Helios swore. How were monkeys so powerful? Yes, there were a lot of them, but they were just monkeys! They were less than a third his height and far less than that in mass, there was no way they should be holding up against him in physical combat, yet they were. Fine, he was facing them four and five at a time and winning, but still!

Helios was a god! This was ridiculous! He hadn’t even found the portal yet; he was going to have to kill all the monkeys just to have enough peace to search the ruin.

He Called on the Sun to roast these unbelievers and while some collapsed, it wasn’t enough.

Worse than that, it caught the attention of some on the far side of the long-abandoned city. He couldn’t face them all at once.

He was going to have to find a place to hide. How did this happen?

Helios ran, then dodged into one of the many cliffside dwellings. Unlike many, the wall was still mostly intact, which gave him a good chance to keep other monkeys from coming in. Unfortunately, it also meant it wasn’t open to the sky, which meant no sunlight. That was a problem.

Helios killed the first three monkeys that came after him with a simple sunbolt, then slid through the narrow passage into the next room. Many of these old ruins had more than one entrance; he needed to find the exit. It would likely be in the sunlight.

Ita, Raz, and Katya had no idea what to order for breakfast; Katya was simply unfamiliar with the food types, but figured it out after some back-and-forth translation. Raz was only a little harder; he expected meat for breakfast. He was quite happy with the ham and eggs option, though he did ask for extra ham.

Ita had never actually ordered food at a restaurant. It wasn’t how her Clan did it; you ate what was served. There was no foolishness about liking it or not; either the local subLord or the cook set the menu, and that’s what there was. She’d treated the meals Janice brought her the same way: they were what there was to eat, so she ate it.

Her meal of “Uh, I have no idea, can you just get me the same thing Rissa’s having?” was just being served when Mr. Williams walked into the hotel’s restaurant.

Serenity noticed Mr. Williams before they were spotted. He seemed anxious; his fingers were twitching by his side as he searched the room. “Eat quickly. I think we’re about to be told we need to hurry.”

Serenity suited his actions to his words and finished most of his meal before Mr. Williams found them and made his way to their table. “It’s good to see you’re downstairs already. Are you about ready to head out?”

“Is there a hurry?” Serenity could already guess that there was, but it was better to be clear about things like that.

Mr. Williams glanced around the room. Serenity noticed that he seemed to be looking at the other people there; his eyes lingered on a woman who was openly watching their table. “Nothing out of the ordinary, but I’d still like to get us moving as quickly as possible.”

Serenity took that as “Yes, but it’s not urgent enough to be worth causing panic.” He might be wrong, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt anything to hurry; he was glad he’d brought everything down with him when they came to breakfast.

Finishing breakfast didn’t take long, and they’d already given their room number when they arrived. “Anyone need to head back to their room for anything?” Serenity glanced at the others, but everyone seemed happy with what they were carrying.

The hotel was about a block from the evacuation zone, but it was still faster to drive than to walk to the probable portal location. Serenity was not surprised when he heard fighting before they were particularly close. He glanced up at Mr. Williams, who was acting as their driver as well as their liaison. “Get us close and we’ll take it from there.”

“There may not be much left to fight when we get there,” Mr. Williams warned Serenity. “These probes don’t usually last long. I think they’re testing our alertness as much as anything else. You’d better let me lead; friendly fire isn’t.”

Serenity frowned, but couldn’t argue; the fact that they were coming from away from the portal should make it obvious they were reinforcements, but mistakes happened when you didn’t have time to think. Most of his team wasn’t human even if only two were obvious about it, and they were all going to be armored more like the invaders than like soldiers. Serenity had intended to stay in his human form, but he also hadn’t expected to be fighting; should he shift to his chimera form?

When they halted, Serenity hopped out and made his decision: he’d stay in his human form for now. It was faster than shifting, and the only ranged attacks that should come from the opposing side should be magical. His resistances would do more than his armor. It meant giving up on his normal weapons, since they were all in his Quick Belt, but he’d cope. He had another option: he had the spells he’d infused into some rocks on the flight; they’d seemed like a better bet than more ordinary weapons to take across the border.

They hadn’t even been asked what they were carrying, much less requested to give it up.

Serenity suspected that wasn’t an oversight; after all, weapons were relatively easy to smuggle, now, if you could get your hands on a Tutorial backpack. They didn’t soulbind, so they could definitely be searched, but the normal imaging machines were unlikely to work. The problem would fade for a while as they wore out, but Serenity knew that it wouldn’t ever completely go away; they were common enough elsewhere that he was sure someone would figure out how to make them soon.

Mr. Williams was slower to hop out of the van; it looked like he’d waited for everyone else to be out before he got out.

As he followed Mr. Williams around the corner of the building, Serenity fished a handful of pebbles out of his pocket. He used the time to sort them by stored spell; some of them, like the Sustained Light spell he’d hashed together, wouldn’t be useful. It was daylight outside; there was plenty of light. Others, like the Minor Confusion Bomb, might be.

They were really pretty close to the fight; only two skyscrapers separated the one they’d parked behind from the one that seemed to host the enemy. Mr. Williams picked up his pace, so Serenity matched it.

It was a strange sight; there were at least twenty soldiers holding what looked like riot shields blocking the attacks of three people with swords; Serenity could see four bodies, as well. Shots rang out from the other buildings; they seemed to target the mages in the back. One fell, but even as he rose back to his feet and drank a potion the other shots seemed to spark off shields on him as well as the others. Serenity could tell that they weren’t even Tier Three; that meant there was no way they should all have personal shields.

They were halfway there when he saw it: one of the mages wasn’t throwing any offensive magic. Her attention was entirely on her teammates. She seemed to be taking the least fire, probably because she seemed like a lesser threat. “Can you get a message to the snipers?”

“Once we get to the command post. It’s not much farther.” Mr. Williams slowed to a brisk walk as they neared a corner, then turned between two buildings. “This way.”

Serenity followed him into the building; it looked like they’d set up a local command post with some walls between them and the action, but there was an entire bank of monitors showing different views of the situation. “Tell them to concentrate on the one in orange. She’s the one managing all the shields; if she goes down, they won’t be immune to gunfire anymore.”

“That’s good to know; we hadn’t figured out what she was doing yet.” The man who spoke was in uniform, primarily camouflage. It was clear he was in charge when he turned to one of the other soldiers and ordered the target change, then walked over to Serenity. “Anything else you can tell us about them?”

Serenity watched the monitors for a moment. He could see them, but not hear; the invaders seem to be relying on verbal coordination, usually short phrases. “Do you have audio?”

“Over here. We’re recording it all, but we can’t understand it.” The officer led Serenity over to a set of headphones.

Serenity shook his head. “There are translator items; they’re pretty expensive, but I know we have some. Several of us can translate some of the more common languages, too.”

He deliberately didn’t mention that they had one with them on Raz’s wrist; that would be opening a can of worms he didn’t want to get into.

Serenity put the headphones on; it wasn’t the best sound, but it was clearly understandable.

“-this working?”

“Group up! And go!”

“...metal casters…”

“OW! Rhalith what the hell!” Serenity could tell who said that line as one of the people in front actually turned visibly to shout at the woman in orange after he was hit by some shrapnel that wasn’t deflected by a shield. She was too busy to respond, and it was clear he realized what was happening. “Shit. SHELL! Converge, shell, NOW! Prepare to retreat!”

As Serenity saw the others start to react, he narrated what he was hearing. “They’ve realized we changed targets; they’re planning to retreat while protecting her..”

One of the other mages yelled “Don’t be weak, one more push and we’re through! They’re only Tier One, we can’t lose to them!”

“Guard Rhalith!”

One of the others seemed to be swearing continually.

They grouped up around Rhalith, then all but one of them retreated. The last one ran for it when he realized the others were gone, mostly because he was suddenly the focus of all of the gunfire.

He didn’t make it.

Serenity shook his head at the blatant stupidity. It was clear that whoever had given the command to retreat had given up on the mage when he insisted that they should stay; there hadn’t even been any argument. Serenity understood, but he also suspected that the mage must not have been well liked; otherwise, someone would have repeated the command for him to run if nothing else.

Or perhaps the fact that he wasn’t with them was missed. Things like that could happen in the heat of battle.

The officer nodded at Serenity. “Thanks again for the tip. You must be Mr. Rothmer, the magic specialist?”

There was an element of doubt in his voice, but Serenity just nodded. “I understand you’re having trouble locating it. I should be able to, but I’ll have to get closer than this.”

“Nice to meet you; I’m Lieutenant Colonel Westbrook. Since they ran, this is probably as good a time as any to send you and a team in; it’s rare for there to be an attack immediately after a probe fails.”

It took a little time for Colonel Westbrook to be satisfied they were ready to go, but once he was he sent the group off with the same number of armed soldiers to act as guards. He wasn’t at all receptive to Serenity’s comment that they could manage without guards; as far as the colonel was concerned, keeping the civilians safe was his responsibility, not theirs. Serenity decided not to push; he knew they’d probably end up defending the “guards” instead of the other way around if something went wrong, but the longer they took to get out there, the more likely it was that someone else would come through the portal.

After watching the fight and all of the preparation, the actual walk to the portal site was tremendously anticlimactic; nothing happened.