Helios cheered as he found his second target. It was hidden in an illusion on top of a tall building, but Helios’s power included Sight, as the Sun should. It should be a far less annoying fight than the monkeys, since he could simply call down the Light of the Sun on his enemies. He didn’t care about any that were sheltering in the building; all he cared about was the portal, and it was right there. He could destroy it at the same time he killed them!

It wasn’t as easy as Helios expected. His Light of the Sun did deal with all of the bird-men on the roof, but it didn’t take out the portal on the first hit. The delay cost him; by the time he was able to create a Focused Sunbeam and destroy the portal, the bird-men had launched from several stories below, and were harassing him from the sky. All too many of them were spellcasters, and the most common specialty seemed to be Air.

Air casters were annoying. Unless they were highly skilled, they weren’t particularly deadly, but they were supremely annoying. These seemed to specialize in moving enough air to physically move someone, and being batted around the roof was irritating. It took him several more Sunlight spells to finally deal with all of the birds.

Once he did, he was able to simply dissolve into the warmth of the Sun’s light and slip away to another location under the Sun’s Gaze. Simple enough.

Now where should he look next?

When Rissa and Serenity got to the hotel, they found that the rest of their party was still awake. It made sense; even though it was well after midnight in London, it wasn’t all that late in New York. Raz was thrilled to hear about the dungeons, so Serenity left Rissa explaining them while he went out for a short practice session with Katya; she wanted to practice fighting when she couldn’t see and Serenity simply wanted the practice.

They didn’t keep formal score, but it was obvious to both of them that Serenity would have won if they had been keeping score. They’d expected that; he won more than he lost even before he advanced to Tier Three, and fighting when he could see and Katya couldn’t was not a way to even things out.

They started the next morning late, but as it turned out that didn’t matter; while Mr. Williams was able to get them the permissions they needed for the next portal site, they wouldn’t be able to go to it until the following day, so it was just a travel day anyway.

They made a fun day of the trip, stopping at a pair of dungeons on the way. Neither took long to clear; they were both simple, traditional dungeons. The first was Tier One while the second was Tier Zero; the group simply walked through them. Both were quite willing to join the ley line network.

They reached Manchester after dark and settled down into a hotel, where Mr. Williams gave them the updates from that day’s probes. It wasn’t much new, but it was something.

The portal was the first one Serenity had seen during the invasion of Earth that was near a major city but not in it. In many ways, that made it easier for the defenders; they didn’t have to worry about damaging their city when they attacked the invaders quite as much, and magic didn’t have as high a tendency to travel long distances when you missed; it would dissipate with distance in a way bullets wouldn’t.

The rockfin portal didn’t count; it wasn’t near a major city.

The soldiers had been ordered to map out the extent of the “disturbed area” around the portal but not enter it. Serenity didn’t understand the reasoning behind that, but all he could do was live with the results. It meant that they knew there was a dirt berm around most of a square mile of the countryside. They also knew that anyone who had been within that square mile hadn’t been heard from in two weeks; it was still making the local news with some regularity as a tragedy.

It was barely a blip on the national and international news. There were a handful of portals in locations all over the world that had far higher death counts, including the near-total destruction of at least one city in the Republic of Georgia; reports were slow coming out of the area, but the last Serenity had heard was that they’d invited the Russian military in to deal with the problem. Serenity was confident they wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t been convinced they wouldn’t have a country otherwise; even so, it was a surprise that showed their desperation.

There were rumors of some very strange portals, as well; the reports from a mountain in the western United States of “something big that knows you’re there” were creepy, especially when people started talking about wanting to go back. Worse was the fact that anyone who went too close didn’t seem to come back out. Drones hadn’t yet found anything; Serenity had the distinct feeling that that was one he’d need to handle.

As they were watching the news, there was a report of “strange lights in the sky” from Johannesburg, South Africa earlier that day. There was a graphic content warning before the video, which showed burnt humanoid figures lying on the ground, often surrounded by feathers. Serenity wasn’t certain how many people could tell the bodies were nonhuman, but it was fairly obvious on all of the ones Serenity could get a good look at.

“Do you think that’s the work of the Sun-god?” Rissa carefully avoided saying Helios’s name.

“It seems likely.” The next segment came on as Serenity was answering, and all he could do was shake his head. It was speculation about how the disruption would affect the balance of power in the world.

Serenity didn’t know the answer. It depended on far too many factors to have any real idea. How powerful would people be? How quickly would people adapt to the changes - and would the leaders in charge continue to be the same people who were currently powerful? If not, would they coopt the powerful people? Would people even be powerful enough individually for that to matter?

Or would the powerful leave? If they did, odds were that not too much would change, at least not quickly. That was a bad thing for a world, usually, but Earth might be different. Earth didn’t have to depend on high-Tier people for defense, not if the monsters and dungeons were Tier Three or lower. Even a Tier Five could be handled if it was alone.

Serenity was tired of thinking such depressing thoughts. “Rissa? Did you notice that there’s a jacuzzi tub in the bathroom?”

There was something strange about the berm.

Serenity stared at it, trying to figure out what his intuition was telling him. It was just dirt, piled up into a ridge. Why did he think it was strange?

Serenity stepped onto the dirt and his foot sank in; that was odd. Why wasn’t it packed down? Was that what he was seeing?

“Serenity? What are you looking at? Is the dirt magic or something?” Katya spoke from only about a foot away from Serenity.

Serenity shook his head, the frown on his face from concentration not changing at all. “No. There’s no magic. But there’s something strange about the dirt in the berm. It’s loose, not packed. There’s no sign of what moved it; if it were done by people, you’d expect tracks. If it were done by magic, there would be residue, and there isn’t. The only…”

Serenity stared at the top of the berm as he finally realized what his intuition was trying to tell him. “There aren’t any rocks. The area around the berm is rocky, but there aren’t any rocks in the berm over about a quarter-inch. More than that, the top of the berm is the only area that’s disturbed and it looks like the opposite of something walking on top of the berm. It looks like the berms were piled up by bringing the stuff up from inside them.”

“Yes. And?” Katya sounded like she was waiting for the punchline.

Wasn’t it obvious from there? “Whoever built the berm isn’t even close to human. Something that burrows or lives underground and moves dirt without magic. Yet it’s clearly planned, and planned as a surface defense. It seems likely that there’s an overall guiding intelligence with some knowledge of surface warfare. Which means the portal is likely aboveground. At a minimum they expect what’s on the surface to matter. That part is good news, the fact that they could come up anywhere isn’t. At least not until we know more.”

Katya didn’t reply, so Serenity figured he’d made his point.

Serenity took a few steps up the berm, carefully taking his time to ensure he had good footing on every step. While he did sink two or three inches into the dirt, it supported him after that. “I’m hoping for moles or prairie dogs or something like that. If we’re lucky, he’s bringing them all over from the other side.”

What other possibilities were there? The holes on top of the burrow weren’t completely telling, since some animals made holes larger than their bodies, but it was believable as a rabbit’s den if it weren’t such a large network. It’d sprung up so quickly that Serenity was worried about it. “Yes, hopefully it’s mammals. That would mean he brought them all over from the other side as adults.”

“Why mammals?” The liaison sounded confused. “Why are mammals better? Are they easier to kill?”

“Easier to kill?” Serenity carefully turned to face Mr. Williams, planting his feet in new indentations in the berm. “Not at all. Mammals tend to be clever, tenacious, and annoying. There’s a reason we’re so common.”

At least, Serenity thought he was still a mammal. He knew birds weren’t, and neither were dinosaurs, so he wasn’t certain about dragons. Still, he was in his human shape so that had to count for something, didn’t it?

Serenity dismissed the absent thought. It wasn’t important. “The thing about mammals is that mammals tend to breed relatively slowly and require parental care to succeed. However much we joke about rabbits and rats breeding quickly, they’re only quick for mammals. They can outbreed their predators in a good environment - but that still takes months.”

Serenity took another good look at the dirt. It kind of reminded him of an anthill, but he wasn’t sure why. “Insects would also be good. Normal ones breed fast, but anything moving this amount of dirt would be a monster. There’s a limit to insect sizes without magic, and monsters are limited more by the local magic level than anything else. This area’s relatively low on magic, so once we kill a monster, it probably won’t respawn. On top of that, insect monsters are generally vulnerable to the same things their nonmagical kin are; we could probably use insecticide on them and seriously weaken or kill many.”

“They can do that?”

Serenity looked over at Mr. Williams. He didn’t think he’d said anything strange. “What? Who can do what?”

Mr Williams tried again. “Monsters can spawn outside dungeons? Isn’t that what makes a dungeon a dungeon?”

“No, it’s not.” Serenity frowned. Hadn’t he covered that in his Guide to the Multiverse? He definitely should have, but which section did he put it in? If nothing else, it should have been clear from that news segment with the Boral Moose. Okay, Aki was a dungeon, but he’d only called it a “high magic zone”. “Rissa? Didn’t I cover that somewhere?”

Rissa shook her head. “I don’t think you did.”

Serenity looked back at the liaison. “Well, they can. As I said earlier, though, as long as you keep them cleaned out they aren’t really a problem; they spawn slowly, and have to grow from a level suitable to the magic level you’re in. As long as you stay in an area with an appropriate magic level, it’s fine.”