Germany, Earth, 2040

Dawn’s light broke over the horizon.

The golden wave dwindled to a dim trickle as it filtered through the thick foliage of the Black Forest.

Men and women in the fortified camp stirred as the night’s watch yawned relief at another blessedly quiet shift.

The forest depths were not safe.

The entire expanse was a blend of encounter challenges and spawn zones in which monsters and mutated animals roamed.

Fortunately for this particular group, they had been provided with magic artifacts to keep the threats at a distance.

Cages and chains rattled as the occupants woke… well, some. Many had stayed awake through the night. Fear stole their sleep.

Armed and armored, the captain strode out of his tent.

The artifacts did what his employer had said they would, but he wasn’t going to rely on them, which was why it pissed him off to see the relaxed atmosphere among his men and women.

“This isn’t a camping trip! Eyes up and ears open! They’re out there just waiting to tear us to shreds!” he barked orders.

They snapped to attention and got busy or tried to look it.

Guards stood straighter and peered out into the dim forest with renewed focus.

The captain was right.

They saw the eyes surrounding them.

“Don’t worry. It’s been weeks and they haven’t attacked once,” one guard said to another.

Cooks labored over camp stoves.

It was hard work to keep an entire company and their captives fed.

“Hey, uh, do you guys know what they’re doing with all those people?” one cook ventured.

“You’re new, right? Well… just shut up and do what you’re getting paid to do or you might get the chance to find that out.”

“Yeah, I heard it happened to a couple of people that got too curious.”

“It’s just, uh, when I signed up for this… I didn’t know we were gonna be all doing… uh… human trafficking…”

“Look, kid, just do your job. A couple of weeks and you can go back with a year’s worth of Universal Points. Plus, you’ve built a resume with the band, which means you won’t end up like them.”

The dark-haired cook glanced nervously at the rows of cages.

There had to be close to a hundred people.

Men.

Women.

Children.

There didn’t seem to be a pattern.

The selection criteria appeared to be random. The only thing they had in common was that they were all from the regions surrounding the Black Forest.

“So, uh, those cages look like their getting cramped…”

“Shut up!”

And so he did.

Back inside the captain’s tent, he went over operations with his lieutenants.

“One more shipment is coming in,” the captain said.

“When?”

“No timetable.”

“It’d be better if we had a window,” the senior lieutenant eyed the glowing communication crystal on the captain’s desk.

“I agree, but it’s out of my hands. You know how it works. I get orders. I give them to you.”

“Boss, I’m concerned about the hike. It’s a long way to the mountain and I don’t trust those artifacts to hold the monsters back.”

“They’d worked this far and we’re not seeing a large drain on their mana. Ambient recharge just like they said. If that changes? Well, that’s why I ordered our mages to conserve their mana. We should have enough to keep them operating. Now, any issues with the cargo?”

“A couple of the guys got grabby,” the junior lieutenant said. “But, I had eyes on the cages. Bull stopped them before anything could happen and gave them a lesson on the pitfalls of failing to follow orders.”

“Good. Our employer was adamant that they arrived in as close to perfect condition as possible. ‘Untouched’ was the word emphasized. Let’s not piss them off.”

Breakfast turned into lunch when the circle of stones in the middle of the camp suddenly vibrated and glowed.

Script unlike anything known on Earth appeared on each stone’s surface.

“Incoming transit!” the guard charged with keeping the wide circle clear barked.

They had learned the hard way that anything biological didn’t want to be in the portal’s area when it opened.

The one armed guard in the medic tent could attest to that fact.

A kaleidiscope of color filled the dim forest as the swirling vortex of magic drew the stones into a circle taller than the combined height of two men.

They spun into an incandescence that temporarily blinded those that forgot to look away.

When the light finally faded the stones vibrated in place, connected by thick strands of magic light as they contained the portal itself.

It was like staring into a window… or an open doorway.

The other side revealed a dark parking structure and people chained together.

Armed men and women barked, pushing the people through.

Naturally, they were hesitant to step forward, but a few punches encouraged them.

“Clear the area!” the guard barked as the last chained woman stepped outside the demarcated boundary.

“Finally,” the dark-haired cook muttered.

“What—” the head cook’s words were swallowed by an eruption of noise.

Twin beams of solar heat burned through the dense foliage to consume the captain’s tent.

Loud booms knocked everyone, except the dark-haired cook, to the ground.

An invisible tornado swirled through the fortified camp, gathering fighters up to slam them into a pile of bruised flesh and broken bones.

The violence lasted a few frightening seconds in reality, but an eternity for the band.

“Tell me you got it?”

The violence spoke as a man because that’s what he was.

Dark-haired and brown-skinned, he floated above the new cook.

“The portal opening put me close enough to punch through their magical protections. I’m putting every single one of their locations into your head. Remem—”

“Kthanksbye!” Eron tore a smoking hole through the treetops.

The sonic booms echoed long after he was gone.

“At least he left me the mages…” Cal sighed. He regarded the pile of mercs groaning and crying in pain. He shifted the pile with a thought and pulled the senior mage to him. “I’m going to fix you and your fellow mages, so that you can keep those monster away artifacts working. I need to return the people you’re trafficking to their homes, you see and while I could bring the rest of you along… I don’t want to. Now, that’s going to take a long time, which means that you’re stuck here. I know that you don’t have the healing capability to fix enough of your guys and I know that this portal is one way,” he gestured to the pile of stones in the middle of the demarcated circle. “So, your choices are to wait here until I come pick you up to deliver you to prison or run, which I know, that you know is a death sentence. Besides,” he poked the mage in the forehead, “I just marked you with magic,” a partial lie, one that the mage believed instantly, “I can find you anywhere now.”

Every mage screamed as Cal knitted their broken limbs together, but not all the way, plus he left the tissue damage in place.

Task done, he freed the caged people and took them back to their homes.

By the time he finished Eron found him somewhere over Eastern Europe.

“Did you get it?” Eron said.

“Yeah. Where do you think I’m going?”

“I wasn’t sure. With how slow you were flying I figured you were still searching.”

“I was going hypersonic,” he pointed to the readout on his watch.

“Like I said… slow. Anyways, who or what is behind this particular human trafficking network?”

“An outworld invader. High level magic user specializing in biological machine creation.”

“Aww, man… that doesn’t sound good for the people they’ve taken.”

“It’s probably too late for most of them,” he agreed.

The brothers fell from the sky like the hammers of God.

They punched through thick, rocky ground and into an ancient system of tunnels, whose original purpose had never been discovered by archaeologists of old.

The spires had turned them into an encounter challenge, which the invader had claimed for their own.

The fight was quick, brutal and violent.

The invader had thrown every one of their twisted abominations at Eron and Cal to no avail.

In the end the invader had triggered a magical deadman’s switch to fry their own brain and everything of potential value rather than give up secrets.

“Do you want ownership?” Eron ventured hopefully.

To the victors the spoils.

“No,” Cal said flatly. He raised a hand before his youngest brother could whine. “This is way too far for me to want to have to deal with. Since you’re soooo much faster, logically, you should take it.”

“Or I could just let it go back to its unclaimed state.”

“Then it’ll need constant clearing or it’s back to a spawn zone.”

“Fine,” Eron sighed. “I’ll leave the rest to you. Things are happening… elsewhere,” he waved vaguely in a direction… in all directions. “Oh, can you take one set of those portal stones to my runic friends? Just seems like they’re a good choice to study them. The ones in the city are probably already secured. Which leaves the set in the forest and the set in the cave.”

“There’s one more set in here,” he pointed.

“You can do what you want with them.”

Eron slowly drifted toward the hole in the cave ceiling.

“Any last requests?”

“Nah… thanks for helping me with this. Less violence.”

“Glad for that. Let me know if you need me to help with something similar in the future.”

“Yeah. I’ll spires message you.”

With that Eron zipped out of the cave, leaving Cal alone with the blood and filth of the invader’s heinous crafting.