Lys woke up at dawn. They had arrived late, and after the meeting they had decided with Tsain to go in the morning. For once, even he hadn’t objected. The room was decent, a local inn she couldn’t remember the name of. She washed her face in a basin, put on her robe and walked out of her room.

She went downstairs to get a breakfast, and to her surprise, Tsain was already up and eating. Lys went to his table and a waitress soon took her order. There was only another person in the room besides them at this hour.

They ate in silence, and didn’t waste much time. Soon, they were both ready to leave. It was a rare sight to see Tsain so serious in his tasks, but the situation was serious, and he was competent, when he wanted to. They walked out to the western gate. The guard let them pass without question and soon they went into the forest.

They had decided to take a detour in case someone was watching the eastern gate. Taking a large detour around the town, they continued on in silence, the only sounds the birds chirping in the forest.

“We should be an hour away now.” She whispered. He looked at her and nodded. They had already decided yesterday how to go about this. Tsain was an illusionist, and a good one, when he wanted to. He soon cast two spells on them, [invisibility] and [muffle]. He had linked the invisibility so they could see each other.

They continued towards their goal as ghosts in the forest. No sounds and completely invisible to the naked eye. The Mayor had told them about Zosk, and that he had gone missing after following the first human. Or Martian as they apparently called themselves. He was a silver rank adventurer on vacation, hopefully alive.

It took them a while to get there, but finally they could see something through the trees. A shape in the distance. It was close to the border of the forest, closer than they had initially thought. Still, with the spells and the cover of the forest, they hoped to be able to see exactly what these Martians were up to, and hopefully return Zosk.

As they came closer, they saw a dome, made entirely of metal, it seemed to be the same metal they used for their armor, but a lot thicker. The dome was fairly big, poking slightly above the canopy of trees. They soon saw some patrols. Always by three.

On a closer look, it was two humans, and something else, like a metal golem. It clearly wasn’t human, but was animated nonetheless. She couldn’t feel any magic from it, and it unnerved her. She turned to Tsain, and he clearly understood what was bothering her, but shrugged. He had no idea what it was either.

They stayed far from the dome, circling it, trying to find the entrance while keeping their distance, but after a while, they had gone around the whole thing, and still couldn’t make out the entrance. Lys pointed away from the dome and gestured that they needed to talk. Tsain nodded and they walked carefully away.

When they were finally out of sight of the dome, Tsain broke the [muffle] spell, but kept the invisibility up.

“Thoughts?” She whispered.

“I’m as lost as you are Lys, I’ve never seen anything like that golem, or that dome.” He whispered back, while keeping a lookout.

“How long can you keep up both spells?” She asked.

“We might have to observe for a while.” He nodded at that, thought for a bit before answering.

“I have some mana potions, so I could probably keep it up for a few hours, but I’ll be low on mana for combat.” He said.

“That’s fine, don’t take any risks.”

-------------------------------------

General Carter was sitting in Dr. Pierce’s repurposed living room, overseeing the construction on the other side. He had initially been surprised that he had been allowed to build the camp so quickly. He had originally assumed the council would be against it. But it seemed he had underestimated their greed. Someone wanted this for themselves. The discovery had been instantly classified top secret, and even Maximilian's and the other scientists personal coms out had been filtered as to be sure to keep the secret. They wanted this under wraps.

Of course, he didn’t know any names, that got you killed, but he wasn’t naive. Someone was definitely pulling strings, and it wasn’t military. They didn’t send diplomats. In retrospect, he respected the move. It cost little time, and could have huge benefits, especially if they could trade. Mars was rich in minerals and such, but severely lacking in more basic things.

In the room were several other people, all organizing and managing different parts of the operation, one of them looked up.

“General, a robot picked up two humanoid heat signature close to the camp.” He said.

“Distance?” He asked.

“400 meters, sir. They are invisible to the naked eye.” The man answered. He paused to think for a moment.

Invisible? Interesting. Magic, if wielded properly would change so much for them. The possibilities were mind boggling. He hadn’t been at the meeting, but he had been briefed. It must be those two from the mage guild.

“Ignore them. Don’t show that we can see them. If they come too close, stop them, no lethal force.” He said. Hopefully they wouldn’t force him to show his hand. It wasn’t a big advantage, but you never knew.

He went back to an email to high command, reporting everything they had found, when sometime later he was interrupted again.

“Sir, how close is too close?” The same man asked uncertain.

“Show me on screen.” Soon a big holoscreen shot up in the middle of the room, showing a map with the dome in the center. Two red dots were walking around it, but slowly coming closer. They were bold. He would give them that.

----------------------------------

Lys and Tsain were slowly circling the weird dome. Getting bolder. The humans clearly couldn’t see them, so they went closer and closer, wanting to find the entrance. They were now close enough to hear them talk, but they couldn’t understand the language at all.

Suddenly, the dome parted to their right, and they could see another patrol going out, talking. The metal golems of each group simply followed them, but Lys didn’t want to miss this opportunity. They didn’t seem to have a means of detecting invisibility.

She dashed towards the opening, motioning for Tsain to follow her. But as she got closer, suddenly, all the golems looked straight at her, soon the soldiers patrolling were looking at her too. Could they all see through it?

“Stop.” One of the golems spoke in a weird way.

But it was too late now, she was a few meters away from getting inside. Several golems and some soldiers were blocking the entrance now, but she was confident in her abilities. She used [Flash step] and appeared behind the blockade, now inside. Behind her she could see Tsain running away, casting illusions to confuse them. But he had a patrol hot on his heels, shouting at him to stop.

Before she could continue and explore inside, she saw Tsain get hit by something, jerk for a second before falling down. Turning around she saw the inside of the dome. It was lit by some kind of light, there were some soldiers, crates, but something caught here eye in the middle, a weird bubble of some kind, showing an entirely different place. Before she could look around more, something hit her, and soon everything went black.

When she woke up, she had her hands behind her back, held by something made of metal, she saw Tsain beside her. They had their backs to the Dome, some soldiers were patrolling still, but in front of her were three Martians. The one in the middle was a man, and he had, like all other Martians, flawless features, but his were still, more square. More serious looking than most she had seen.

“You must be Lys and Tsain. Correct?” The man asked. She simply glared.

“Answer when he asks you a question.” The woman to his left yelled at them, looking angry. It was Tsain who answered for them.

“Yes we are, and we would like you to release us, unless you intend to keep us here by force?” He asked.

“I am General Carter, and I am the one asking questions here. Why were you snooping around our base?” The General asked, his mask void of any expression.

“We were looking for Zosk, we suspect you are holding him against his will.” She said, trying to appear calm and in control of the situation.

“You would do well to release him, unless everything you told us yesterday were lies?” She continued, defiance in her voice.

“Zosk? Never heard that name before, and I would know if he was with us.” He told them. She didn’t believe it. Where else would he be.

“You don’t believe me do you? Alright, I can show you inside the dome if you want, and you’ll see that he isn’t here.” He said, to her surprise.

She looked at Tsain, who looked at her, uncertain. Could they really not have Zosk, but then, where was he? He wouldn’t die from some monsters. Probably. No. It was too convenient. They had to have him, they would see.

They stood up, a Martian undid their cuffs and soon they were all walking towards the entrance. This close to the dome, she could see the metal, and it was weird. It looked almost liquid, but was hard to the touch. No magic seemed to go through it, but there was power here, another kind of power flowing through it.

Soon, they walked into the dome again, Tsain was wide-eyed, and she figured she was too. It was another thing to be able to see all this without the stress of being caught. She saw the same thing she had previously, crates, soldiers, more golems. But the thing in the middle was gone. They showed them around, and indeed, there were a few rooms on the sides for storage, where they were packing things, but Zosk wasn’t here.

“What about that thing in the middle?” She decided to ask.

“Why is it gone now?” She continued. The General looked at here, and then laughed, but it sounded fake to her.

“I forget you do not understand our technology. You must have simply seen a holoscreen.” He told her, he soon showed them floating thing, depicting numbers and inventory. It was like paper, only you could see through it, slightly. He played with it, showed some images, made it larger.

She tried to remember what she had seen in that brief instant, before, it had felt different to her. Or could this be what she saw, only something else on the ‘screen’ ? Lys couldn’t shake her suspicion. They were hiding something from them. Plus, were had they all come from? No convoy had been spotted with humans, they had just appeared.

There was something more to it. She knew it. She looked at the General, and saw that he knew she didn’t believe him.

“You simply had to be too smart huh.” He told her. He made a signal with his hands to some soldiers waiting close by, and they pointed some weird contraption at them.

Her eyes widened, and she quickly used [Flash step] to teleport a few meters ahead. Her instincts proved right as behind her, she could hear a loud sound, and saw that Tsain had several holes in his body, his eyes already glistening over, as his body fell limply to the ground.

Suddenly, all eyes turned to her where she had appeared. She saw a patrol coming in, and ran for the opening. The patrol was slow on the uptake, but soon pointed the same weird contraption at her. She couldn’t use [Flash step] indefinitely, and decided to save it. She cast [Barrier] and a shimmering wall appeared between her and the patrol.

Suddenly, the same loud noise could be heard, and she felt her barrier breaking, her leg wasn’t working anymore. She looked down, unable to believe what had happened, and saw that she was bleeding, something had made a hole in her right thigh. The gate was closing, she didn’t have time to think about this.

She used [Flash step] again and appeared outside, behind her she heard more loud noises from those contraptions, but they had aimed where she had been. She saw more people running after her. Her mind was getting foggy, she was loosing too much blood.

She saw more coming from the side, aiming at her. She used [Flash step] to its extreme distance and felt she had already reached her limit. They had lost sight of her for a moment. Lys didn’t slow down however, and used all the remaining mana in her to cast a teleport spell. She couldn’t get away any other way with her injured leg.

She started chanting, but saw humans flying in the air looking for her, she tried to hurry along, but it did take some time to cast. One of them spotted her, and soon she saw more of them coming towards her.

She was almost done, but they were getting close, fast, and her mind was working in slow motion. She felt the end of the spell coming, when her mana ran out. The spell unfinished, triggered, and she disappeared.