“Everyone is out of China?” I asked Briggs as I flopped down on Sama’s Couch of Let-Fae-Relax.
“Completely. Moving to the final staging zone, and prepping it on the sly,” Briggs confirmed. With the planet Sealed, so was the ability of the Interlopers to monitor what was going around in places where they had no servants or worshippers... and there was nobody with Dark Elements among the Undead Hunters, let alone an Evil Aura.
“How’s the Faith building up?” Sama asked softly, turning away from her twelve monitors with a sigh.
“Eighty percent, maybe. It’s been tracking higher after the hits against the Light and finally clearing the Dead Zones, which is good. But that’s a lot of juice they’ve got in the thing.”
“How’s the cat and mouse games going?” Briggs rumbled.
“To my deep approval, they’re setting traps and lures, hoping to bait me in... or one of their opposites. False Auras in their home planes, hidden spotters watching the fixers and the guards both sitting out in the Aether. I got one of the spotters to the spotters Judged as he sat in ambush in the Aether, so the Light only has one and the Dark two Lords who have proper mana regeneration now. They aren’t happy with me.” I smirked despite myself. True and proper Curse magic was a bitch to get rid of, especially when it was earned!
“Have they started consuming their planes?” Sama inquired directly. That was the final show of resolve that they were going to stay instead of retreat.
“Not yet. One of the reasons I’m staying busy with this is so that they don’t have the Mana needed to grind away at the Judgement on them. If they start planar consumption to deal with their Mana needs, that shows resolve to stay, otherwise they’d just cut their losses, leave, and find somewhere safe to grind the Judgements down on their own.”
Briggs grunted something unintelligible and uncomplimentary. “Odds of them leaving?”
“One in four, and dropping with every day they remain. One side gets into a rut and won’t leave or question their own decisions, and the other side has Greed and Pride pressing down hard on them.”
“Fucktards, making life hard for us. Just fuck off and let us take over the world, will you?” Sama snarked, her lip curled in ultimate mocking disdain.
“Fae, how badly can we punish them for this?” Briggs asked quietly. “Even if we have to run, we really do have to punish them.”
“We’ve already chosen the area for the final fight. We’re prepping the ground. All the Emperors and Rulers know what they have to do and where they have to go. They know they are going to die, and they’d all rather go out fighting.
“If Aru comes, the Interlopers are dead, even if they don’t know it. Their little Realms are just matches to be struck to Him. He’ll read the entire situation in an instant with His Omniscience, and Judge them all. It won’t be good for them, but it will definitely be Good.
“As for how badly we can hurt them if we have to cut and run... everything depends on how long they wait, how much they are willing to sacrifice to make it in here, and how long I can hold them off.”
“What is the key moment, then?” Sama pressed. “I know you’ve been timesighting possibilities without expressly narrowing in on the future, just trying to see the scenarios...”
“There’s four variants being narrowed down to as time passes,” I related to them reluctantly. “The first is a forced planar convergence. The second is an attack on the Broom Closet. The third is mass saturation of a Conduit weakpoint they would normally exploit to build a new one. The fourth is coordinated opposition attacks on the Veil to weaken it at said Conduit spots.
“The coming assault will be a combination of some of those four things.”
Briggs and Sama looked at one another, and then laughed again, harsh and low. “Damn,” Sama hissed, glancing in a certain direction. “Okay, you’ve already fortified the Broom Closet. The Teeth take care of the other three options. Are there possible but unlikely options?”
“Various methods of going after the Beast Realm first is the main outlier option they have. But they still don’t know I’m Realm-level here in magic, so saving Him for later is the best bet, even cutting the Beast Realm free if they take the Earth is probably better than trying to assail His home plane at this point.
“If they stop repairing the Barrier, that means they are giving up or assault is imminent. It’s the other reason I’m keeping up with the destruction of Nodes, as well as to test their commitment. I’m perfectly happy to string out this Node destruction until we absolutely have enough Faith to do the job.”
“Trigger point there?” Briggs inquired grimly.
“They launch a Realm-class attack at me, I tank it, and they realize I’m Realm-class. I invest the Earth as my Realm, and they realize it’s all-out or nothing, because they won’t be able to get in without committing everything.”
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“Leaving them gravely weakened even if they succeed,” Briggs nodded. “Even if they subsume the planet and break your Realm Link, they’ll still lose out.”
“Subsuming the planet will destroy all of its value, but is possible from the perspective of spite. If they don’t think I’m coming back, they’ll keep it. If I’m not dead and might, they might well strip it and run. I’ll be able to track them anywhere if they subsume it,” I confirmed with a steely voice. “They are so fucked, whatever they do. I’ve got absolutely nothing better to do than make sure all the bastards pay for what they’ve done.”
And I would. I would follow them to the arse end of nowhere. Tying to the planet was to protect it and manage its energies to do that, not to drain it and give me more power.
“We’ll continue to get the Teeth ready,” Sama promised. “In the meantime, what do you want to do about Rome?”
Her smile was all the teeth. Eight canines gleamed.
“The Emperors dealt with the chaff. Finish the job.”
Briggs clenched his fist, and killing intent bloomed in the room, washing through Markspace. “I’ll contact the Sages and get things ready,” he promised in a voice that was going to deliver only doom.
I wasn’t going to have to do anything other than Sing in the distance.
----------
The Archangels weren’t stupid, and soon realized something was up. Sages from all over the world were invited in for the big event, with an absolute bias of No Mercy to be shown to those sheltering behind the strongest City Wards in the entire world.
The response was pretty great. From all over the world, over a hundred Sages came to the Call of Coralost, with only one mission before them: Wipe the last of these traitors to Humanity and utter cowards from the world while their Lords could not protect them.
With the Sages came the Archmages and Mages in support of them, nobody else delivered for this fight, as they would be of scant use... although there were many, many Contracted Beasts in support, rising opposite the Dragon of Light, the Black Dragon Ant Queen, the Silver Unicorn, and other Great Beasts bound by unbreakable Contract to the service of the Church of Light.
The weather turned dark and dire, black clouds gathering, hissing and spitting around the remnants of the Conduit in the area that was crackling and bleeding liquid Light that couldn’t get through. Thunder rumbled ominously, and the heavens seethed with Lightning ready to burst forth.
The first thing that happened was that six double agents in the assembled Sages were captured and paraded before the walls of the city. Three had their Geases and brainwashing removed and their minds Restored, and joined the attacking Sages with towering rage ensuring they were going to fight to the death. The other three, along with over a hundred infiltrators of all nations and levels of power, were obliterated in dragonfire.
They were getting ready for the bombardment, the Avatar’s expression immovable in her shell of flesh, the Archangels still confident, certain their Lords would find a way through. They watched as the Sages with the Lightning Element gathered and participated in a building Ritual that was soon crackling with so much energy it couldn’t be viewed directly, and the sky was just one long crackling, rumbling display of seething, hidden Lightning Mana.
The bombs that Sama had planted were some of the absolute nastiest chemical explosives and incendiaries imaginable, and when they went off, it was an absolute shock to the Synod’s defenders. Mortar in bricks, hollows in statues, the grout in tiles, insulation in walls... it went off, and some very important Formations and technomagic chambers blew up.
Sama’s grin radiated across the Markspace as a whole arc of the City’s Wards blinked right out of existence, the artful feedback from channeled energy whipping and looping back into the sources and wreaking more havoc even before anything else happened.
The smart ones looked up at the sky, and the sky obligingly unloaded on them.
It was a LOT of Lightning; falling Thunderbolts, Pillars of Heaven, Lightning Elementals in the form of birds, fishes, weapons, dragons, and all of it was accompanied with the loudest celestial chorus of screaming Eagles you ever did hear, it was.
The Lightning didn’t strike at anyone, it struck at things, and very, very precisely, in many cases running horizontal to the ground to extend under the flickering remnants of the Ward and plow into their targets before secondary Wards could arise to protect them.
Ravening Lightning blew through stone walls centuries old, obliterating everything beneath them, most especially hidden Ward Nodes that were not given the chance to trigger and secure the most important parts of the city. Connections between the Formations were severed with precision explosions that were completely lost in the deafening of the screaming Heavens falling atop them.
The Thunder was still rolling and echoing in the distance as the Sages, their retainers and their Contracted Beasts, attacked with full force, and the fall of Heaven upon them quickly became an Elemental Hell on Earth.
------
December, 1978, Prague...
His name was Hans Gouldman, and he had just learned that his father had been killed.
His mother, tears still running down her face, was hurriedly throwing some important things into her battered luggage, haranguing him to do the same, although he didn’t understand why, only that his father was not there.
There had been a demonstration, a protest against some ruling by the city council against the synagogue, and then things had gotten very loud and bright.
“Hans, we have to run now. They will be coming, they are always coming after they do these things!” his mother had hissed to him, taking his hand and leading him out the back of the alleyway. “We are going to flee south, where they will not think to look for us, right in the heart of their precious territory! Remember, be quiet, but do not forget!”
---
June, 1994, Zurich...
He saw the cars pulled up outside his mother’s home, and stepped back into an alleyway out of sight. He knew that mages possessed great senses, but the street had already emptied, everyone who could get out of sight having done so. He would be one among many.
A cluster of men in dark coats came out soon after, and departed after a quick scan of the area. Out of direct sight in an alleyway, waiting there with a woman clutching two children by her side, his expression was a careful mask, although his heart shriveled as he watched the car drive away.
He looked at the house for long moments, pondering his next move, but he could only grit his teeth and keep on his way.
However, instead of crossing the street and walking past his mother’s house, he kept going.
He never found out exactly what happened to her, although his neighbors confirmed she was missing.
Nor did he ever go back to his own home. He continued on the way to the train station, bought a ticket to Italy under the name of Falsetti, his Italian only positively accented by his years in Switzerland, and never looked back.
But he never forgot.