asked the question about magic sounded curious. “So, there are different types of magic, and they behave differently. I heard Path Skills, which are rigid but fast and learned spells which are more flexible but slower. Is there anything else?”

Serenity must not have explained learned spells well; they were also rigid. “Learned spells are slower but you can know more of them since you don’t have to have a Path to get them.” Maybe that was more flexible?

“Past that, there are spells that are built on the fly and rituals. Those are both extremely flexible and much slower. Probably all we’ll see here for a long time is rituals; building spells on the fly is difficult and takes a lot of practice. Hm. You mentioned melted buildings? That sounds a lot like ritual magic. Rituals can be used to gather more mana than a mage would normally be able to handle.”

“I assume magic can be used to make people stronger or faster or tougher, maybe even change shape?” The question came from one of the two civilians Serenity didn't recognize in the room with him.

Serenity nodded. “Yes. That’s usually Path skills; unless you have a specific Affinity for it, affecting people can be tough. Life affinity is the most common way to get most of those things, though going faster is more often under Time. Still, they almost have to be a Path Skill to be cast fast enough to actually use in combat.”

The woman who asked the question smiled. “Then is there a way we could enhance our materiel to compensate?”

Serenity thought for a moment. “That … that sounds more like a Path or maybe a group of Paths. A Path to be able to use technology better, to get more out of it, and a Path to be able to build magic into it? There is a Technology Affinity, so it ought to be possible.”

Her smile widened. “I’ll take that. Are force fields possible?”

Serenity blinked. “Well, you can do that with magic. It’s not common until higher Tier, but it’s possible, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible with technology?”

The questions about magic and what was and wasn’t possible continued for an hour. Most of the questions were very specific, but Serenity could see why most of them were asked. He wasn’t sure about the question about whether or not magic would make trees grow taller and sturdier; they would be, but how was that important?

The question about different types of magical sight made far more sense. Serenity had the feeling that the military would be doing a lot more exercises in night time and other poor visibility conditions; magical methods to deal with those existed, but they were either draining to a mage or to items if they were to cover everyone.

“What do they want? How can we get them to leave?”

“It depends,” Serenity admitted. “Some are here to conquer or die, others simply to get as much as they can cheaply. So some will have to be killed to the last man, while a sufficient show of force may be enough for others. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to set up trade with any, but that’s possible too.”

Would setting up trading relations with invaders count for the Voice? Serenity knew that until the situation with the invaders was handled, the Voice locked out the travel functions on town crystals. Did that mean all of the invaders’ portals had to be closed, or was simply making them no longer an expanding threat enough?

Serenity wasn’t sure. He didn’t remember it coming up the last time, and when he’d been doing the invading himself, no one had ever tried to set up friendly relationships with undead invaders.

“It may not always be easy to tell which is which,” Serenity added. “I’m not sure how to tell.”

Another voice spoke from the speakers. He sounded angry. “They’re attacking us. Killing ‘em’s good enough for me.”

Serenity didn’t have a response for that. In many ways, he agreed with the man.

His father’s voice sounded warm and amused. “Fortunately or unfortunately, that level of policy’s not up to us. What I want to know is how do we find them? Either the portals or the beings that come through them.”

Serenity’s mind flashed to the image Tzintkra had shown him when it helped him choose where to go. “Portals emit something. I’m not sure what it is, but that’s how I got to DC, I had help to follow a signal. I think it might be a magical signal of some sort, but it seems likely they emit something else.”

Serenity knew that he could do a divination ritual and find them, but that wasn’t even remotely scalable to the size of a planet. He’d have to take days, maybe weeks, to find the one in the DC area unless he got lucky.

Knowing it should be near where he arrived would cut that time a lot. He might even be able to find it in a few hours with the right set of maps.

Wait. The portal was still open or he wouldn’t have been able to use it as a waypoint. “Have you found the one near here yet? It ought to be somewhere to the East. I know I didn’t land at it; I didn’t see it, but it ought to be nearby. I think the first address I got was 5th and Mimosa?”

The sudden eruption of talking told Serenity that no, they hadn’t found it. He had the feeling that they hadn’t even been sure it was really there. After a moment, it disappeared as Karen muted everyone and the only people Serenity could hear were the people in the room with him.

A ding noise from the screen told Serenity that people were using the text chat, probably to say that they didn’t have audio anymore. He was grateful that his future didn’t hold much in the way of virtual meetings.

He was going to have to make sure that didn’t change. Somehow. Management was not what he wanted to do with his life.

What did he want to do with his life? He’d saved Rissa and seemed to be well on his way to doing what needed to be done to save Earth. Once that was done, what did he want to do?

Serenity shook the question off. He had at least ten years before any questions that long range would matter. He needed to deal with what was in front of himself first.

“How many people could they have put through the portal by now? We haven’t had anything like what happened in London here. There’s been no sign of anything.” Serenity’s father looked at him, clearly hoping for a better answer than Serenity thought he had.

“How many can hide, then? I can’t think it would be that many. Sterath shouldn’t hide well. They look more or less like, well, like kangaroos. The warrior class is armored. If we can find them…” Serenity paused. Did he really have to handle it personally? He wasn’t sure it was required; he was allowed to have help, after all.

A woman’s voice spoke from the television. It sounded like the same person who’d done the initial introduction. “Mr. Rothmer, I’ve been reading the chat, and apparently there’s been a string of kangaroo sightings reported on the east side. They’ve been getting dismissed as a hoax.”

Lex Rothmer sighed and shook his head. “We need a better way to get that sort of thing looked into. A matter for tomorrow.” He looked directly at the camera. “I’m ending the conference here. Many of you have things you need to take care of with this news, especially those of you who are liasoning with the local police.”

As everyone stood up to leave and the computer shut down, Serenity turned to his father. “Aren’t you going to-?” He wasn’t sure what he was asking.

His father smiled. “I’m going to let the President know, and then I’m going to have dinner with you and your mother. It is very specifically not my duty to do the planning right now; everyone already has their contingency orders. I’ll likely be up all night seeing what happens, but right now there’s time.”