Serenity slipped through the Metro building, moving from shadow to shadow unnoticed. He could feel the invasion portal in the distance, though without stopping to concentrate, all he got was a rough feeling that something of significant magic was nearby. With concentration, he could get the direction and something of the distance.

So far, he hadn’t seen anything other than humans; the evacuation of the Metro station had started and there were more people in the building than Serenity would have expected, with no more trains stopping at the station. One of the humans looked directly at the shadow Serenity was hiding in and he froze. The human shook her head, then continued leaving the building.

Perceptive. Perhaps a bit too inclined to trust that it really wasn’t anything … I hope she never has to learn paranoia.

As long as he was paused in a convenient shadow anyway, Serenity took a moment to concentrate. He could do the same thing the portal-detector did, but now that he was this close he could combine that information with his magical senses. Everything told him it was still ahead; the magical concentration was a bit more to the left than the electromagnetic signals indicated, but either way that meant he needed to go forward. At a guess, it was down a level then he’d need to reorient.

The mass of sentient darkness slid along the ceiling avoiding the light fixtures, knowing people didn’t often look up. If they did, they’d probably assume a maintenance issue as long as he didn’t actually block the lights. When he reached the ceiling of the floor below, he checked again; this time, it was off to his left and past another set of stairs with an attached escalator.

The portal was at the very end of the platform; half a dozen Sterath were gathered around it. Serenity could feel a hint of magic between him and them; he assumed it was an illusion of some sort, probably making the platform seem shorter by about ten feet. It wasn’t much room, but there also weren’t many Sterath present.

No wonder they were spreading out in the city; Vengeance had always chosen to establish a central point near his portal, guarding it, but he hadn’t had one as bad as spawning in a subway station.

Serenity slipped silently out of the Metro station. They’d given him until the station was fully evacuated to scout, and he wanted to get out in plenty of time. His Sovereign of Potential form still moved slower than an ordinary walking pace.

Once the place was cleared out, both groups went in. The SWAT team went in first, looking for people who hadn’t yet evacuated. Serenity couldn’t help but be amused by the people he saw hurrying out of the station after they saw a SWAT team in full gear.

The SWAT team was going to clear everything except the one platform where Serenity had seen the Sterath and the portal. Serenity gave them a few minutes to start, then headed in with his allies. Ita and Raz wore shrouding coats, while Serenity walked in his human form. They didn’t want to alarm the Sterath any sooner than they had to.

When they arrived on the platform, none of them could see or hear the Sterath. Serenity and Rissa could tell they were there with Eyeless Sight, but fortunately they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the platform. The group headed to the last bench before the illusion; the Sterath seemed to start watching them as they got closer, but relaxed when Serenity, Risdsa, and Katya sat down on the bench.

They didn’t seem to have noticed that Ita was hopping instead of walking. She was keeping the hops small to make it less obvious, but she simply couldn’t walk that far.

Serenity tried to stay aware of them, but his attention was tied up building the spell they were going to use to start things off. It was unlikely that a simple gravity spell would do much; these were not Tier Zero minitaurs, these were Tier Two or Three Sterath. They should be able to cope with a small increase in their weight.

Instead, Serenity was using a spell that dovetailed perfectly with his Nihility Affinity, but required an extremely high understanding of spellcraft to achieve. It was normally done using the Arcane affinity; Serenity seemed to have that, even though it wasn’t on his Status anymore, but adding Nihility made it stronger and harder to deal with.

Counterspell.

It was useless against people who didn’t use magic, but they knew there was a portal mage there, and portal mages often had terrifying tricks. There was probably also an illusionist, given the fact that they were hidden, and illusionists could be worse.

Beyond that, it would also disable many enchanted items; he wasn’t going to push it far enough to actually break them, though that was possible. He’d have to continuously channel the spell and adapt it on the fly to catch spells as they came and items as they were activated, but he could do that.

It meant he wouldn’t really be part of the fighting, but none of the others could hold and manage a counterspell of the magnitude he planned to use. He was also the only one that could exclude their own enchanted items and spells.

When Serenity had the spell ready, he nodded at the others and triggered the Haste he’d infused that morning on them all. It was the last spell he was going to be able to evoke. “Go.”

Ita whispered something and touched both Katya and Rissa. Serenity felt the spell echo through the local magic before she pulled out the new darts they’d gotten for her. The old ones had been more or less destroyed by the magic she ran through them.

Katya stood up and stretched, then meandered halfway to the edge of the illusion, followed by Rissa. Raz loosened the coat he wore, getting ready to drop it.

When Serenity saw that the Sterath were paying far too much attention to the women, he activated the counterspell. It smashed against the illusion, crushing it out of existence. The portal didn’t react, but Serenity felt a sequence of other small spells, probably traps, disappear from just inside the illusion-covered area.

All of the Sterath were wearing magical equipment, and mana bled out of Serenity’s spell as it suppressed the gear’s effects. He didn’t take the time to figure out what it did or which ones to suppress; he simply laid an absence of mana over the entire area.

Not that there was anything simple about it. The spellform was difficult, because it had to be able to counter mana itself and not simply a specific affinity; it was also mana-hungry, as each attempted mana use had to be countered, which burned more mana than the spell took to begin with. It was a good thing Serenity had an enlarged mana pool, even if he couldn’t completely fill it on Earth outside a ley line.

Serenity was only vaguely aware of the fight itself, where Katya took the lead with Rissa right behind her and Raz watching their rear. He noticed individual flashes, like Raz’s mana bolt aimed at the face of one of the Sterath as he turned to strike Rissa or Ita’s darts as they struck another Sterath and sent magic shooting through his body, making his muscles cramp until he actually fell over.

Most of what he did notice was the spells, when he had to tweak his counterspell so that it wouldn’t suppress his allies’ spells. He had a vague idea where each of his allies was, because he had to maintain the separation of the counterspell from the magic each carried.

His mana dipped below half of what he’d had when he started and continued dropping. He continued to hold the spell until he heard Rissa’s voice in his mind. :Serenity? You can drop the spell. They’re all down.:

Serenity replied with a curt :Good: before he began properly shutting down the spell. He was low on mana, but there was no excuse for letting a spell just drop. Especially not a Nullity-based counterspell; shards of that would be a pain and a half to clean up if anyone wanted to use a spell in the area again, and he didn’t want to randomly degrade the magic items of anyone who walked through the area either.

As he finished shutting down the spell, a spike of pain lanced through Serenity’s head. He didn’t let it distract him from properly closing the spell, but once that was done he leaned back in the bench and closed his eyes. He’d let his mana run down too far; he was well below a quarter of his full mana pool, more like a tenth. He hadn’t let it run down so far that he passed out, but given the headache he had, Serenity thought he would probably have preferred unconsciousness.

Serenity reached out to try to pull mana into his aching emptiness, but it just wasn’t there. He’d pushed it away or destroyed it or done something with it using his Nihility Affinity; he wasn’t certain which and his head hurt too much to try to figure it out.

After entirely too long, Serenity felt a hand on his shoulder. It was followed by a small amount of mana flowing into him. It wasn’t nearly enough to fill up his mana pool, even for Earth, but it was enough to eliminate the low-mana side effects.

When Serenity looked up, Rissa was standing with her hand on him. “You feeling better now?”

Serenity took a moment to check his condition. “Yeah, I am. Thanks.” He levered himself to his feet and wrapped her in his arms. “Thanks.”

“You’re repeating yourself.” Rissa’s face was hidden, but Serenity could hear the smile in her voice.

Serenity grinned. “Yeah.” He tightened the hug for a moment, then released it, letting her go. “I’d better close the portal.” He took a quick glance at the Quest status, just in case.

[Global Quest: Permanently deal with all Invasion Portals and remove the threat of the invaders]

[Quest Status: 32/512]

“You left the Traa and rockfin portals open. What makes this one different? Shouldn’t you get someone to approve closing it?” Rissa sounded nervous as she trailed behind him on the way to the portal.

“Better to ask forgiveness…” Serenity muttered. Not that he thought he’d really need forgiveness for this. “This is a different situation in a couple of ways. The Sterath can put someone or a group through that may not be easily dealt with by a few soldiers. On top of that, this is in a metro station. The Traa situation is completely different; we’re likely to get a treaty with them soon.”

“How are we going to send the captives back, then?”

Was that the real concern? It wasn’t unreasonable, but it still wasn’t enough to change Serenity’s opinion. Cutting off reinforcements was far more important than giving the Sterath a way out. “We aren’t going to - at least, not immediately. There’s no good way to gather them up from wherever they are quickly; we still need to take out the main base. This means that they won’t get reinforcements, that’s important. Once we have trade open again, we can let them leave to find their own way home.”

Serenity decided not to mention that even allowing that much was far more than many places would allow prisoners of war. Ita had been a war slave, after all, and that was within her own people; they’d have treated humans just as poorly if they let them live at all.

Rissa didn’t say anything immediately. Serenity nodded to himself; that meant she didn’t have another counterargument ready. He was certain they’d discuss it again at another portal, but for now the matter was settled.

Serenity reached out to the portal. He didn’t have much mana available, but telling the portal it was time to close didn’t take much mana now that he knew how to do it. It was a matter of skill at handling mana, and Serenity had no shortage of that.

Unlike the first Sterath portal Serenity had closed, he knew this one would simply shut down without causing an explosion on the other side.

Speaking of which, Serenity didn’t see any sign of such an explosion. He’d been pretty confident it would happen and be messy. Was he wrong or had they cleaned it up?