Serenity led the way to the second exit from the womens’ locker room; it was a ways down the hall. The second door to the mens’ locker room was directly across the hallway.

Serenity checked to both the right and the left; there were no Sterath visible in the hallway. Good enough. He waited until Katya was in position; she silently nodded that she was ready and he repeated the same entrance he’d used on the other locker room.

It went just as smoothly, but only because it couldn’t possibly go any better. The Sterath were all completely surprised again; this time, they weren’t even gathered around the correct door. That could have been a problem if the locker room was large enough for them to recover before Serenity and Katya crossed it, but it wasn’t.

There were far more Sterath here than in the house a few days before; this was a relatively permanent relatively large ‘base’ for them, even though there were still less than fifty Sterath. It was a ‘permanent’ location instead of a ‘transit’ location; the Sterath here were accumulating instead of staying for a day or two until there were enough portal mages available to move them or bad enough weather to move without being seen.

It had to be why the Sterath were still hiding; there simply weren’t enough of them to be confident they could conquer a city. In fact, Serenity was fairly confident that they believed they couldn’t; if they thought there was a reasonable chance, they’d probably have already attacked.

Serenity wanted to take out as many Sterath as he could before they were alerted. Serenity needed to keep the number of invaders down to keep the status quo from changing; hopefully, it would also lead him to the BattleLord.

That was why he’d picked it as the ‘far’ option, after all; both of the choices he’d selected were larger locations. With luck, that would create enough chaos to give him an opportunity to find the person giving commands and follow them back. He needed to capture a messenger, not a no-rank soldier; none of the Sterath here would know anything useful.

It was kind of nice not to have to work to keep enemies alive. Killing was easier than disabling with little chance of death, after all.

“There’s still no one in the entrance area,” Raz reported. He’d stayed there with Rissa and Ita while Serenity and Katya attacked the two locker rooms.

“Good. Let’s go then.” Serenity led the way down the hall. It wouldn’t be so easy from here.

Three small workout rooms later, Serenity felt like revising that statement. It shouldn’t have been so easy, but it was. They either completely surprised the Sterath and slaughtered them before they could act or the Sterath charged forward mindlessly. Serenity was beginning to wonder if there was something actively wrong with the Sterath; yes, he’d seen them act like this back in the past; the Sterath were like violent, hopping lemmings sometimes. He simply didn’t remember them doing it so pointlessly.

This was supposed to be a contest with the Shameful One of strategy, Tranquil Conviction. Was he missing something or was being separated from higher authority really this bad for the Sterath?

The fourth small workout room was empty, as were the next three.

“Someone’s started getting smart and is trying something.” Katya said the obvious. It took Serenity a moment to realize that she was saying it to make sure he agreed as much as anything.

Serenity stood at the next door and looked back at Katya. “Yeah. I’m expecting a wave attack, probably with some stronger Sterath mixed in. They’ll try to overwhelm us and at the same time use their numbers to let their stronger people survive long enough to hurt us.” It was pretty much the simplest actual tactic the Sterath used; Serenity could remember seeing a city’s worth of Sterath flatten themselves against his undead army, trying to reach him.

No, trying to reach Vengeance. He had to remember that he wasn’t Vengeance and Vengeance wasn’t him. It hadn’t happened, and if he had anything to say about it, it never would.

“Sounds about right. Hmm. Plan Three?” Katya was staring at the door Serenity stood next to, not moving towards it. “That will help with the chance of a multi-pronged attack. I don’t like this layout, where everything has multiple entrances and exits.”

Plan Three had Serenity standing in the door, preventing anyone from reaching the others, while the three mages took care of most of the enemies. It was the primary plan they’d come up with for a wave-style attack. Serenity nodded. “Makes sense. The hallway’s a bit narrow for it.”

“I’ll stay out of the way,” Rissa volunteered quietly. “I don’t have great attack spells anyway.”

“That’s a good reason to have you attack - if you want to get them.” Katya frowned at Rissa. “The Voice rewards what it sees you doing. If you choose not to do something because you aren’t good at it, you won’t get better. You have to practice and learn.”

“It should be you and Raz,” Ita concurred. “I am too large to fit behind Serenity and give him his full space to move in anyway. Also, there are spells I can use where I do not need to see. Serenity, you must tell me when you need help. It will only be near you.”

Serenity was curious what help she meant. “Some sort of area effect?”

Ita bobbed her head. “Yes. Very high mana use but deadly. It will not harm you.”

They should have settled this ahead of time, but for some reason no one had thought about space issues. Serenity knew that some issues like that were normal for a new group; you learned as you went and adjusted. It would be a long time before they could work without occasional conferences to adjust.

Serenity waited while the others arranged themselves; Katya stood farther down the hall, since it was the most likely direction for a second prong, while Ita watched the other direction in case someone had gotten behind them. Serenity, Raz, and Rissa would handle the attack through the door.

The room was just as empty as the previous three.

Serenity frowned at that. There weren’t many more small rooms. “It’ll be in the large studio in the back. That’s the only place this many Sterath would fit.”

They repeated the same setup on the next two small workout rooms, but they were both full of supplies instead of Sterath. Serenity performed a quick check of each room to be certain no one was hiding, but didn’t find anyone.

The entrance to the large studio was a pair of double doors; it sat directly at the end of the hall, at a T intersection. The right arm of the T led to workout rooms they’d already checked, so the large studio was one of the few places left. The left arm was still unexplored; Serenity knew it led to the ‘staff only’ area, and had several more small rooms but nothing as large as the studio.

Serenity couldn’t block the double doors with his body the way he could have with the smaller doors, but he could reach anything that was to try to come through either door without any trouble. Katya stood on the side that was unexplored, while Raz, Rissa, and Ita all stacked up behind Serenity, where they’d be able to see through the doors once they were open.

The doors didn’t have locks, and they both swung into the room. That was convenient; Serenity decided to open only one of the doors. He’d still have to defend both if the Sterath opened the other, but it’d slow them down at the beginning. “Ready? I’m going to open the one on the left.”

Once all of the “ready” and “yes” responses came back, Serenity pushed the door open to see a sea of angry armored kangaroos.

Serenity had a moment of regret that they didn’t have a true area-effect spellcaster; Nightwitch would have made this much easier. Even if she couldn’t kill them, she could weaken them significantly - and she probably would have killed some.

Serenity shoved the door as open as it would go and made sure to kick the little kickstand-thingy that would prop the door open. He wasn’t sure what it was called, but this wasn’t the time to think about names. He wanted the door to stay open to keep the Steraths’ attention focused.

During the moment of surprise, Serenity scanned the room looking for another entrance. It seemed likely; surely the fire code wouldn’t allow such a large room to have only one exit, if nothing else. He found it at the back of the room , a single door with a FIRE DOOR - ALARM WILL SOUND IF DOOR IS OPENED sign on it. He somehow doubted the alarm would actually work; none of the building had electricity.

A group of darts flew over Serenity’s shoulder into the room, followed by another. Few of them hit Sterath, and the ones that did bounced; they weren’t intended as actual weapons, after all. Serenity knew that wasn’t the point anyway. The point was that they gave Ita connections.

She’d said she could restrict movement in an area with them, and they’d based a good bit of their planning on that. Serenity’s gravity spell might slow down a Sterath, but it wouldn’t stop them, unlike the minitaurs.

The Sterath charged him in a wave. He was more worried about being knocked over than hit by weapons; if they simply pushed through and on top of him, they could immobilize him with sheer weight and give time for others to attack. Swarm tactics would result in a lot of Sterath killed, but they might well kill some of the people behind him while they were at it.

Only three of them reached him at the same time. The rest seemed to have tripped, stopped for a reason Serenity couldn’t see, or be stuck behind others. That was the most dangerous moment, and Ita had prevented it from materializing.

The three Sterath that reached Serenity were quickly taken care of - one by a spell from Raz, one by Rissa’s spear, and one with a simple ax swing from Serenity. Once they were down, Serenity could see lines of magic crisscrossing the room at about a foot above the ground. The only thing visible to the eye was the floating darts that somehow anchored each magical line.

Serenity could see the Sterath having issues with the lines. It wasn’t that they couldn’t jump over them; they definitely could, even though the ceiling wasn’t high enough for a full-height jump. The problem was that they had to be careful on both the way up and the way down. It was obvious that most couldn’t tell where the lines were, as well. All they would do is trip; they were apparently … strings between the darts?

Serenity wasn’t certain why the darts were floating; the lines between them made some sense as connection magic, but the floating must be because of whatever spell Ita was using. He’d want to ask about it later; if he had the spellform, he could probably adapt the spell to use some of the Affinities he had. There were several possible ways to make things float, but portable mass tripwires was a very interesting spell.

Sounds of fighting came from Serenity’s left; he couldn’t take the time to investigate, but he knew that Katya was holding the defense there. At some point in the battle, Raz and Rissa shifted to helping Katya while Ita kept her attention on limiting movement in the main room and Serenity blocked the doorway, killing anyone who came close enough.

With the tripwires in play, only a few Sterath at a time reached the door; holding it was far easier than Serenity had expected. By the time Ita ran out of magic, the darts fell to the floor, and she collapsed against the wall, panting, there were only a handful of Sterath left. The remaining Sterath were three mages who’d found that their firebolts did essentially nothing against his high Heat Resistance and a swordsman that Serenity was fairly confident had to be the installation’s leader.