“Are any of you healers?” Serenity stared at the terrified group of slaves. None of them seemed to react. “Anyone? How about medical training? I don’t think I hurt them too badly, but they’re not up yet.”

Serenity waved a hand towards the two men who attacked him. He knew that if he were one of them, he’d only still be on the ground if he couldn’t get up. Staying down in a fight was a good way to get yourself killed; the only time to do it was if you were lost otherwise and thought playing dead might give you a better chance.

Vengeance had done that a time or two; undead were really quite good at playing dead. It couldn’t be counted on; people often made sure of the dead, and that was doubly true of undead. When it was necessary, however, it could be useful; many monsters weren’t smart enough to tell the difference, and undead didn’t smell like food to most.

One of the men moved, then took a half-step forward before visibly steeling his nerves. “I can heal.” He paced over to the two downed men, then checked them carefully without moving them more than necessary. “They’re both alive. Broken arm, dislocated shoulder, damage to the knee, and some cuts and bruises on one; the other has some hand and wrist damage, a broken nose, and probably a concussion.”

“See if you can get them to where they can walk safely, at least with help,” Serenity ordered. “You can finish healing them once we’re in a safe place.”

The man shook his head. “I can’t use magic, and I don’t have any supplies.”

“Can’t use magic?” Serenity frowned. That had to be because of the slave bond, didn’t it? He sorted through the stack of tokens until he found the one that belonged to the man. He pushed a little mana and his Intent that the man be able to heal into the token before speaking. “Try again.”

The man shrugged and set his hand on the non-earthling’s knee. Serenity could see the mana gather, so he nodded and headed to the end of the dead-end alley. There was no one visible, but he still didn’t want to be obvious.

Serenity had started forming the first spell when Andarit walked up beside him. “You’re a portal mage? I thought you were a fighter. You have armor, and that axe…”

Serenity shook his head. “Not here. I’m a hybrid, yes, but let’s talk about that somewhere else.”

Serenity was being paranoid. At least, he hoped it was paranoia and not reasonable. Chances were good that no one had yet made the connection between him and the slaves they’d just bought; with luck, no one ever would, but Serenity didn’t trust his luck that far.

Serenity’s first spell wasn’t a portal spell; instead, it was designed to gather the information he needed for the portal. He couldn’t use a door or anything on this side since there wasn’t one, but he remembered the doorway to his room well enough. Even better would be the connecting door between his room and Andarit’s.

Serenity used SpaceTime to “see” what was there. It was almost exactly like Eyeless Sight, and was all he needed. The doors were closed, which was a good thing, and he didn’t “see” anyone in his room. Serenity used the spell to get the location information he’d need to feed into the portal spell.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the mana available to do all of the spells he was going to need and also put up a shield around the area to protect against anyone walking into the portal. Shield spells were expensive. He also didn’t have any way to contact the Duke and tell him to put Serenity’s room off limits for safety.

Maybe Andarit did? Serenity turned to her. “Andarit, do you have any way to contact your father? I’m going to put the portal in my room, at the doorway to your room, and I don’t want anyone walking into it while it’s establishing.”

Serenity had never seen that happen, but the stories about what could happen were unpleasant. Some of them weren’t very believable, but some were. Serenity was confident that someone somewhere had created a weapon or offensive spell that worked using unstable portals, but he didn’t know it and wasn’t interested in finding out about it on accident.

Andarit frowned, then shook her head. “I don’t. Distance is one of the things I gave up along my Path. I want a commander’s Path, and that means affecting people within my Presence and myself. I can’t work outside that range.”

A momentary thought flitted through Serenity’s mind at Andarit’s words. Was her Presence like his Ambit, a nonstandard Attribute, or was it more like aura? His first thought was that it was probably similar to Ambit, the area her presence gave her influence on, but he couldn’t be sure and this wasn’t the time to ask.

Serenity frowned. That sounded like a self-imposed limitation and one that could be a real problem. On the other hand, if she was willing to work around it in other ways, it could be lived with. “Communication is vital, especially in a commander. What if you have a scout force that needs to report back or someone else you need to coordinate with? An item can work, so I recommend you pick one up when you have the chance. Hmm. I wonder if Rissa would be willing to bring radios?”

“Radios?” Andarit repeated the word and Serenity realized he’d slipped into English because there wasn’t an equivalent word in Aeon.

“Later.” Serenity was pushing an awful lot of stuff off to later, but this really wasn’t the time. “Can you try to calm them down? I need to concentrate on building the spell.”

Serenity wasn’t certain what Andarit did, but the one thing he was certain of once he built the spell was that she was better with people than he was. Of course, that wasn’t exactly unusual; Serenity was good in a fight but he wasn’t the best with people.

There were no interruptions while Serenity built the spell. It opened smoothly, leaving a mirror-like surface floating a few inches in front of the wall. Nothing came through the portal unexpectedly, so they hadn’t gotten horribly unlucky.

Serenity turned to Andarit to find that she was sitting with the slaves, watching him work. Serenity felt himself freeze for a moment before he remembered that they’d probably never seen a portal created before. “Andarit, should you go through first? I’m not sure they’ll trust walking through a portal without someone leading them.”

Andarit frowned. “You should go first. That way, I can stay with them and encourage them but they’ll know it’s safe.”

Serenity hoped Andarit believed it was safe, but he didn’t have a way to reassure her. He shook his head. “I can’t. A mage can’t go through a portal they created, the portal is relative to the mage’s position. I suspect it’s mostly a matter of control, and likely a safety measure as well; traveling through SpaceTime inside a spell controlling it is undoubtedly more difficult than the spell itself. It’s something I want to look into when I have time, but I don’t want to do experimental magic in the middle of a city.”

Serenity tried not to hurry her. Maintaining the portal had a cost, but it was manageable so far.

Andarit frowned. “Then how will you get back to the house?”

Serenity shrugged. “I figured I’d teleport. If nothing else, I can walk; I know the way.”

Andarit glared at Serenity for a moment, leaving him wondering what he’d said wrong, before she pulled the miniaturized flyer out of the pouch it was in and handed it to him. “At least fly back, it’s faster.”

Andarit turned back towards the slaves and sighed. “Tell them to follow me through the portal.”

“They won’t all understand me,” Serenity warned Andarit.

Andarit shrugged. “Do the best you can. You’ll probably need to have the tokens, um…”

The tokens. Yeah, that was a good concern; they didn’t want people collapsing right after they walked through the portal because they were suddenly too far from the token. Serenity pulled them out of his pocket and concentrated, pushing mana and Intent into the tokens. Staying near the token was fine; staying near Andarit was also fine. “If they stay near you, they should be fine.”

Andarit nodded, frowning, as Serenity stuffed the tokens back in his pocket.

Serenity turned towards the slaves. He’d better give out some more information, since he wanted them to follow his words; speaking in English should limit the chance of anyone else knowing what he was saying, though if it was seen it would still ruin the chance of choosing those slaves seeming random. “OK everyone, this is a portal. It’s going to take you to Andarit’s house, where we can deal with breaking the slave bonds and talk about how to get you home. Andarit will lead the way, but I need you to follow her. I’ll be behind you, since I’m holding the portal spell.”

The slaves from Earth glanced at each other. None of them seemed to want to start, until the woman Serenity had seen first stood up. “It’s a chance. Better than anything else I’ve seen here.”

Her movement broke the ice and the others got up to follow her, even the two who weren’t from Earth and didn’t know what was being said.

The two injured ones were in far better shape, but neither was fully healed. They each had someone help them stand, but they both seemed to be able to walk or at least limp. The healer had clearly taken Serenity’s words to heart and gotten them mobile before anything else. It was obvious that they’d need more healing; broken bones and concussions weren’t fast to heal, and he doubted the healer had enough mana.

Serenity watched them straggle through the portal. Andarit was the only one who seemed to take the portal for granted; all of the slaves hesitated for a moment before stepping through. Once the last person was through, Serenity closed down the spell properly, cleaning up the remaining traces of it by pulling them back into himself.

Serenity could taste the SpaceTime mana, with just a hint of Liminality. It tasted delicious; there were few other hints of magic overlaying it. They weren’t a bonus, but they were at least tolerable.

Serenity blinked. This was the first time he’d really tasted spell residue as he cleaned it up. It was also the largest spell with by far the largest maintained spellform he’d done while manifesting his dhampir bloodline. He hoped that the two had something to do with each other, because there were a lot of spells he was fairly confident he didn’t want to taste. It was a bloodline of magic, after all, and the general concept of the dhampir was closely tied to vampires; he was probably technically similar to a vampire of magic right now?

The idea was only slightly horrifying, especially since he knew he wasn’t really a vampire.

Serenity shook himself and started building the teleportation spell. He’d gotten more mana back from the spell cleanup than he’d expected. Teleporting to follow the others should be entirely possible; he’d need to adjust the coordinates slightly so that he wouldn’t end up in the door, and add some anti-collision features that were used in higher-Tier versions of the spell.

Serenity wondered if there were higher-Tier versions of the portal spell that included anti-collision features. It seemed likely, but the spells were dissimilar enough that they’d be hard to port over. After all, the teleportation spell handled it all at the end, when the movement happened, altering the end point of the teleportation. That wouldn’t work for the portal spell, which required the end point before the spell started. Perhaps it could be looped in then, but …

Serenity pulled his attention back to the spell he was actually casting instead of trying to modify a different spell.

They’d rescued eight people today, six of whom were from Earth. It wasn’t much compared to the number of victims, but it was a start.