The first step of the plan went off without a hitch. Serenity took his time. There were plenty of shadows to hide Serenity’s Sovereign form, but hurrying would still get him caught. While there were patrols and they did have proper attention to detail, including both looking up and examining the shadowed areas, they couldn’t tell the shadows were deeper where he hid.

The ward on the room that probably held the communication device was well-designed, but it had the most common weakness in wards: people had to be able to get in and out. That meant it had to be able to tell who was allowed in and who wasn’t. There were ways to discourage tampering, but only the simplest were in use on this particular ward.

Realistically, that was usually the best choice on a low-Tier planet like Asihanya; you were unlikely to encounter anyone over Tier fifteen, so the odds of running into someone skilled at breaking wards was still relatively low. Such people did exist, however, so secondary precautions (like having the ward inside a guarded compound) added redundancy. People who could sneak past guards and break wards without setting off their alarms were far more unusual.

Serenity noted a lockdown provision in the ward when he explored it; it would be far harder to fool if the base was alerted and anyone thought to lock the ward. Fortunately, it was unlocked, which let him add himself to the allowed list and edit the checks that were meant to catch that sort of unauthorized change before they even looked.

He slipped into the room. It was small, but not tiny; other than the complete lack of decoration, it reminded Serenity of a number of offices he’d seen over the years. It had a table, a chair, a short bookcase, and piles of paper that were clearly being used for something. The desk also held a classic communication device: a crystal ball set on a short stand.

No one was in the room, so Serenity took the time to decipher the enchantment. There was nothing special about it; it didn’t even have coordinates to link to, just the signature of a ‘master’ crystal ball. Serenity got the best impression of the signature that he could, then updated Rissa. :I’m ready. Are you in position?:

A flash of their daughter as she’d been when they last saw her crossed Serenity’s mind before Rissa pulled her thoughts into words. :Ten minutes, please. I need to make sure everyone is still ready and no one has fallen asleep.:

Given how long he’d taken to make his way through the base, ten minutes might not be enough time.

:I miss her too. At least we should see her soon.: Serenity looked forward to it even more than he looked forward to repeating the message he’d sent Tirmanak about not worrying her parents.

:Yeah…: Rissa’s mindvoice clearly revealed her emotions.

Serenity distracted himself by searching the room for possible backup devices, then checked over the crystal ball to see if it could lead him to one. He didn’t expect to find anything, so when he came up empty it wasn’t a surprise.

A few minutes later, Rissa sounded far more composed. :We’re just outside the door, we’ll go in when you give the word.:

Serenity used the form he’d secretly left behind at the ritual site to check the entrances. There wasn’t anyone in or near the hangars other than the usual two guards. :Okay, go ahead and head in; the guards are at their posts. I think one of them’s napping. I’ll break the spell here.:

Serenity reached into the spellform of the crystal ball. Using something like the wand of severing would be faster, but Serenity could definitely do this without it, and not using the wand allowed him to stay in his Sovereign form. The fact that he was in a ley line made this especially simple; he was going to use a completely wasteful method to break the crystal ball, since he had near-unlimited mana from the ley line.

While the crystal ball was made to use energy from monster cores, that energy was nicely stabilized and slowed down by the core itself. There was usually no need to add anything to shunt away excess power; there was no normal way for it to get excess mana. Of course, that gave someone with access to excessive amounts of mana an easy way to sabotage it as long as they had a high enough Arcane affinity to shove the mana at the device.

Serenity wasn’t cautious about it; he wanted to be absolutely certain the device was dead. He shoved power at it like a firehose and less than a second later, the crystal ball explosively dissolved into fragments.

:Well. That was a bit more energetic than I expected.: Serenity was glad he was in his Sovereign form; while he thought his armor would probably have withstood the shrapnel, anything that hit his face would have been painful until it healed. :I’m going to have to do it slower next time, but their communications are down. I’ll start sneaking out now.:

Serenity was just outside the warded room, in the base commander’s bedroom, when two things happened in quick succession.

First, Rissa told him they’d broken the first aircraft. She was the arbiter of when they’d done enough damage, since she was the most familiar with things that used physics instead of magic to stay in the air. Legion was there as well, and probably knew something, but she’d refused to make the call.

Second, the lights went from night-time dimness to daytime brightness.

Serenity moved as quickly as he could to a dimmer corner of the base commander’s room. It wasn’t nearly as dark as he was and it didn’t connect to any other dark spots, but it would have to do. :The lights just came up here. Someone knows something’s happened; I’m going to have to hide and wait.:

:There aren’t any lights here yet; we’ll finish and get out of here. No, that’s not good enough, Daryl; holes don’t let the air out and make it fall down, this isn’t a balloon. Or a bird. You have to - yes, that’ll do it.:

It was obvious that Rissa was busy, so Serenity turned his attention to where it really should be anyway: watching his surroundings. Moments later, a tall blonde man appeared from around the corner. He emitted a distinct Tier Ten aura and matched the appearance of the base commander. As usual, he didn’t carry any armor or weaponry; he didn’t reach for them where they lay on the chair, either. If anything, he just looked annoyed.

He must have heard the explosion. He clearly wasn’t thinking of it as enemy action, but Serenity knew he still needed to avoid being seen if he wanted to avoid a fight. For a moment, he considered an ambush; he was fairly confident that as long as he stayed in his Sovereign form, he wouldn’t be noticed.

Serenity dismissed the notion as stupid a moment later. Yes, he’d managed to fight off the Sterath Battlelord, but not without consequences. More importantly, he already had a plan and help available that could deal with the base commander; two Tier Nines and a Tier Ten should make the fight much easier than trying to take him alone, even with the advantage of surprise.

All he had to do was remain hidden and everything would be fine.

The base commander glanced around the room quickly but fortunately didn’t look up. He didn’t seem to see anything wrong; he stormed into the warded room and allowed the door to slam behind himself.

Serenity wasn’t sure if the commander would be back out as soon as he saw the broken crystal ball or not, so he waited. When a full minute had passed with no sign of the commander, he decided to move to a shadowy corner closer to the exit.

He wished he could just dismiss this form, so that he would be safe back at the camp where he was already in his human form, but it wasn’t so convenient; he’d tested it. If he wanted to dismiss a form, it had to be next to (or at least within the aura of) one of his other forms, just like he could only create forms at the same distance. It was clear that his forms didn’t come from nothing; he was making them and reclaiming them somehow, even though he didn’t exactly know how yet. He’d had a little time on the journey to test things, but there was always limited time.

Serenity made it to the next patch of shadows; from here, he could probably safely move to the patch above the door, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to while the commander was still in the room. Those shadows were even smaller than the one he was in now, and careful examination of where he was now would probably reveal him. He didn’t want to be poorly hidden and in the commander’s direct line of sight if he happened to emerge at the wrong time.

:Three down, three to go,: Rissa reported to Serenity. :I think we should also get the two that are used for parts so they’ll all be broken.:

:Sounds like a good idea, but it’s less important than getting out of there safely. They haven’t noticed yet?: Serenity hated the fact that he couldn’t be with her right now, but he really couldn’t manage two bodies at once. Not unless they were both in Sovereign form, at least, and that would have been far less helpful. He was already stretching to manage his infiltration and watching the ritual, anyway.

Serenity paused for a moment and checked. There wasn’t anyone new near the hangar; the two guards were still alive but unconscious. That was probably Blaze’s work; that was the plan and Rissa hadn’t mentioned any issues.

:No, it’s still dark here,: Rissa confirmed. :Blaze is watching the far entrance, he hasn’t seen anyone either.:

:Good. I’m glad they didn’t have much to fix today.:

Rissa chuckled; she got the joke. Serenity had actually entered the base before the hangar was empty, because one of the biplanes was still being repaired at sunset. Fortunately, even when fully lit there were large dark corners in the hangar, so it hadn’t caused him any trouble. They’d known he’d need time to get in and out; he didn’t move quickly as a cloud of darkness. Not that he’d mentioned that last part to the locals; they thought he was going to sneak in normally.

The door to the warded room slammed open and the base commander stalked out. Serenity was glad he hadn’t moved towards the darkness over the door; he would probably have still been moving. As it was, the base commander didn’t look up at all. He stalked to the other door and left his room, clearly seething at the destruction.

He didn’t turn the lights down when he left.

Serenity gave him a couple minutes to be certain he wouldn’t return, then slipped into the shadow above the door before trying to slip through the gap at the top of the door. It was wide enough to get through but narrow enough to slow him down even more.

He was barely into the hallway when it became obvious that the lights were bright here, too. Worse, the corridor was well enough lit that there really weren’t any good shadows to hide in; he’d be immediately obvious to anyone who looked at him. Serenity pulled back into the commander’s room before he let Rissa know about the delay. :I can’t get out right now. I’m going to have to wait until they settle down; the only other option is to try to make some of that runeclam armor and try to sneak out. I don’t think that’ll work; I’m too deep.:

:It might, but let’s give them a chance to turn off the lights first,: Rissa agreed. :If we’re found, that should cause enough confusion for you to slip out one way or the other, but I’m not expecting to be found before morning. They don’t usually go into the hangar that early and the guards will be out until after sunrise.:

:It’s a good thing their shift change is just before sunrise, then.: Serenity knew they’d planned on that, along with the fact that whoever their superior was, he didn’t seem to check on his night shift, but it didn’t make him less nervous.

To calm his nerves, Serenity decided to alter the ward next to him again; this time, he backed out the first change he’d made. He was no longer an authorized person, but it would be far harder for even an expert to figure out the ward had been tampered with.

Lillene

They're still on Plan A! Okay, Serenity's a bit delayed, but it's still Plan A.