Lillene

Enjoy!

A neon pink thorn brought back memories. They weren’t good ones, but at least they made it fairly easy to figure out what the monster had to be. It had to be a Demon of Pain, a Thorn Demon. 

It was a hard decision, but Serenity had to trust that Earth’s defenders could handle a Demon of Pain. Given that all of the others he’d seen were Lesser Demons, his guess was that this one was, too. Its size also seemed to indicate that it was probably Lesser. While they’d have to get people in place that could handle the demon’s resistance, Serenity expected they could do it. Unless he happened to be really close, it would probably be dead before he could get there.

“You look like a man who knows something.” Russ kept his eyes on the road as he spoke.

Serenity tapped the knob to turn the radio off. It was funny that cars still had actual knobs, dials, and separate buttons for things that any other modern tech just threw on the screen, but they did. Serenity assumed that it was because they were easier to find and deal with without looking; despite all the automation in modern cars, it was still better to have the driver pay attention to the road. 

“A neon pink thorn sounds like a Lesser Pain Demon. I’m starting to think that we’ll see a lot more of these soon.” Serenity had to assume they were being summoned deliberately. There was no good reason for them to just start popping up otherwise, at least not without a particular place that was generating them. 

The Lesser Demon of Sorrow definitely didn’t come from a dungeon and the thing similar to it that Aki mentioned another demon noticing was all the way down at the Palisades. Serenity pulled up the news story quickly and found that the Lesser Demon of Pain was on Long Island; that reinforced the conclusion that they didn’t have a common point of origin. He didn’t think the Lesser Demon of Pain could have gone far without being noticed. The Lesser Demon of Sorrow could have gone farther, but he suspected it hadn’t.

“I hope you’re wrong.” Russ didn’t sound like he believed Serenity was wrong. “I’ll have them try to track the latest monster back to where it came from. They’re probably planning that already; where one monster is, there are usually more.”

“There are people who have Paths for that,” Serenity muttered. “I bet that’s how they do it.”

Russ barked a laugh. “That and the cameras, yes. Sometimes dogs, too; it depends. Either way, we’re here.” Russ turned into a large parking lot surrounded by a tall fence. A gate automatically opened for the vehicle, then closed behind it. 

It was obvious which vehicle they were here to look at; not only was it one of the largest vehicles, it was the only one with a hole torn in the side from the inside. Russ was able to get a parking spot nearby, as the other vehicles were all at least three spots away, as though the truck might have something communicable.

Russ had to run inside and get the key to open up the vehicle. Serenity could have easily gotten in without it, but there was no reason to do that when it was just a few minutes’ wait to do it properly. He needed to examine the exterior of the truck for spell residue anyway; if there was any, it would tell him something. 

There wasn’t, which told him something very different: whoever built the spell knew what they were doing and either built an efficient spell or included something to limit the residue left behind. The first was more likely than the second, at least on Earth; why would anyone worry about being tracked by their residue on a planet that had just learned about magic?

At the same time, the fact that Earth was new to magic didn’t explain how anyone could make a spell that was good enough to not spill residue everywhere. Most spells had limited residue because they simply weren’t very strong and they were generally Path Skills anyway. A spell that could teleport demons from who-knows-where had to be strong. Worse, this clearly wasn’t just a Path Skill, since Path Skills wouldn’t have the complicated spell components of the vase and the remote trigger. 

“I always forget how nice it is to have Quincy and Brown take care of these things,” Russ muttered. “Especially under these circumstances. Stay at home and rest …. Sure. Right.”

“I can come back later if that’ll be better,” Serenity offered. He could get in without anyone seeing him as long as he was careful and did it at night; at the most, the cameras would catch some shadows. That wouldn’t be too obvious. It might not even be particularly visible; Serenity wasn’t certain how good the cameras on the lot were, or even if they all worked.

“Nah, I got the key.” Russ held up a key fob and clicked it to unlock the truck. “I just had to tell them that I wanted to see inside to prove to myself that there weren’t more in there, for closure. I’m pretty certain the sergeant at the desk knew what I was up to.”

Serenity shook his head. He knew that agreed-on official stories were a thing, but he’d never been any good at them. He caught on that this was one because of the way Russ put it, but he doubted he’d have realized what was going on if he’d watched Russ get the keys; he’d probably have assumed that Russ was lying. This wasn’t the same as lying, at least not really, since it wasn’t supposed to actually fool anyone. Everyone knew what was going on even if no one said it.

Serenity shook his head at the insanity inherent in ordinary human interactions and opened up the back of the truck. The doors were fine; it was the side that was destroyed. 

The inside of the truck was clearly reinforced, but Serenity didn’t care about that. His attention was on the pair of cardboard boxes that sat next to the entrance. “They put them here after they moved the truck, didn’t they?”

“I guess?” Russ didn’t sound certain. “By the time I asked where they ended up, they were already here. We’ve been avoiding doing anything with them until you were back since Red said she wouldn’t be able to open them without potentially triggering them. Can you?”

“Maybe.” Serenity pushed his magesight back into the active mode. “”I’ll have to … well, isn’t that special.”

“Found something already?” Russ moved to stand next to Serenity. He looked at the boxes but didn’t seem to see anything. Of course, he wasn’t a mage.

“Yeah. The entire box is trapped; it’s pretty complex, too. The spellform is pretty faint right now, clearly fading, but it’s probably still going to be possible to trigger it for another few months. Based on where it’s strongest, I’d say that cutting the tape or the cardboard with the intent to open it would set it off but just jostling the box shouldn’t. The more it’s opened, the faster it happens; I’m not actually certain that just cutting the tape would do anything at this point. It depends on how much the spell it triggers actually needs.” 

Serenity shifted his right hand to have claws. He still wasn’t anywhere near as good as he wanted to be at partial shifts, but the only way to get better was to practice. “I can definitely get past it. I assume that’s not a problem?”

“No, that’s the point. I want you and Red to look at the contents while they’re intact.” Russ glanced away from the van then looked back. “In fact, please go ahead; it’s probably best if we have the box open before Quincy gets here.”

Russ sounded confident, but Serenity didn’t miss the fact that he manifested his soulblade as he talked. He was clearly prepared if Serenity was less than successful at opening the box without summoning demons.

Serenity made certain he was facing away from Russ when he grinned. It was good to be working with another professional, someone who could both trust that the other person knew what they were doing and still prepare in case something went wrong. 

Serenity pushed together a spellform of his own. It wasn’t much of a spell; all it would do was displace the spell on the box, fooling it into thinking the box was still intact. It was finicky work that didn’t require a lot of power, which was a good thing. Serenity still didn’t have much power by his old standards.

Once the trap-spell was pushed into the box, Serenity carefully slit the tape with his claws. They weren’t as good for the task as a good box knife, but they were more than good enough for the terrible packing tape whoever put the box together used; all he needed was a small tear in the tape and it split in whatever direction he told it to. When he was done, he dismissed the shift and settled back into his human form; he didn’t want the distraction of maintaining a partial shift for what came next.

Serenity had to push the alarm spell even farther into the box to open the box flaps, but once he did he was able to pull the spell up and really get a good look at it. He spent a solid eight minutes looking at it before a voice pulled his attention back to the outside world.

“I see you started without me.” Was that a teasing note in the woman’s voice? Serenity thought it might be. “You must be Serenity. I’m Quincy, Russ’s liaison.”

Serenity half-turned and gave Quincy an awkward wave. This was a bad time for an interruption; the only thing that was keeping the alarm spell from falling apart was Serenity’s spellform and he wasn’t yet certain which direction it would fail in. He had found the activation section, so he could slice that if it came down to it; he’d already prepared the spell. Doing that would make it impossible to examine the spell more, though, so he was going to wait until he was done as long as it didn’t start to actually trigger.

“You should step back,” Russ told Quincy. “I’ve seen him like this before; the rest of the world isn’t quite there for him right now. He’ll tell us what he’s figured out when he’s done. I’m glad he can shut the world out; right now, he’s defusing a bomb.”

“Figuratively,” Serenity agreed. He turned his full attention back to the spell; Russ could handle Quincy.

It was another thirteen minutes before Serenity was confident he’d wrung all of the secrets he was going to be able to out of the small alarm spell and that he could destroy it without setting it off. When he did, there was a small puff of both mana and essence, which Serenity carefully sent up and away from the objects in the box. He took his time checking to be certain there were no more traps, but with the trigger spell gone, the other objects were mostly safe. He moved the wooden lattice that held a monster core away from the vase anyway; it was obviously built to be easy to trigger and he didn’t want it connecting with the vase if that happened.

Russ and Quincy were seated on the hood of a car Serenity didn’t recognize; it must be the one Quincy came in. Russ looked up first. “Figure out anything interesting?”

“Yeah. It’s not a summoning spell at all.” Serenity frowned. He wasn’t certain how he felt about this; he didn’t like being wrong, but at the same time a new type of spell was exciting. If only it were a spell that did something else. “It’s a spell to create things, probably specifically to create demons. It’s not quite the same as what a dungeon would do; they’re not dungeon monsters. This … either it was developed here on Earth or it’s knowledge that was hidden or lost elsewhere. The way everything adds up, I’m guessing the right answer is hidden. It even uses a type of magic I’ve seen only in ancient artifacts and here on Earth.”

Lillene

Yes, A’Atla counts as both an “ancient artifact” and “here on Earth.”