The Sterath were already alerted, and the second house - the one with the child - was quite a distance from the fifth house. That meant there was no reason not to call for help for the Sterath child. Serenity debated how best to handle it and decided that it would be best if he worked through Lieutenant Smith.

Call Lieutenant Smith

Three rings later, Serenity heard the answer. “Smith.” This time there wasn’t a lot of noise on the other end.

“It’s Serenity.” Not that that should be a surprise. Where to begin? “I have - I found a child, a Sterath child. Pretty badly injured; I think he snuck through their portal, and they beat him up. He was hiding in a closet. Probably some broken bones, and it looks like old injuries as well.”

There was a long pause before Lieutenant Smith replied. “Not exactly what I was expecting you to say. I assume the other kangaroos weren’t exactly happy with you taking the child away from them?”

“Some of them are probably still alive.” It hadn’t been that long, after all.

The pause this time was shorter. “If I said that to the department shrink, I’d probably get put on a leave of absence. Send me the address; I’ll get some people out there. At least an ambulance for the child.”

Serenity started to hang up, then remembered that he hadn’t mentioned the situation three houses down. “Make sure they don’t get too close to the other houses; the big one three over from that one has a lot of Sterath still in it, and they know they’ve lost their secrecy. I don’t know that they’d attack, but…”

There was no movement on the street other than the police and ambulance the entire time they waited for darkness to fall. There was also no movement from the fifth house.

The police limited themselves to the first two houses. Serenity didn’t go near them once the child was taken away; he was the only thing of importance left there as far as Serenity cared.

While Katya, Raz, and Rissa watched the house with the Sterath in it, Serenity investigated the last house, knowing Rissa could call him back with her telepathy if the Sterath started to move.

Like the fourth house, it was empty.

They were going to have to face the second half of the Sterath group all together, instead of spread out. That only made getting into the house where there were limited sight lines and restricted passages more important. It was the largest house in the group, which was probably why the Sterath had chosen it as their last refuge, but once they were inside it would still limit how many they could be attacked by at once. If nothing else, Serenity knew that Katya and he could make a barrier of bodies if they had to.

Not that he really expected to need to.

When Serenity returned to the others, the sky was beginning to darken, but it wasn’t dark yet. They’d been at this for about four hours, which meant Janice would need to head off to get food for Ita in about an hour -

Ita!

It also meant that Ita had been sleeping for hours. That was probably long enough for her to recover.

Call Janice

Janice answered the phone almost immediately. “Serenity? What do you need?”

“Can you head to the hotel and see if Ita’s awake yet? We could use her help, and I think she’s probably rested by now.” Serenity hoped she was rested, at least. A few hours ought to be enough.

“Sure. I’ll pick up food for everyone while I’m gone; anything else?” Janice sounded happy to have something to do.

“That sounds good.” Serenity could take the time while she was gone to switch his gear to his chimera form instead of his human form; it wasn’t like they were trying to fool the Sterath anymore, after all. Once again, Serenity noted how annoyed he was to have only one set of gear.

As he was turning to walk away, Serenity realized there was an easy way to fix that if gear was available at an even halfway decent price. “Oh, and once you finish that, could you look around and see if there’s any magic armor and weapons available at a reasonable price? It doesn’t have to be a nice dungeon drop, Tutorial stuff would be fine. If that won’t work, maybe I can get something custom made…”

Janice frowned. “There probably won’t be, but I’ll look. Last time I checked, anything that was good was selling for a pretty high price. I’ll try, but don’t expect too much.”

Serenity nodded. “I’m looking for a secondary set, so something that’s being sold because they’re buying better now would be fine.”

Once it was dark enough, the entire group, including Ita, quietly made their way up to the front door. Serenity went first; in Void Sovereign form, he was simply a moving patch of shadow and no one was likely to notice that. Oddly enough, Raz seemed to be the next-best at sneaking; he went second, followed by Katya.

Once Katya was well on her way, Rissa and Ita started up the driveway together; neither of them was particularly good at sneaking, but they did the best they could. There was a minivan in the driveway, which helped, but they still wouldn’t have been able to make it without being seen if it was daylight out.

As it was, they didn’t quite succeed.

While there was very little light from the Sun, the moon was half full and shed enough light to see if the eyes were adjusted; unfortunately, that still wasn’t enough for Katya to avoid kicking a pebble on the driveway. The sudden noise drew Sterath attention; she hurried under the overhang, but Rissa and Ita hadn’t reached it yet.

“RUN!” Serenity shouted as the Sterath started throwing out beams of light. It made him wish he had a sniper - gun or bow, he didn’t care - because they had to be lighting up their own position even more than they were lighting the ground, but he didn’t have a way to take advantage of it.

The light was quickly followed by firebolts. They were strong enough to singe the grass, but not to set it on fire.

There was nothing Serenity could do to protect them; they were already running as quickly as they could -

No, that wasn’t quite true. He could distract the Sterath. The best way to do that was by killing them. Yes, Rissa and Ita would probably catch up to him before he got to the mages, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t work.

Serenity turned to the front door of the house to find Raz already working on the lock. “Can’t believe the problem is that the damn thing sticks. This lock is garbage but it’s heavy garbage.”

The front wasn’t fast enough. It probably wouldn’t be fast enough even if they were already inside; he needed to deal with the mages on the second floor, not the people on the first. He needed to get up the stairs; that was the plan if something went wrong, after all. It wasn’t the best plan they’d ever come up with, but that was why they’d split the group up and gone one at a time.

Well, who said he had to go up inside?

Serenity stepped back to the edge of the overhang. It was only about eight feet to the edge of the roofline; surely he could manage that. With his height and arm length, it wasn’t that much of a jump.

Serenity bounced upwards and grabbed the roof with both hands; his claws dug into the shingles, tearing through them, but giving him a good grip on the board at the edge. He pulled himself straight up, levering his body up until he could get a foot on the roof. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as difficult as it still seemed like it should be. He had to remember that he wasn’t only as strong as Thomas now; he’d adapted well to his increased strength, but it was sometimes still surprising.

All of the mages targeted Serenity and he took a handful of firebolts to the face. He closed his eyes, but even when they hit him directly, they didn’t do more than singe his hair. He’d expected them to hurt, but it felt more like the beginning of a mild sunburn than an actual attack.

Fortunately, there was no force to the firebolts, just heat. Serenity was able to pull himself the rest of the way onto the roof. As he did, he called down to the others, “They aren’t hurting me. I’ll take care of things up here, keep their attention down there so all I have to deal with is mages!”

It wouldn’t work as well as it did in the first house, since he wasn’t taking them on before they noticed him, but if he could keep the attention of all of the mages and still not take any damage it would be fine. Serenity had known they would do less damage to him than anyone else, but this was even less than he’d predicted.

Before he could enter, he needed to clear some space. Serenity tossed his ax at one of the Sterath in the near window, then the other. Two quick steps took Serenity to the open window that now had a space above a pair of bodies; he flung himself through it following a third toss of his ax.

As he tried to catch himself on the other side of the window, his foot landed on one of the Sterath mages he’d just killed and instead of a graceful landing, he cartwheeled into a mage that was still alive, knocking him down and then landing more or less on top of him.

Instead of attempting to use more magic, the mage realized that wasn’t working and reached up and bearhugged Serenity. For all that he was a mage, Sterath weren’t weak to begin with and this mage was no exception. The hug was almost certainly strong enough to hurt a normal human, but for Serenity it was only confining - which was more than bad enough. Serenity couldn’t afford to be locked down.

Serenity couldn’t use his ax with his arms restrained, but he could still use his claws. When he tried to scratch the Sterath’s arms to get him to let go, his claws didn’t penetrate the armor.

So he did the same thing to his claws that he’d been doing to his ax; they were a weapon, Infused Strike would work on them. Unlike Plasma Affinity, a Death Affinity Infused Strike would only add the damage that came with the ability, but it was dirt cheap and had some other nice side effects; more than that, it was what he’d been using because it was so cheap and cheap was important when facing a horde.

As he struggled, other Sterath were attacking him with magic. Serenity could feel some of the impacts, but they were still mostly fire-based and they did little damage to him; his opponent was actually being hurt worse by the occasional miss than Serenity was.

“Kill him! I can’t hold him for long, stab him while I’ve got him!”

Serenity couldn’t spare the time to do anything about it other than to be thankful that no other Sterath was attacking with melee; he was tough, but his defenses weren’t nearly as good as his resistances. If he didn’t get out of this soon, though, they would be.

Serenity scratched at the Sterath with his claws again; this time, they barely penetrated the armor but it was enough to make the Sterath loosen his grip. Serenity squirmed and twisted; his right hand slid to his opponent’s elbow and he slipped his claws into the space between armor plates.

A moment later, he was free. The Sterath couldn’t hold him very well with only one functional elbow. Serenity called his ax to his hand and smashed it into the Sterath mage - who didn’t go down.

No wonder he’d seemed smarter than the others. He must be a higher Tier; that meant that he was older and more experienced.