The escort turned out to be a SWAT team. They weren’t there to fight, supposedly; they were there to guard the two civilians.

Serenity didn’t ask why it was police instead of military; he already knew that the answer had to be politics, and he didn’t want to get involved in that.

It meant there was a caravan of vehicles making their way through the streets, searching for the source of the signal. It was a boring morning, which Serenity spent looking over the options Janice had found in the local area.

The armor was easy; there was only one set available that was close enough to his size in human form. It wouldn’t be terribly protective, but he’d take what he could get. It was surprisingly cheap; Serenity asked Janice to find out what the man’s story was. If he was selling it because he didn’t want to fight, that was fine. If he was selling it because he couldn’t afford not to, a helping hand now might be worth a lot later.

There were very few utility items available; the most common one was “Tutorial knapsacks”. Janice had already picked up three of them. Serenity wasn’t interested in the firestarter or the “magic crafting tools”, though he would want to check out the people selling them.

Weapons were more difficult, mostly because they were incredibly expensive. It didn’t make sense to Serenity; why was a sword with nothing more than a minor Sharpness enchantment selling for over a hundred times what a similarly low-end suit of armor was?

The swords were all insanely overpriced. The axes were slightly better, and the polearms were only ridiculously overpriced. Serenity knew that he was far too likely to break any of them to make him want to pay several thousand dollars on any of them; he’d be better off with a cheaper pair of nonmagical fighting knives that he expected to replace regularly.

The last item on the weapons list was a set of knives. Serenity was about to dismiss them as overpriced as well until he saw the note at the end of the listing: pushing mana into any of the knives will make a copy. The copy doesn’t last long and breaks after a single hit.

There were several ways such a set of knives could work; Serenity would have to see them to know if they were worth the price the seller wanted. More than that, this was expensive enough that he needed to know if it was within the budget. “Rissa? I’m looking at a set of knives, but you’re the only one with income these days. Can I?”

Rissa chuckled. “Our expenses have been pretty high lately, but things have been unstable enough that I’ve picked up quite a nice bit of change lately. How expensive are they?”

“Five grand,” Serenity admitted. “But if they do what I think they can, they’ll scale with the user’s Affinities and cross several Tiers. The big question is whether or not I’ll burn them out; if they’re well-made, they’ll last decades but if they’re poorly made, too much mana will burn them out in just a few uses.”

Rissa nodded. “Can you tell that by looking at them?”

Serenity shook his head. “Not unless it’s really obvious. I’ll be able to tell if they’re about to fail, but not if they’re weak.”

“I can.” Katya interrupted. “It’s a combination of the mana traces and the quality of the central core used; to cross Tiers, they’d have to be made up to the quality of the higher Tier. You have good mana control, which helps.”

Rissa nodded. “Then if Katya passes them, you can have them. We can afford them easily.”

By noon, they hadn’t found the portal site, even though they’d driven past the suspected locations several times each. Dr. Ridge declared that he needed to look at the system and make sure it was working and Rachel declared that it was lunchtime. They’d have two hours to get lunch before they met back at the point where they’d split up, because while Dr. Ridge might be willing to work through lunch, Rachel wasn’t - and she knew how long it would take to do a thorough review of the portal detector’s functionality.

She wasn’t quiet about her opinion, either.

Before they went anywhere, Janice called the people selling the armor and the knife set. It turned out that the man selling the armor was at work and wouldn’t have time to let them see it until that evening, but the woman with the knife set was only a few blocks away and happened to be at home.

Serenity knocked on the door; it was opened by a short blond woman dressed in an old T-shirt with paint stains and an oil-spotted pair of bluejeans. From the wrinkles she was starting to develop, she seemed to be in her late forties, but it was hard to be certain; she could easily have been a well-preserved sixty-year-old who kept herself in shape and didn’t happen to have any gray hair. “Welcome! Are you the people interested in the knife set? I wasn’t expecting so many of you. They can’t be separated, it doesn’t work if multiple people are trying to use different knives. I’m not sure why.”

Serenity smiled gently and nodded. “Yeah, we’re all in the same adventuring group. I’m the one planning to use the knives. Are they balanced for throwing?”

“They should be. Come on in; I’m Carol, by the way. I’ve got them in the kitchen.” She led the way into the kitchen, where Serenity found a set of six knives, each in its own case on a table.

The knives were beautiful; the blades were all pattern-welded steel and the handles were predominantly a dark wood, with matching inlaid patterns. They looked to be modern knives, nice but available at any number of places.

Two were what Serenity would have called ‘fighting knives’; the longer of the pair was a bit over a foot long and similar to a Roman gladius, while the shorter was roughly two-thirds as long and shaped more like a bowie knife. They could be used together, but either would also be usable on its own. Serenity doubted they were balanced for throwing.

From their looks, the other four could well be balanced for throwing; they were all smaller than the bowie knife and varied in size from only slightly smaller to a knife that Serenity could have concealed in his hand.

They all glowed a little to his Mana Sight; they’d clearly been enchanted.

Knives of Duplication

This set of six knives can create temporary magical copies of themselves, though only one copy of each knife can be in existence at a time. Copies can only be made or used by the bound user of the knife set. Copies match the condition of the knife copied.

Currently Unbound

The description basically told him what he already knew; all that meant was that she hadn’t lied about what the knives could do.

Katya looked up from the knives and turned to Carol. “You enchanted these, didn’t you? But you didn’t make the base blade.”

Carol seemed startled. “How did you know? I bought the knives; I wasn’t intending to make them a set, I was just working on them at the same time.”

“Intent.” Serenity smiled; it was obvious what had happened, even if Carol hadn’t realized it yet. “You thought of them as a group while you were working on them; that became part of the enchantment.” He’d seen similar mistakes happen in spellcasting more than once. Letting you mind wander or your intent vary was dangerous.

Carol was lucky that all it had done was making the knives a single set instead of six separate items. Most “cursed” items Serenity had seen were actually mistakes in the creation of the item, rather than actual curses.

“These are quite well made; the enchantment’s surprisingly durable, and because it’s a set, the stress of each duplication will be spread across all of the nearby knives.” Katya looked straight at Serenity. “Try not to have them all active at once; the enchantment’s fairly sturdy and surprisingly stable, but the fact that she used an absorbed medium rather than constructing them around the spell means that they’re limited in the intensity they can support at a time; to last, they need the support of the other knives.”

Serenity nodded; that clearly meant that Katya thought they were worth buying.

“Have you made anything else? It looks like you like to experiment; I think my cousin Elvar is looking for an apprentice, but he hates teaching children and would rather make different things than stick to what sells.” Katya smiled. “I’m sure we can use some help in how to price and sell what we make, too. It could be a …” She stopped and turned to Rissa. “What did that movie call it? A wa wa? Where it’s good for everyone?”

Rissa chuckled. “Win-win. Do you always try to recruit people into your family’s business when you buy things from them?”

Katya winked. “Only when the things I buy are good.”

They arrived back at the meeting point to find Dr. Ridge swearing at the equipment. He hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with it, which meant that either the assumed locations for the invasion portal were all wrong or the device was broken in a way he couldn’t find.

He continued to try to troubleshoot long after the planned time to move on had come and gone. Serenity was considering saying something when Rachel told him to “Button it back up. We still have places to search and as far as we can tell, it’s working. Let’s do the rest of the route before we give up.”

In some ways it was just as well they’d taken a break as long as they had; the streets were empty enough that the three vehicles were able to stay together without continually having to deal with other traffic cutting in front of them or splitting them.

It was another two hours before Janice spoke. “Wake up everyone. I think we’ve found something.”

Serenity pulled himself back from contemplating the magic on his new knives (which might have turned into a small nap, though he wasn’t ready to admit that) and tried to pay attention. Nothing seemed out of order; Janice was still driving, following the scientists’ van. “We’re not stopped?”

Janice’s chuckle was warm. “No, but this is the second time we’ve gone around the block here. I don’t think it’s part of the search pattern.”

The blinker on the van in front of them turned on, and Janice followed the scientists into a large parking lot, already filled with other vehicles. Serenity looked around, trying to orient himself.

He felt the blood drain from his face when he saw the large M of a Metro station. The Sterath invasion portal was at or near a Metro station? It was getting close to the beginning of rush hour, too; they couldn’t go in there and start a fight. It would be far too likely to have casualties.

The scientists’ van pulled to a stop at the closest point it could get to the building without going up on the pavement, followed by Serenity’s van and the SWAT SUV. Serenity didn’t wait for a phone call; he simply hopped out of the vehicle and walked forward. He could hear someone else getting out of the SUV behind them.

The driver’s door was already open on the government van; Serenity met Rachel at the entrance to the interior of the van; the SWAT team’s leader wasn’t far behind.

The SWAT team leader stared at Serenity. “It’s here? Do we need to evacuate the Metro station? I’ve seen what’s left after one of your fights.” Serenity still hadn’t gotten the man’s name or rank, other than the BROWN written on his uniform.

“It’s here. Somewhere. Underground probably but not deep. Definitely in or near the building ahead of us, it has to be.” Dr. Ridge didn’t look up as he spoke. “I’d have to get closer to know for sure, and I can’t do that in the vehicle. The map projection puts it inside the building; with the error I think we have, it might be right outside. But it’s underground.”

Serenity turned back to Officer - Lieutenant? Captain? He really should ask. Mr. Brown, anyway. “Evacuation’s probably a good idea. I can’t guarantee there won’t be collateral damage. Portals can be dangerous.”