The rest of the morning was filled with Rissa teaching Jacob some of the basics; she had Serenity take the shield down so that Jacob could practice. Serenity used the time to have a series of long conversations with his parents, Nightwitch, and Lancaster. The most interesting thing was the portal in London.

After the first assault, more soldiers were brought in; two more attacks happened before they were able to push their way into the central area. When they did, they found an empty building. Despite searching, they were unable to find the portal. No one quite trusted it, which proved to be a good thing when fire started to rain from the sky with no source. They were beaten back, but pushed their way back in.

“They’ve requested that we send you to help. Is that something you can help with?” Lex Rothmer sounded doubtful. “Whatever they’re using, it doesn’t block heat, so thermal vision works - but only until they start throwing fire around. That’s just too much, and it’s tough to pick anything out of that mess.”

They were undoubtedly using some kind of visual shield, probably either a camouflage or invisibility spell. There was a decent chance they had a protective ritual circle around the portal itself; Serenity certainly knew he had, when he’d participated in invasions.

Serenity found himself describing the different countermeasures the British could use, and what sort of abilities to look for in people who’d been through the Tutorial. It wasn’t that he couldn’t help; he could. The problem was that he couldn’t be everywhere. It might not be optimal for any particular situation, but the people of Earth needed to learn how to do this without him.

It felt ironic that the best way for Serenity to defend his planet was to make other people do it, but it was true. One person couldn’t be everywhere, and if he fixed everything on his own now, the people who could have learned from it wouldn’t be there in the future when he couldn’t be. People were going to die because he left problems to others to deal with, but it was still the right choice.

Serenity knew the information he was sharing was important for the current situation. What he didn’t know was just how far the information was going to spread - or how much his country would end up gaining in return.

The moment Serenity was off the long conference call with his father, Rissa was in the room. Serenity had the feeling she’d been listening, waiting for him to say goodbye. “Serenity? Where’s that bat?”

Serenity blinked. That was not the question he’d expected, but he could check; the tracking spell was very low power, so it was still running. It took a little time to orient himself again and follow the trace, but it was still there. “Same place as this morning. Or close, at least.”

Rissa nodded. “Good; there’s a lot of relatively open land to the west. I need to get Jacob away from the city. Denise should be here soon; she’s going to pick up some chicken. We’ll have an early dinner then we can head out that way.”

“Dinner?” It wasn’t dinnertime; it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Was it?

Serenity looked down at his phone. 3:52 PM. Huh. He ought to be hungry, but he wasn’t particularly.

Rissa was grinning. “I didn’t notice either, until Jacob said something. I told him to have Denise pick up extra, since we both skipped lunch and you’re you.”

“Gee thanks.” It did seem like he was forgetting meals more often lately. That made sense in Aki’s dungeon, where the mana level was high enough to be comfortable, but here? He should have been hungry before lunchtime.

Maybe he was simply getting used to eating mana instead of food? That would make sense on one level, but it still disturbed him a little. He was used to eating at least two meals a day.

On the other hand, it wasn’t like he couldn’t eat when there was good food in front of him.

Despite making it an early dinner, they didn’t escape the Austin traffic. It was closer to six than five by the time they were actually on the west side of Austin, headed towards where Serenity still felt the bat.

By then it was obvious the bat hadn’t gone back to the bridge.

By seven, they were north of the bat, trying to figure out how to get south. Serenity was trying to triangulate the bat’s location based on when they passed it, but his notes weren’t good enough to say more than that the bat was closer than San Antonio; it was probably somewhere in the hills, possibly close to Canyon Lake.

After another hour, they were close; they’d narrowed it down to a five-square-mile stretch of very hilly land with a stream - or maybe it was a creek? Some of it was fenced off, but most of it seemed to be set aside for residential use or to simply be unused land; it was hard to tell exactly what it was in the dark. Unfortunately, Serenity couldn’t be certain where it was; the roads wound up and down the steep hills and made it difficult to accurately guess when they were close.

Just as concerning, there was a pair of ley lines that went into the area; there had to be a nexus. Serenity had the feeling that whatever the bat was doing in the area, it had to do with the nexus. After all, the problem wasn’t this bat; it was whatever had cast spells on all of the bats, especially the ones that could resist being tracked.

They were going to have to go in on foot; unfortunately, it was already after dark, and the only one of them that could see in the dark was Serenity. Rissa could as well if he shared his Eyeless Sight, but that didn't help Denise or Jacob.

There were no flashlights in the rental car.

There was a long argument after Rissa found a good place to pull the car off the road. Denise wanted to leave and come back in daylight; Jacob wanted to go somewhere else and work on his mental shielding. Rissa thought they should investigate; after all, Serenity could create a light and they were already here.

Serenity thought he should go in alone. He could see, bats weren’t directly dangerous, and at least he could find out what was at the nexus.

Everyone else thought that was a bad idea. What if he fell or something? Rissa told him he had to at least take her.

Serenity said he’d just call out on his phone, but he wasn’t going to get into trouble anyway. This was almost convincing, until Denise pointed out that she didn’t have a signal and Serenity checked his own phone, to find out that it was going in and out of having a connection.

They spent half an hour trying to make a decision until Serenity finally gave in. “Fine. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll head back to Georgetown tonight. I’ll set a shield spell on Jacob in the morning that’ll hold him through the day. Rissa and I will come here after that and investigate while you two are teaching. If there’s a dungeon here, we’ll check into it and figure out what the bat’s doing. We’ll rent a wilderness place for the weekend, Rissa can teach Jacob then.”

Serenity checked the trace spell again. It was starting to fray; he hadn’t set up one designed to last for a long time. “The bat hasn’t moved. The spell should last tomorrow, but that’s probably it. It’ll fail tomorrow at nightfall, I’d guess.”

Midmorning the next day found the two of them back at the same pulloff. There was no fence, but there also was no trail. It seemed to simply be wilderness.

Serenity was confident it wasn’t wilderness - or at least, that it hadn’t always been wilderness. The trees were all about the same height, and they didn’t look fully grown. Either the area had once been managed or there’d been a fire that cleaned everything out, but there were no skeletal tree remains. Either way, it wasn’t currently managed land; that was obvious.

“Did we bring any bugspray?” Rissa seemed to be looking at the grass instead of the trees.

“No, why? I think we can avoid the treeline, mostly at least.” Serenity concentrated on the map he was looking at. If he’d mapped it correctly this morning, the two ley lines ran there and there, and the bat was more or less that way … it was possible the bat was in the nexus, but he couldn’t be certain. It was going to be less than a mile in, probably closer to half a mile. Still more than enough distance to have to cover over bad terrain like this.

“High grass. Ticks are likely, and … have you ever had chiggers?”

Serenity paused at Rissa’s comment, then took another look at the grass. He knew a spell to repel vermin. It was a variant on a common Path skill, but it required more mana than he had available; even then it only worked on up to Tier thirteen, because-

Serenity shook himself. He needed to do the same thing to that spell that he’d done to the mind-shielding spell and weaken it to near-nonexistence. The mind-shield he had on Jacob wouldn’t hold up against a serious attempt to get through; it was simply there to dull the noise from people who didn’t have any particular Mind Affinity. A vermin-repellent spell to stop ticks and chiggers didn’t need to be good against the Venki cave rat or even a rattlesnake; it simply needed to make them not seem appetizing.

It’d probably work on mosquitoes, too.

Serenity shifted to his chimera form. Not only was it a bit more comfortable, the scales would probably make it harder for vermin to hurt him. He’d still want the spell, but even a small gain would help. Rissa would need the spell more than he would.

Serenity was in good shape on mana after visiting the ley line that morning to cast the spell on Jacob, so he could afford a maintained spell on the two of them. They’d be entering a ley line again soon enough anyway.

Following the “line” towards the bat was even worse than Serenity had expected; they had to go up and down hills and crossed a stream four times. Serenity suspected that it was actually the same creek all four times. Each time, they found a relatively narrow spot, then Serenity carried Rissa over; he didn’t even dare use the gravity-alteration spell more than what it took to offset Rissa’s weight, since he didn’t know exactly what they were going to face and he needed to save enough mana to return.

They were most of the way there when Serenity realized that not only did the spell indicate that they were close, it indicated that they were too high. Wherever the bat was, it had to be underground. Not all that deep, but still underground.

It made sense; the bat was probably in a cave nearby. The question was how they would find it.

They were near the point Serenity had identified as the likely nexus as well, but hadn’t hit either ley line, even though Serenity felt both of them as they drove up. It was looking even more likely that the two were connected.