Lillene

Enjoy!

“That’s enough.” Serenity projected his voice ahead of him; that was one of the very few spells he was allowing both “Tom Cooper” and Serenity to use. It was necessary. “You know you’re not allowed to fight on A’Atla’s surface.”

This was an unusual place for a fight; most people stayed away from the broken ground of the damaged area, but clearly that wasn’t going to last. Unlike most of A’Atla, it was still dirt and dried mud; the ship hadn’t tried to plant anything in a wide swath of the shoreline. Even so, some of it was slowly being colonized by the plants in the nearby areas. The lack of significant vegetation was the easiest way to know when you’d entered the danger zone.

The area was treacherous; the dried mud made it look solid, but there were a lot of places where there was only a thin layer of mud that concealed a hole where the mud had vanished as the water flowed away after the surface dried. At least, Serenity thought that was what had happened; either way, Blaze had dealt with more than a few injuries from falls near the area before people figured out it was treacherous.

During the long silence that followed his announcement, Serenity floated towards the group with his wings slightly spread. They weren’t doing any of the work, that was all his footwraps, but they were impressive and that was what mattered here. It helped that he put no pressure on the ground as he floated; he could go right over one of the sinkholes and never notice.

Serenity took the time to look at the two groups; he could only see four on one side and three on the other. One of the three was holding something that looked a lot like a book. It was magical, which didn’t really say much about what it contained. The fact that he was holding an artifact probably meant that his team was the one who found it and the four working together were the aggressors.

Unfortunately, Serenity found that he recognized three of the four attackers. Two of them, the two in the back, spent a fair bit of time with Liam and Samantha, while he’d seen one of the other two practicing Skills at one of the firing ranges.

Just before he arrived between the two groups, a Skill slammed into the man holding the book. It was a forceful push that made him skid backwards. He held onto the book, even when the ground gave way beneath him.

Serenity had known this day was coming. It was inevitable. If you gave a group an advantage, even a perceived one, it would be taken advantage of by someone. It was just a surprise it happened at a fight Serenity was responding to, rather than “Tom Cooper;” Serenity had more of a reputation. That was why he’d decided that “Tom” would have the suppressive aura, after all.

No matter what the soldier thought, Serenity wasn’t about to permit fighting, no matter who was doing it.

To be fair, this particular idiot did have an advantage; he’d get medical attention quickly. He hadn’t outright killed anyone yet, though he was confident some of them would rather be dead and a few had probably been killed by their own people. Serenity didn’t feel guilty about that; even before he started violently trying to stop the fighting, the various groups on the island knew Blaze would heal them, even if the story they gave was clearly utter nonsense. You didn’t get bullet wounds by falling off a cliff and landing in the mud.

On top of that, every injury he’d created was one Blaze could heal, even if he sometimes made Serenity help. Serenity wasn’t entirely certain if Blaze actually needed his help for the larger reconstruction efforts, such as the pair of hands he’d removed during the first lesson, or if Blaze just wanted to punish him, but at least it wasn’t that hard. He just had to pull Potential through the Rift and shape it into whatever part of the body was needed. Blaze handled the hard part of actually connecting the rebuilt body part to the body.

Serenity already knew Blaze was going to be unhappy with him over this one. He shook his head at the overconfident idiot. “You know what? You deserve this.”

Serenity let his aura spread across the area around himself. Instead of using it to suppress the people around him and almost physically force them to the ground, he simply let Death flow into it. These were all Earthlings; they’d know what they faced. 

Serenity pulled out a short wand, really more of a stick he could conceal in his hand, that he’d prepared in case he wanted to do something really gruesome. He had to re-infuse it daily to keep the effect powerful enough, but he’d always known he would eventually need to get people’s attention with more than his basic spells. He pointed at the offensive idiot then triggered the spellform he’d infused into the wand.

It was not a cheap spell, but the effects were completely worth it. The man withered as Serenity’s spell suppressed his Life-based Vital Affinity and infiltrated it with Death. His flesh seemed to disappear as though he were caught in a wasting disease; by the time the spell finished, he looked more like a skin-covered undead skeleton than the fit man he had been before. That was significantly more effective than he’d expected. 

Serenity took a moment to check the man’s Vital Affinity; actually turning him into an undead wasn’t the point, and if he’d gone too far he’d have to fix it. Fortunately, there was a solid core of Life Affinity present, surrounded by a coating of Death Affinity; it was expressing itself much more quickly and strongly than normal, but it wouldn’t be any worse to heal. Well, not much worse; simply removing the Death Affinity wouldn’t remove the damage it had done.

Vengeance had never used a spell that affected the Vital Affinity of any Earthling other than himself, so he’d always assumed his adaptability was simply his good luck, but Serenity now suspected that there was something about Earthlings that made them more adaptable.

Serenity turned to look at the other three Americans. “Leave. You’ll have to carry him; I doubt he can walk right now.”

Serenity pulled his aura back into himself. If anyone attacked now, they deserved what they got and it would be much easier to break this up if people weren’t paralyzed in fear. They were moving; Serenity didn’t miss the fact that someone, probably Liam from the glance he got, had been hiding behind the two others Serenity had recognized. Fortunately, there was no further hostility apparent.

Serenity floated over to where the foreigner had fallen. The hole was larger and deeper than most, a good ten feet across; it looked like it was longer than the part that collapsed, but only about fifteen feet of its width had fallen in. It got narrower as it went down until it breached into part of the underground city; all told, the man holding the book had fallen something over thirty feet. Serenity didn’t feel any Death from below, so he was still alive, but that was all he could tell from up here.

Serenity was glad he’d prepared for something like this to happen, but he wasn’t thrilled that he needed the preparations. He reached out to Ita as he tossed a broken token on the ground next to himself. She’d arrived with Rissa and Jenna but no one had mentioned it until the following day. :Ita, I need a portal. To as close to Blaze as you can get.:

She spent most of her time in the tunnels these days, but she’d probably have to head to the outer site to find Blaze.

:He is too far, but he has an alert; I will bring him to me as soon as I can. Are you ready for the portal now?: Ita was clearly keeping track of where the important people were.

Serenity pulled another of his concealable wands out; this one was a little more difficult because he had several “utility” wands in that pocket. :Yes, go ahead.:

The spell in the new wand was simple in concept but a pain in the butt to actually make, because it was a mentally controlled - effectively, Intent-based - telekinesis. Encoding an opening for Intent while leaving the rest of the spell available to control was difficult, but it was a very useful spell. Most telekinetics would either build it out of several Skills or get one Skill that they had to learn to use; Serenity wasn’t a telekinetic at all. 

Serenity carefully picked up the fallen man, along with the book he was still holding on to, and lifted him out of the hole. He left the man exactly as he’d fallen; yes, Blaze could heal it if Serenity hurt him more, but there was no reason to do that. 

As the man floated to the surface, Ita’s portal opened behind Serenity. Serenity looked up at the man’s companions. “I’m taking him to a healer. If you want, you can come as well. We can return you here when he’s healed.”

----------

Blaze was indeed completely pissed at Serenity about the Death spell. It turned out that there was a type of damage he’d never seen before and Serenity had just done it; his first several attempts to heal the man amplified the effect. Serenity eventually had to show him the correct way to remove it.

In payback, Blaze made Serenity help with the rest of the healing. He wouldn’t back down even when Serenity complained about it weakening the deterrent effect of the spell. As far as Blaze was concerned, it was more than nasty enough even if it was healed fairly quickly. Serenity did notice that Blaze didn’t actually heal it completely; the man was going to need at least a few days of rest and probably a few weeks of exercise to rebuild his physical condition. 

Between the healing and one more fight that had to be suppressed, it was a couple of days before Serenity made it back to the hole the man with the book had fallen into. Oddly enough, it looked like that team had left once they were portaled back and it didn’t look like anyone else had come by. That was odd; anyone who looked down should have seen the tunnels. Perhaps they just hadn’t approached close enough?

Serenity shrugged to himself. Why they weren’t back wasn’t important; the fact that no one had looked was. This particular part of the underground was inaccessible due to the damage, so even if he’d wanted to get there from the tunnels he wouldn’t have been able to.

Serenity pulled out the wand he wanted. It took a lot of time to keep a range of spells infused, but right now he had the time and it was really convenient. This one was a variation on the telekinesis spell, but it targeted himself instead of someone or something else; it made a much easier way to get in the hole than using a rope.

Once he was at the bottom, Serenity could see where the mud had gone; there was a tear that continued down a little farther along the cut. He thought he could hear the sea somewhere in that direction.

The other direction was just corridor, but it ended in a solid looking door. It looked like whatever cut through this part of A’Atla should have cut through part of the door, but there wasn’t even a scratch on it. That was enough to pull Serenity’s attention away from the rest of the area.

Even more interestingly, A’Atla’s system wouldn’t tell him anything about the door or the room behind it. It showed the space but that was all; it was less information than he could get about the room that was sucking in all of the magic of the nexus. That room at least had a danger marker.

Which, come to think of it, probably meant there wasn’t a detected danger behind this door.

There wasn’t a handle on the door, but that was fairly common in A’Atla. Most doors were automated and slid to the side or up; the outer doors were the only ones that didn’t seem to go into a pocket, but they were still automatic.

When he set his hand on the door, words appeared in his vision. They weren’t quite the same as the ones from A’Atla’s system even though they were similar. Was this a standalone system of some sort?

Authorization: Wizard of A’Atla

Holding Area Status: Secure

Check Cycle: Past Due

Open Door to Viewing Area?

Lillene

We all know what’s on the other side of that door, don’t we?

(Hint: it’s been shown.)