Fomoria planned for a week to start with.

The only advantage he really had was that the base was set up in a desert basin, mountains on every side.

It made hiding impossible, but, if he was going to enter the area by gate, then this meant it wasn’t a problem, and that there was no collateral damage outside of the hostages to worry about.

Sandworms made by Fomoria were constantly moving through the ground, and shockingly, there was nothing outside of the base.

If Fomoria had built it, the entire area would be covered in traps, but perhaps since they built it overtop of a concrete foundation with pillars stretching down hundreds of feet and the defenses on all three walls, they didn’t feel it was needed to waste to resources filling out a desert far removed from any settlements.

There were many ways that it could be handled, but Fomoria’s plan required a train.

“How is it going?”

“We have reached 3,000 miles per hour and the train is holding together, but we can’t be sure how it will handle once we have the explosives on it and if it is going to be able to split apart how we want.”

He and the Other cocked their heads to the side.

“Air rails?”

“Air rails.”

“We should look into making sky trains.”

“Maybe. Work on this, I’m going to check on the other ones.”

“Will do.”

Next he checked with the alchemists.

Anti-magic would weaken the solution itself, but because it was mana suspended in a physical structure like a person or a mana gem, it would still be useful, depending on what it actually was.

An alchemical acid relied too much on the mana for the actual effect, but an alchemical explosive, something that had a large initial effect but where most of the damage being done is based on physical laws as a result of that contained reaction, could be far more effective than something mundane.

“Are we ready?”

Making something new wasn’t required for this, he already had a good formula for an explosive gel which he got from Sepul.

“We just need another day to finish the last batch. Are we sure that this is worth all the effort?”

“I want Rosen. You are sure that you will be done by tomorrow?”

“By noon at the latest.”

The next part was his team.

One might expect a team or just Others, because those were the ones who he trusted, but Fomoria wanted more than just that.

He was going in himself, but everyone else would be part of the next generation of Black Sentinels,

part organic, part metalic.

Their bodies were four legged beasts, but outside of that, one would have a hard time coming to any conclusions on what they were.

The base were bones, but not from any animal.

Normally, when one was to cut off a piece of a body made from void, flesh or bone, it would turn to dust.

What Fomoria did was force the mist and hard fragments generated by the sigil into a mold, then add melted stonesteel, mana gem dust dust, and a soul that the sigil could latch onto.

These bones were the only organic part of it, and once formed, they were finished with a layer of stonesteel; each bone had a small opening that would allow the sigil to let out the void body which made up the bulk of its form.

They were not a single entity, they were a hive mind made up from hundreds of bones, large and small, each with a soul bound to them.

From his own testing on anti-magic, void flesh would maintain stability, but would be hard to reshift once it was trapped in a field.

So each of the six Void Beasts were put in a form just for this plan.

Two of them would be carriers, cow-like golems with hollow stomachs that stretched to hold whatever was needed and provide a reasonably comfortable ride.

They were built like tanks, they didn’t need to be the fastest, they just needed to be the safest.

For weapons the carriers had two launchers with concussive and smoke grenades; their soft inner form would disperse the force that hit their harder outer shell.

Two of them were runners, half a mantis and half a wolf with many eyes around its body, shotguns, bladed talls, claws and spring legs that let them jump around rooms, these were close combat specialized.

Their jobs would be to enter the facility, grab the hostages, then bring them back to the carriers while killing anything along the way.

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The last two were brutes.

They looked most like a bison mixed with a beetle and were armed with high caliber slug throwers.

One might call them snipers, but they were more breaching tools and hallway clearers, not something for long range.

They would remain behind to hold off the advancing troops, their heavy forms hard to bring down with anything but a large cannon.

Each one of them had an Other that ran through the plan time and time again.

They didn’t know exactly what room the hostages were in, so Fomoria, with the largest range of his mental senses, would go in, find them and help with the extraction in whatever way he could.

He didn’t ask questions, he just watched the Others pushing each of them to their limits, whatever those limits even were.

Finally, Fomoria needed his own equipment.

The golem armor required the shifting to maintain comfort and maneuverability.

So, he was going with something else.

Enchantments became ineffective in anti-magic, since they worked by physically carving spell runes along with mana channeling runes. These runes directed mana, and could hold some which let them be cast without much prior knowledge, but because they it would be held in the rune, and not in a physical vessel like a gem or a body, they were useless even if the enchantment was something internal like hardening enchantments.

So what Fomoria did was create a high strength but flexible fabric made from woven skysteel fiber, making it light, stronger than anything mundane, and breathable.

On top were heavy plates of stonesteel, each soulsmithed so that they could hold magic even if they couldn’t use anything at range.

The mask had nine diamond glass lenses; if he couldn’t shift inside of the base, he had to have all of his eyes out before he got there.

Then, lastly, overtop of the rest, he would conjure a void bone armor.

For a weapon he had a large shotgun, belt fed, a large backpack full of slugs, and a large axe to hack apart enemies using the monstrous strength that he had.

Overall, it was bulky, uncomfortable, and sure to terrify his enemies.

Everything was done, the plan had been gone over a dozen times.

Xol had tried to talk him out of it, The Darkness gave no word on if it was a good idea or not, and Fomoria was going through with it, since he operated under the assumption that if he was in real danger, even if she said that she wouldn’t, The Darkness would warn him.

There was some hope that the eye in the sky, a literal floating eye above the base, would see the hostages outside, but in the week that they had been monitoring the base, they never left the building.

Though by where Rosen went, they did find out which building they were in.

It wasn’t as good as knowing the room, but it made the search much easier.

The way that they got the train to move so fast wasn’t with a long round track, but a straight one that led into gates, and now that the signal was sent, the destination of the entrance gate was being changed.

It couldn’t be opened inside of the base, or anywhere within half a mile, by at 3,000 miles per hour, that half a mile became half a second of travel time.

Each of the cars split in the air and were then stabilized by short lived rails made from hard air, directing them to strike at three points on the wall.

Then came the Eolgi, whose claws and teeth cut the concrete, letting them enter the walls where the soldiers were gathering to figure out what was going on.

Their bodies were naturally hard, and anything low caliber just deflected off of them as they tore through the men.

It took five minutes for the enhanced soldiers, those given nanotechnology like Drachma, to arrive, and these men, without any magic in them at all, fought off the Eolgi with blades whose edges moved like a chainsaw but with teeth as thin as paper and strong as diamonds.

While all of the chaos was happening above, drawing attention to the east side, Fomoria had already been waiting under one of the housing buildings on the north side.

The moment he heard the boom, he cut through the floor, having already figured out which room Rosen’s family was in.

The runners were much faster in the halls due to their ability to spring from wall to wall, and the brutes didn’t use the halls, running directly through the walls to make a faster exit point.

The guards outside of the room hadn’t yet received a kill order, Rosen’s meetings with him were, so far as Fomoria knew, still a secret.

The guards were not normal, they were just as dangerous as the ones who were across the base dealing with the horde of Eolgi.

Yet their forms were still human, unlike the Void Beasts who had been designed for exactly this combat scenario.

Their nimble forms let them keep the guards at bay until Fomoria arrived, and once he was at the hall, they fell back, leading the two into his gunfire.

His slugs tore through their knees, and though they regenerated, it had limits.

Fomoria stood over them for a minute, using his axe to hack away until the hall was covered in blood and the piles of meat that were once men stopped moving; Fomoria gave the swords to his runners, the way that they carved through the walls with almost no resistance despite a lack of magic intrigued him.

The brutes waited outside of the door for the breach order.

He was in the room and out again in an instant, the runners held the screaming woman and child and moved as fast towards the tunnel as they could without harming them.

Fomoria left the brutes in the hall above the tunnel, waiting for the runners to hand the hostages to the carriers, who had to empty their stomachs which were full of mud.

Fomoria didn’t like the idea of going out of the tunnel with them, so they would go down the path he came through while he and the remaining four beasts retreated down a second tunnel.

The runners left the hostages behind the wall when it was nearly finished, and when the carriers were done, their tongues pulled the woman and child into a second stomach which was meant for carrying live targets.

Everything was perfect, he could hear the brutes behind him, opening fire on somebody, but then they went quiet.

As the hearts of the brutes stopped, any remaining munitions detonated.

Yet the heavy footsteps only gained on him.

Whatever it was that was after him, it probably wouldn’t be slowed down by anything, so, one of the runners continued to run and the other stayed behind, giving Fomoria the blade stolen from the guard.

Thump, thump, thump.

The blazing heart of Ur filled the tunnel with sound, then came the booms of gunfire.

Ur was barely slowed down, the slugs cracked his blackened outer layer and revealed the churning molten form, but his flesh, if it could be called that, pulled itself back together, losing only droplets that splashed when the shots hit.

He was on the runner in moments, its blades stuck inside of the Hand, and Ur punched forward, his hand melting down and reforming into a sharpened half-circle that split the beast in two.

Fomoria saw that he had no chance of his gun doing anything, so he tossed the backpack and weapon aside, switching to the sword.

Ur stopped, the upper layer of him darkened as it cooled, returning him to the dark appearance he normally held.

“Emperor Fomoria, I would prefer if you came with me peacefully so we could have a chat.”

“I am doubtful we have much to speak about.”

Cast who can be trusted. So, shall we walk?”

Fomoria didn’t like the idea, but he disliked the idea of fighting a Hand without his magic even more.

“Alright. Let’s talk.”