Time passes...
The Mick concentrated, and the rubble of the Vivic Brazier gathered back together, reformed, and a moment later the extinguished Vivic Eternal Flame re-ignited, back to life and beginning to draw in the Dark Mana streaming through the gap in coverage.
The Mace at the tip of Forked gleamed ready for any more surprises coming from the Deathlands beyond the circle of Braziers. His dark eyes wandered over the white-armored Vivic Guards, re-erecting all the crushed Braziers as he had, restoring the line of unwhite fires encircling the centers of Dark Mana growing on the land like bitter black pustules.
They were the cost of victory, a sacrifice to Evil and to Chaos, and to Law to maintain the discipline and unity required to keep the darkness from below at bay.
Hopper trilled, and the Mick looked over as a pack of Stonefang Sabertooth Tigers, all of them messily wounded by the recent battle, vivic Flames blazing undaunted on their claws and overlong dentistry, came pacing up to him.
“No more runners, Jaspar?” he asked the green-fanged Commander in charge of the pack, making a show of looking over their wounds. “Messy fuckers. Ghouls?” he asked with the voice of long experience.
The proud Sabertooth growled back a curt reply, nevertheless raising his head stoically.
“Well done. Get to the Moon and Stars, and get all those wounds looked at. You know how much they like rotting diseases, and we need you at full strength. The Dark of the Moon is coming up. This is just the first skirmish night.”
All of the Sabertooth Tigers growled, lambent yellow eyes turning to the Darklands with clear loathing in their gazes. Jasparfangs coughed at them, and they turned towards the sparkling Formation hanging in the sky behind them, where they’d find Healing and Healers to deal with injuries very likely to be infected with disease, Poison, or Curse magic, which had to be cleansed.
The Mick watched them go, glad for their hunting instincts and drive to bring down anything that escaped the breach in the lines. The big Cats and the Wolves competed to see who could run down any escaping Undead, and had quickly grown wise to the many tricks the more exotic undead used to escape detection, from burrowing to turning into swarms of insects or clouds of mist.
The spiritual ones never got far. The Sunbreasted Robins were particularly good at sniffing those bastards out and incinerating them.
His wife Otosim came gliding down on a young Stormcrown Eagle, one of the younger ones raised to power on the strength of their Contract. The mark of a Thunderbird Mage gleamed on her cheek, just like her husband, the white of it contrasting with the flowing black of her long hair.
“All clear on the borders,” she said, leaping over to him from Flashback’s back smoothly, the Eagle barely slowing as he regained his altitude. The Eagle could sleep on the wing among the clouds, and didn’t much like setting down in a hostile area if he could help it, leaving that for his nest near their home on a floating island in the Broom Closet.
Hopper barely acknowledged her weight as she settled in behind her husband. “Deaths are manageable. We’re recovering all but a dozen of them,” she told him.
He nodded once. The work of the Healers and Priests was incredibly necessary. The defenders had to survive to gain the Levels and power they needed to defy the Undead, and the Healers were the ones that made that possible. “Another long week ahead,” he muttered, leaning back into her embrace.
“The worst is being away from the kids, my love,” she agreed softly. While they could whip up a Portal and return to their home during any other time, it was not possible during the Wane Week around the dark of the moon, when the Undead and Fiends in the Death Zones stirred all over the world and had to be found, fought, and beaten back.
This was the Deathzone of Thunder, located as it was in the Canadian north, a hundred thousand square miles of silence and damnation in the middle of what had once been pristine wilderness. Thunderbird Emperor had told him that over half a million Beasts had died when the Death Zone was brought down on them. Similar numbers had accompanied the other Zones, the Mick knew, and the whole country of Switzerland had basically ceased to exist in its historical form when its southern reaches became a new Death Zone.
There was a lot of Earth-moving and rebuilding of fortifications to do in the aftermath of the attacks. It was a littoral of a different kind, a beachhead from another realm, and the work wasn’t too awful different.
“One foot at a time,” he recited, growling at it.
There was Hope. There was always Hope.
It was a grind, a test of patience and power. All the strength of a world wasn’t enough to close a Portal erected by Skulos Himself... but time and vivus were.
It was probably going to take longer than his own lifetime, he’d been told. Raising the boundaries, forming hills and valleys and walls around this stinking, silent cesspool of death, and pushing in slowly and inexorably as the energies of death were Burned away and fed to the Land.
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Slowly, slowly allowing them to push in against the undead. They just had to remain united, committed, and strong enough to do the job.
It was going to be the work of generations. Even now, every Sage in the world was stationed at a Death Zone, without any exceptions. With them were Beasts of every stripe and power, ordered into the fight by the Emperors, working with the Humans who were willing to work with them.
The defenses of the Death Zones where they didn’t work together suffered far more grievously than those that did, but it was not his job to comment on their lack of unity... although the prevalence of new Dark Magic wielders around such locations, often raising necromantic armies of their own against the invaders from the slaughtered, was a defiant tradition, railing against the discrimination of Dark Magic wielders and those unwilling to Purify their Stars.
“I’ve got to work on the walls,” he sighed to his wife. “You should get back with the Healers. Jasparfang is definitely infected, and I’m sure there are tons of others who are, as well.”
“Of course,” she sighed back, giving him a soft kiss behind his ear, just before Void Magic wrapped her up and Blinked her off into the distance towards the Formation.
He would’ve loved to call it a day and head back home to see his son and daughter, cute little scamps that they were, but the Wane Week was merciless in its demands.
He glanced at the Soul Crystals inside his Pocket, a treasure that was the single greatest compensation for those defending against the incoming undead, a treasure those places using Dark Magic could not gain for themselves.
Securing the future for his children, too, they were. Slow and steady growth, even for a Sage. There’d been no undead Emperors in this bunch, but one popped up about half the time on the Dark of the Moon, and occasionally they even managed to kill the bastard before it could run away.
There were a lot of Undead Hunters around now, too.
“Let’s get to it, Hop,” he murmured, and his Contracted Great King Stormrunner spread purple and golden wings. There was a crack of Lightning, and they Jumped into the distance, where the gaping holes in the Walls were in obvious need of repair before the night, and the First Thunderbird Sage was the obvious one to lead that effort.
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The skeletal ruler was a hundred feet tall, waving about a spiked bony saber carved from the rib of some gargantuan beast, surrounded by legions of thronging undead and Fiends that looked like them, screeching commands in Necrus.
Then something really fast closed in on its face, and there was an explosion that drove deep, deep into its face, shattering all that bone and leaving a single gaping hole where the cuts for its nose and eye sockets were as it toppled over.
A streak of motion raged through the undead, vivus igniting behind it with half a dozen other flames of power, hurling fleshy agglomerated corpses and collections of bones into the air alike. As the ruler of this attacking horde hit the ground heavily, the blur of motion turned abruptly right with total defiance of inertia, and streaked right across its throat, then around its skull in a blur of motion as everything around its head died... and something was then Hewed right into their boss’s head.
Briggs came down from above and smacked the fucker again. Completely ablaze with scars raging with vivus, the head of the alien creature, which was the size of an elephant, went flying as the spine of the body it left behind lit up with its death throes.
Endure beat as a Song lifted over the raging undead’s cries of hatred and dismay, hammering into hearts that no longer beat, and minds that should not have felt fear, a Song taken up all over the world during this Week of the Wane.
“Tremble, you dead bastards, and feed the Land!
“Tremble, you fuckers, and die where you stand!
“Tremble, before the Doom that is coming!
“Tremble, you curs, too late to start running!
“TREMBLE! TREMBLE, WE COME!”
And Sama Rantha, the Golden Hag, was indeed coming for them, as an annihilating wave of magic, powered by the path of vivisizing undead she’d left behind her, blasted into the sky on her backtrail and then came down in a very prejudiced anti-necroic firestorm that those unliving things beneath it had no resistance to.
Briggs started crunching his way towards the next big undead in sight, plowing right into the largest clusters of them and just hacking his way through no matter how big or ready his opponents were. Hammer blows just like explosions sent bodies flying en vivus, and he closed in on his prey remorselessly.
The defenders against the Death Zone called the Texas Maw weren’t going to fall while he was in charge of them, and if he might have been rapidly advising five other Zone defenses at the same time, that was between him and the commanders at those locations only too pleased to have someone so competent giving the orders.
There was no doubt whatsoever that he was going to be busy for a very, very long time.
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The deep Pacific...
Leviathan sang out his order, and the progress of the massive Pyramid stopped, settling down to the ocean floor.
As it made contact, it came alive.
The new High Emperor of the Oceans watched with approval as every crack on the edifice burst into vivic flame, and it began to spread, and spread, and spread some more!
The necroic energy leaking into the waters ignited, gathered to the Pyramid, empowered it, and the radius of its Domain grew, and grew, and grew.
And as it did, this, the last of the new undersea Deathzones, Burned, as did all the corruption it brought.
Defending against the undead and Fiends and other evils coming out of the Death Zones had been as holy a duty as it was upon the lands, but the Beasts of the Seas did not have nearly as many Humans about to buff them with Holy magic, buttress them, Heal them in combat, and strike in so many ways at the evils here.
Nor could the Realm Sage come down and aid them in the battle, no more than she could aid in any of the other fights.
What they could do... is move the Pyramids that were already in place, blocking Conduits to a realm that no longer existed, and resettle them into the new Death Zones to do the same exact job!
It had taken time and persistence, but the last one was in place now, and there was only one minor Death Zone in the deeps, centered on the abyssal darkness of the Marianas Trench, that did not have a Pyramid guarding it.
The Obelisk once gifted to the Sea Emperor stood at the lip of that Abyssal Trench, a vivic fountain blazing on it that generated Dragon Water ceaselessly, and rewarded those who spent their time and efforts making sure the evils of the Netherdeeps did not spread.
As for injuries, High Emperor Leviathan Sang out, and the Portal to the Broom Closet opened for those wounded during the last of the fighting to bring this Pyramid here.
If they could make it to Her Demesne to be Healed, the Moon and Stars would still be Brought Down, and they would be Healed, adding to their scars of silver and gold, and soon would be able to resume their duties.