Lillene

Enjoy!

Serenity glanced back at the trident. The message and the fact that he couldn’t sense any magic about it made him feel positively paranoid. If he’d been affected by something he couldn’t see, putting it in his Rift wouldn’t hurt anything. On the other hand, if the hologram was truthful, it was just a message; that would also be safe. The only case where it would matter would be if there was something there but it hadn’t yet affected him.

On the other hand, he knew quite well that he’d triggered something he couldn’t see already. If he were building a trap, that would be when it would go off since it definitely had someone relevant in range and they were distracted. 

The fact that Poseidon, if that was who this was, seemed to be on the opposite side from the wielder of the Night Fire was only slightly reassuring. Serenity knew enough to know that the enemy of his enemy might well not be his friend. 

No, the deciding factor was Liam and everyone else around him. Serenity’s defenses were much better than theirs. If his weren’t good enough, theirs wouldn’t be either; they might well be affected even when he wouldn’t be. Now that he’d found the trident, there was no way to avoid having it land in someone’s hands and his were probably the safest.

He didn’t think he’d been influenced to feel that way.

Serenity shoved the two pieces of the broken trident through his Rift almost as much to stop his internal debate as because he’d arrived at an acceptable solution. There was no way to know the right answer or even if there was one until after the fact, so he might as well do whatever made sense and move on. Agonizing over it for even longer wouldn’t help.

Serenity headed over to the hole in the soil where it had washed over Liam and Mike. The hole was only a few feet outside the contaminated area, just like in the vision. 

The building, however, was full of Night Fire. Serenity couldn’t tell how much; he could only see what was leaking out. It didn’t seem as dense as what he’d seen from the summoner, but a building was much, much larger than a person. He couldn’t tell how much was in the material or if much of the Night Fire had been pushed out of the building as it collapsed. 

No matter how much was there, it was something he had to deal with before it would be safe for anyone to enter the area. Worse, he was the only person who could see the boundary, so others wouldn’t even know it was dangerous. Marking it would only attract people, too.

The other question was if there was still an active spell in there somewhere. Serenity couldn’t see one from the outside, but the presence of an active spell would explain things far better than residue with no cause. He’d have to take care of that before he did anything else.

No, there was one other thing he should do even before that. He should prepare everyone else who was present for what was about to happen. There was enough time for that and it would make things smoother.

Serenity led Liam over to the largest cluster of Team Two. There were only six of them, including Mike, but that was enough for an open area like this. Serenity picked the one he thought was in charge. He had the last name Roberts, at least according to his uniform. “Will you all be ready to fight shortly?”

Roberts nodded. “Is someone coming? I thought you were breaking up fights?”

Serenity chuckled at that. “Not someone. Something. I’m not sure what it will be, but the best way to take care of this issue is to destroy the spells that melted the building; there are probably some left in there. I may not be able to lift them cleanly, which means residue, and the best way to deal with that is to turn it into a monster then kill the monster. Which is where you come in; I’m not certain what we’ll get, but you’ll need to be ready to defend yourselves.”

The commander gave a long sigh. “Can you at least tell me if it’ll be vulnerable to bullets?”

Serenity gave a sickly grin at that. He couldn’t make any guarantees, not with magic this new. He’d have to come up with something else to make; wooden golems were probably not what Team Two’s leader was looking for. “I can try?”

Roberts shook his head. “At least you’re not sugarcoating it. Tell us as soon as you can; I’ll have everyone ready to fight.”

“I should be able to give advance warning, at least,” Serenity offered. “And you should be able to see the monster form. That’s what happened on the previous tests.”

Serenity was fairly certain he heard one of the crowd mutter that sounded like "always test subjects," but he wasn't entirely certain. Aide would know, but Serenity didn't really care.

The commander nodded. He looked over at Liam, who’d followed Serenity away from the building. “Stay behind us. Miller, make sure he stays there.”

Serenity followed Roberts’s gaze and found that his attention was on Liam’s bodyguard, Mike. His nametag did say Miller, now that he checked.

“Sir.” Mike Miller nodded.

That was one fewer worry. Serenity wasn’t at all displeased that Liam would be out of the way. Now he just had to handle the spells; that shouldn’t be too bad. There were several ways to destroy spells; he wasn’t going to use his ax here, since he was in disguise as Tom, but he also wasn’t in a hurry. He probably wouldn’t even use his wand of countering; that had limited uses and he could create a spell that could be sustained instead. It would take longer, but he should have the time.

Serenity floated over to the edge of the Night Fire. This part was residue, mostly inert. At least, it seemed mostly inert. That meant this was a good time to test his resistances. He could find out if the mental effects were inherent in Night Fire, which would be odd, or if they were the result of a spell. There was certainly plenty of time for the summoner to have been hit by a spell, and the collapsing building could easily have covered one as well. Serenity didn’t remember any indication of spells in the vision, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.

Serenity started by activating the shields infused into his robes. While he didn’t expect to need them until he turned whatever residue remained into a monster, shields wouldn’t hurt. They might even deflect some effects, though they wouldn’t be as strong as normal since they were leftover from the day before.

The moment Serenity slid into the darkness, the dirt around him started to visibly bubble. He heard some exclamations from outside, which told him he was really seeing this. Serenity decided to just float there for a moment and see what happened.

The bubbles continued until all the moisture seemed to be gone from the dirt; one particularly large bubble splashed boiling material at Serenity, but it slid off his shield with no other effect. The bubbling didn’t stop until the area for about three feet in any direction was baked dry. The temperature rose a little more before it stopped as though it had run out of energy.

The odd thing was that the Night Fire in the circle was essentially gone. Its shadow wasn’t there and it no longer added any heat to the area. It was like it had tried to make itself real, using up all the mana it held in the area. That was a reaction Serenity had seen, though it was rare; while mana residue would react to any mana use in the area, it was usually weak. A strong reaction and a release of energy meant there was something incompatible about the residue and the new mana. Fire and lightning wouldn’t react, while fire and ice often would.

The question was which mana type was antithetical. The strongest one he leaked was probably Death, but that didn’t seem innately antithetical to Night Fire. Solar seemed more likely, but it was unlikely that Serenity leaked much of that. There was an easy way to find out, but Serenity didn’t want to try it; spreading out his aura simply made him a bigger target if there were spells hidden somewhere inside. He’d have to wait and test until he found and disabled them.

Serenity moved slowly through the blackness that had spread from the building. The ground baked under him as he moved. He’d gone less than a foot forward when he found the first spell remnant, a lingering stronger form made of Night Fire. Serenity took the time to analyze the spellform; it was designed to attach to a person or animal, remember what it heard, and trigger them to panic when certain conditions were met. To Serenity’s relief, it seemed to use chemistry rather than mind control to trigger the panic, but he couldn’t unravel the conditions. They weren’t embedded in the spellform in a way he could decipher.

Serenity created a simple spellform of Arcane mana, little more than a large knife, to rip through the spellform he’d found. Once the important strands were cut, the spell lapsed into more residue. It didn’t immediately mix with the already-present residue, but Serenity knew that was simply a matter of time.

Serenity found over a dozen little traps like the first one in the shadows outside the building. He also left the area in front of each door and window baked solid. Once the spell-traps were taken care of, it was time to handle anything inside. Of course, there was one rather large difficulty: there wasn’t enough room to move inside. He wasn’t even certain he could get inside.

At least, not in his human shape. Or even his much smaller dragon shape; he could probably get inside like that, but he wouldn’t be able to move freely. No, there was only one shape that would fit. 

He was going to have to pretend that his Sovereign form was a spell he was using, wasn’t he? He’d much rather transform not leave a form outside where people might try to talk to him and distract him from what he was doing inside, but if he made it look like an active spell, they’d probably leave him alone. They had so far. Then he could ignore his disguised human shape and concentrate on the inside.

Yes, that was the best plan.

Serenity made sure his body was between the members of Team Two and the building when he removed his Crystal Hilt from his belt and shifted it into his Sovereign shape. After that it was fine; all he had to do was stretch out his hand and anyone watching would think the moving shadows were simply a spell effect of some sort.

There were enough trap-spells in the partially melted rubble that Serenity lost count. He could figure out how many it was if he went over the records or asked Aide, who probably kept track, but he really didn’t care. The important thing was that he was able to thoroughly search the building. All of the trap spells were the same thing, too; whatever originally melted the building was gone.

Well, there was one other interesting thing that he discovered. The range of the reaction to Serenity’s mana was wider in his Sovereign form and he could feel the disconnect more as the mana he leaked countered the Night Fire. Pushing more out seemed to make it happen a little faster, but it left a slight imprint of his own mana. Serenity decided that wasn’t worth it in a place that whoever did this might come back to.

Lillene

The original plan for this chapter included a fight with a building-golem. Unfortunately, when it came time to write how it happened, I realized it didn't fit the existing lore, so I scrapped it. We're still left with a mostly offscreen mention of construction debris coming to life as the only remnant of the building kaiju fight I've been thinking about for a while. Oh well.