When Serenity stepped out of the travel portal, he stepped into a room rather than being outside the way he’d expected. The room was slightly cool and the air smelled familiar. It took Serenity a moment to recognize the smell as solder.

As he looked around, he realized he was probably in an electronics workshop of some sort. The walls were lined with workbenches, most of which had stuff on them, and the floor was slightly springy. It was either a corporate work area or it belonged to someone wealthy.

If he really was in the DC area, it was hard to know which was more likely.

He should probably get going; appearing in someone’s lab - whether he had a choice about it or not - wasn’t likely to be well received. There was only one door, so that was obviously the way out. The door was an octagon, rather than the usual rectangle, but Serenity didn’t have any other choices. It opened soundlessly as he approached, splitting into eight interlocking pieces which each sank into the wall.

Beyond the door, a hallway led directly away; he’d expected a choice, but then again it wasn’t like he was an architect. The hallway was oddly shaped, like the door leading into it. It was eerily silent in the hall; he couldn’t hear anyone else moving around, and even the sound of an air conditioning system was absent.

The hallway led to another octagonal door. When it opened, he could suddenly hear voices.

“When will the others get here?” A young woman’s voice was the first thing he heard. She sounded a bit nervous. Serenity couldn’t place her accent, though she was definitely speaking English.

At least that meant he was back on Earth.

“She isn’t coming, one of her dear friends got into a fight he couldn’t handle, so she’s bailing him out. Well, that’s what she was intending to do. I’m not certain exactly how it’s going to turn out when she finds out it’s a fight with his girlfriend.” The man’s voice dripped with amusement as he spoke. His accent was more definable; somewhere in the American West, probably. It was only a light accent, but still distinct.

Serenity wasn’t sure why he was hesitating in the doorway; it wasn’t like he could stand here until they left, and he needed to figure out where he was anyway.

The woman’s voice sounded gleeful. “Did you put one of my cameras up? I want to see this.”

Serenity stepped into the room and looked around. There were two - no, three - no, four other people in the room. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed the last two at first glance; one of them was seated in one of the six chairs and the other was leaning against the wall in a corner. He should’ve been hard to miss, but somehow seemed easy to overlook, despite the hooded robe he wore.

Two of the other three people in the room looked over when Serenity entered. The person he’d almost missed was a woman dressed in ordinary jeans and a T-shirt, lounging in one of the chairs. The other woman had a pair of goggles pulled up onto her forehead; her outfit seemed to be covered in pockets and straps to the point it was hard to tell what she was wearing under them.

The last person in the room was the man who didn’t turn to look when he entered. He was dressed in worn jeans and a button-up shirt that had probably seen better days. He didn’t seem to fit the place at all.

As Serenity looked around the room, he saw what looked like several incomplete projects scattered around the room. It was hard to tell what they were without taking a closer look. The room would have seemed large for the five of them if it weren’t for all the stuff.

“Ah, so you decided to show yourself. Come on in and take a load off, Tek won’t mind.” Even though the two women were the ones to turn and look at Serenity, it was the man that spoke.

“Do you want me calling you Little Dog again?” The woman in goggles glared at the man who spoke. “Let the host give the-”

There was no sound as the door at the other end of the room opened, but somehow the matronly woman standing outside it grabbed everyone’s attention. “May I come in?”

There was nothing outside the door other than the woman. There was no hallway or even an outside scene, simply emptiness. It wasn’t a cavern, either, unless it was truly enormous; Serenity couldn’t see a far wall.

The woman in goggles waved her in, then turned to Serenity. “I should do this right. I’m Tek. This is my home, well, one of my homes. The man with his feet on my table eating my - where did you get those cookies?” Tek glared at the man again.

“He stole them, of course. It’s one of the things he does.” The motherly woman smiled as she walked over to sit next to the man. “I brought them as a welcome-home gift. Please help yourself, Coyote already did.” She turned to Serenity. “I’m Rhea. I don’t have time for the whole dance, so I’m going to jump ahead a bit. We’re here, meeting you on your way home, because we need your help. Well, Tek and I do. I think Coyote is just here for laughs.”

“There’s no better reason to go anywhere,” the man said. “But no, that’s not why I’m here.”

Rhea shook her head and turned back to Serenity. “You intend to stop the invasions, do you not? Both the ones that are here and the ones that are coming.”

Serenity nodded, then realized the important part of her statement. “You know what’s coming?”

Rhea shrugged. “It’s why I’m here. If you’ll swear to defend Earth, Tek and I will give you a boon. I’m not sure why Coyote is here.”

Coyote smiled. “Blessings shout their presence. Curses don’t. I’m here for the cookies.”

Serenity’s vision wasn’t interrupted by blinking, but that’s still what it felt like as Coyote vanished. One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

Rhea sighed. “Always involved in a scheme, that one. Still, of the three of us, he’s the one that doesn’t need Earth, so I can’t blame him for the advice he’ll refuse to admit he gave.”

Coyote and Rhea were the names of gods - or of a spirit that might as well be a god and a Titan, at least. Close enough. Serenity didn’t really like dealing with gods; they tended to be fickle and more interested in what they wanted than anyone else.

They were rather like ordinary people in a lot of ways - ordinary people with a lot of power. Serenity had seen the same behavior in others.

When you came right down to it, he’d taught himself not to depend on anyone who might let him down, and for the Final Reaper, that was everyone. It was a reflex he needed to get over; if he was going to succeed, he was going to have to depend on others helping.

Especially when it was in their own self interest.

“How do you know what’s coming, and why do you care?” As Serenity repeated the question, he saw the woman slouched in a chair turn towards the door, as though startled. She hadn’t reacted when Rhea came, why was she reacting now?

“A prophecy. However much I hate it, it hasn’t been wrong yet. The mirrors that cross space open not once but twice. The first is hard but the second is the last I can See. That’s the end of it, and the only lines that haven’t -”

Serenity was watching the entrance instead of Rhea, and he was glad for that when the door suddenly bulged inward as a man punched his way in.

No, not a man. A Sterath. A ten-foot-tall Sterath. Other than his height, he was typical of a Sterath Warrior; bipedal with extremely strong legs and somewhat short arms, covered in smooth plates of bone across most of his body, he looked almost like an armored kangaroo. Serenity knew that only the Warriors grew the bony plates, though he’d never bothered to find out why; it gave them a vaguely insectoid look even though Sterath were not insectile at all otherwise.

The strange thing about the Sterath Warrior other than his height was that he was unarmed. Serenity didn’t think he’d ever seen a Sterath Warrior without weapons unless he’d taken them away - and when that happened, the Warrior usually tried to suicide.

It bothered Serenity that he couldn’t see the Sterath’s colors. They were important in knowing what the Sterath could do; for some reason, their chitinous plates grew in as a pale yellow but every time they fought the plates would change color to reflect the experience, only resetting if they were badly enough damaged that they shed the plate.

Serenity knew how to read the plate colors, but it didn’t matter since he couldn’t see them.

Somehow, Serenity had his naginata out and nestled in the crack between two plates of the warrior’s chest armor. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to break the armor or not, but that didn’t matter if he slipped between the plates.

When did that happen? He didn’t remember reaching for his weapon or moving. He must have simply reacted without realizing it.

The warrior stopped moving forward when he felt Serenity’s blade. “Of course it is you.” He spoke in Sterath. “I came for you, thief, to find you hiding behind the shields of your betters.”

The insult was ridiculous - hiding? He was the one holding a weapon on the Sterath! - yet somehow it was still insulting. Serenity jabbed the naginata forward a little, wedging it farther into the space between the warrior’s bony plates. “I’m not hiding, and I’m no thief.”

The Sterath Warrior swayed back and forth as he spoke. “I search your home and do not find you, until you appear here in a place where I am lessened. You were hidden. You took one of my Names for your own without earning it. You are a thief, though I do not know how.”

There was something oddly compelling about the Warrior’s words. “A challenge, yes. A challenge for your world and your Name. I challenge you. For a Sterath, great honor lies in beating me. For you? Only a name.”

“What are you talking about? A challenge?” Many cultures put a lot of emphasis on formal challenges; Serenity couldn’t recall if the Sterath did or not, but this Sterath seemed to, so it was likely.

The Sterath Warrior grinned, baring his teeth. “Choose your battleground: Words, Strategy, or Deception.”

Serenity looked at the Warrior. He didn’t want to meet whoever this was on his own ground. Words and Deception in particular seemed horrible choices.

Serenity wanted to go home, and to keep his home safe. That required defeating the Sterath, not fighting them one on one. “No. I will defeat your people and save my homeland. Whether that leaves you dead, gone, captured, or unwilling to fight, I don’t care.”

“Strategy, then. Accepted! If you can convince my people to leave, you will win. I will defeat your people, do not doubt it. I am the Tranquil Conviction, and I do not lose.”

[Quest Received: Prove your Name]

The Sterath stepped backwards, pulling himself off the naginata but leaving a line of liquid on the blade. He then turned and jumped back out the way he’d entered, leaving only his blood and the destroyed door as evidence of his presence.

Serenity stared after the Sterath warrior in shock. Tranquil Conviction? That was the name of a Sterath boogeyman, the same one called the Peace of the Grave - the same one as Serenity’s Name.

He’d never realized that when he took the Name, he was taking it from another, yet that was the only thing that explained what just happened.

He’d always thought it was figurative that the Sterath had granted him the name of their boogeyman; he’d never connected the dots. He hadn't even believed in gods until much later, and he’d simply never made the connection until now. A boogeyman was similar to a god; they could be as powerful as a minor deity, though they weren’t deific. Some could even be as powerful as a major deity.

Oops?

If Coyote and Rhea were gods … then were the other people here also gods? Was that why the woman whose name he still didn’t know had turned to look at the door before Tranquil Conviction arrived? Had she seen that he was coming?

If Tranquil Conviction was limited by being here, was this the home of a god? A modern technician…

Tek. Of course.

Why did she look like someone in a steampunk cosplay outfit?