The two Psychics, one human, one Aquatic, reeled at the feedback coursing through their brains, unable to think, only stumble and clutch their smoking heads, screaming in agony at the power of Heaven and some Arcane juice lighting up their skulls.

The human female looked up, just in time for the Called Thunderbolt to come down and add to her terminal woes.

The three Snipers on overwatch fired maybe a hundredth of a second apart. The head of the Krakenoid out in the bay exploded as the burning lines converged on it and blew it apart, as well.

Sama was a blur of motion up above, only a speedster of a Mage able to keep pace with her, and none of them could do that in her Null Interdiction and Stillflight Zone. She was rampaging along the length of the Boondock Wall, taking down the attackers and their pets with bloody violence, driving right through the heart of wild spell attacks to take heads and shatter spines, Singing bad limericks gleefully, and wow, were they panicking to see her coming.

Trembling, you might say.

---

Reynard was watching it all in Markspace. -This little rabbit is concentrating so intensely on the route he has to take, it is soooo obvious it is a trap... and likely a trap around the trap!-

-Ops Teams Two, Five, Six, converge around the location. Watchers, full scans beyond the perimeter, give them targets. Reynard, harvest the rabbit, if you please,- Briggs /responded without blinking an eye.

There was only a ferocious laughing snarl as Reynard pounced. Jaws of Void Magic, impossibly sharp and shear, bit down as the fellow who’d tried to Poison-dart me found his screaming head ripped clean off his shoulders by invisible teeth in a ferocious display of gore.

-Shedding some Light on them,- Red /said calmly, and several streets off the Boondocks Barrier, a very, very bright Light lit up in the sky, chasing away a lot of shadows, painting a whole lot of hiding people, and the even more well-hidden people beyond those people.

-Bringing the winds down!- Burt /followed up, as a supercell descended from the sky and exploded against the ground in the center of the trap, sending the many hidden ambushers flying with tornado-force winds.

Lord Quake politely announced his presence by plowing straight through two concrete walls and into the middle of the outer secondary ambushing force. They had just enough time to acknowledge the wall exploding behind them before they were swallowed up in Drake fire literally twice as hot as it should have been, hurling them out into the airburst just as a winged form up above dropped countless burning meteors from his burning breast into the screaming vortex of wind taking place there. The shrieking of the wind battering at their ears rapidly became an all-consuming inferno of wind-fed flames!

Firearms were popping and picking off tumbling ambushers, while others were raising Earth walls and barriers to make sure no civilians were caught up in the magic, noting that several dozen innocents had already been slaughtered so the ambushers could occupy the apartments and buildings in the area.

Faerie Fire was marking them as they tried to run, with Reynard keeping track of them and thoughtfully supplying the Hunters and military forces racing urgently to encircle them. The fleeing ambushers were literally turning corners and running straight into cavalcades of magic as they did so, as if the salvos were timed to greet them. They didn’t have any chances to take hostages or destroy things indiscriminately before they were fighting for their lives against Shore Marines who were all too good at this sort of thing!

-------

“Excellent containment job!” I praised the whole team, especially Big John, who’d used Lord Quake’s massive distractive presence to get a whole lot of Earth Barriers up very quickly, letting the Big Drake pull at his own Fire Mana to really supercharge the Firestorm he’d whipped up with Sunny and Burt.

I was moving over the Boonies now, doing what I normally did not, which was take an active fighting role. There were thousands of Aquatics embroiled in combat here, a double distraction with the Hiders down below, so I was taking out the Hiders and ripping through clusters of Aquatics as I did so, even as the Sublime Chord raised the magic of everyone around me and helped them fight back with more potent spells and magic.

I could not heal and harm at the same time, but that was fine. Removing the Hider threat enabled the Boonie Brigades to refocus on the Aquatics, and a single Dart punching through twenty Aquatics of whatever kind in a looping swirl of Fire, Frost, and Holy flames could easily break a knot of fighting and turn it into a quick slaughter.

I could also return some severely wounded fighters back to nearly fighting prime, so I was pumping out the Darts non-stop, accented by full arrays of Shards if the Aquatics had the numbers close enough together to demand them.

Hiders trying to take out our snipers generally found themselves Levitated into the air. The once-human Creatures, warped and twisted by Dark Magic, were melee specialists, and literally had no way to reach someone if simply lifted off the ground. Headshots generally took care of the problem they represented quickly.

The Hand of magic coming down from the sky, literally a wall of solid air, was probably meant to surprise me. With so much attention focused on the ground game, it should have been a perfect distraction and a chance to kill a very troublesome little Human.

Except I had a ton of magic seething up there in the sky with Call Lightning active, so how could I not have sensed the subtle gathering and power of the Air Magic there, if not seen the massive flows of magic through my Detect Magic V and Mask of Clarity?

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It came down on me like an acres-wide section of the sky falling. It would crush a whole section of the Boonies to gravel, and meatpaste anything underneath it.

That also confirmed that the spell was complete, so it was the best time to crack it!

Caster Level or go home! Silver Magic didn’t care how much Mana you spent making the spell. If those bonds couldn’t hold up, all it meant was a lot of Mana breaking apart, rather than a little.

Of course, a Spellflare also had a whole lot of stuff it could do with that much Mana!

The burst of harsh silver light wound about with wild coruscant prismatic displays blew up into that descending clawed hand, quite showy. The absolute confinement effect emanating from the spell, ensuring nothing could avoid it, also meant it couldn’t avoid anything below it, its course committed and final.

Threads of Silver shot through the entire spell, found the Mana structures holding them all together, and cut through them.

Caster Level of Twenty. I’d seen higher, but this was the highest while working at the Boonies. So, there was a powerful Noble Beast out there, keeping a careful distance, and even using a secondary Element like Air, instead of the default Water.

The Spellflare set all that Mana on fire, pouring it all back along the lines of control. There was a massive roaring that seemed to set a whole swath of the sky aflame as the spell arced backwards, heading offshore to something in the distance.

Forewarned, Hunter Guildmaster O’Bannon and General McElroy, as well as their lieutenants, went streaking out in that direction at all speed. A whole goddamn lot of magic started descending out there immediately as they did, arriving even before the outraged roar of pain from its own spell rebounding back at it echoed back to us.

My Darts could clean out most of the Warriors and below, basically dealing with the chaff so the tougher stuff could be focused down. Chaff destruction meant the wave approach of the fighting force out there began to break, harder and faster as my precisely-targeted spells Chained through them, the Kickers doing most of the damage, and I sent dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands of Aquatics down burning in multiple hues of Firefrost, Holy, Bane, and Elemental fires.

I kept the vivus down on the ones away from the KIA positions, directing the people working the zones there to harvest and keep the kills, it didn’t matter to me. Given it wasn’t the first time I’d acted that way, they were very happy to do so, and even more enthusiastic about unloading on the various Aquatics still bristling for a fight.

Of the Hiders who’d come out, they were all dead or very much hiding again.

The Water mages of Boston were all in formation here, helping to hold back the tide of Water Mana that was threatening to surge forward and bury the Boonies. The disruption being caused by the big fight out there was certainly helping, as the numbers of Aquatics adding to the effort was getting disrupted big time by the spells being thrown around by the combatants.

Better them than us, I mused, looking down the front and finding the Shore Mages were really out in force today, stationed along the Boondock Barrier all around the bay. Precision Caster Formations were much better than the loose efforts the Aquatics were making, but the monsters were both specialists in Water and there were a lot of them, so the disruption was the thing really holding them back.

“Officers, I suggest sounding that recall right now. I’m of the impression there’s at least another Ruler out there, and there’s going to be one Hell of a storm surge coming the instant the Archmages run into a problem.”

The officers conferred quickly. It was true that if there was a tsunami, getting back up the Barrier would be damn hard.

The Sound and Psychic Mages began to sound the general retreat for everyone in the Boonies, Hunters and soldiers alike. The disruption that had been intended to materialize had not, and instead had sort of rebounded on the Aquatics, giving us some time.

I saw the arrows of motion in the distance shooting back our way, and a monstrous wave of Mana, almost liquid in its intensity, swept past like an unclean wind. At least two of the men who’d just gone out there weren’t going to be coming back...

The KIA teams were falling back in very good order now, covering fire making sure any surge in Aquatic attacks ran into walls of flaming lead and chewed them up. Bodies fell burning white, and I knew today had a been a really good day for Soul Crystal harvests for everyone.

I sent Chains reaving through those leaping, clawing lines and hordes of attackers, wiping out the weak in droves, and if the stronger ones wanted to jump for me, well, there were two other teams of shooters up on the Barrier wall doing overwatch for me, and having quite a fun time of it. True Seeking shots were shooting where the Aquatics were dodging to, making it look like they were trying to intercept the shots with their heads.

I’d also been bringing up a few more Call Lightning effects for fun and games, and now I began to bring Thunderbolts down, sending whole clusters of Aquatics flying in pieces and bloodspray as explosions of Heavenly wrath fell down on them in singing Silver fury, isolating Commanders and letting the Mages up on the Barrier have free rein at them.

Or, in one case, for Briggs to bounce through the destruction and expediently take off its scaled and finned head in passing, even snagging it for Baneskull use as he did so.

There were a lot of Aquatics trying to bounce after him, which was fine. He didn’t even look back as Endure whipped behind him, somehow always finding the optimum angle to crush a skull, cleave a throat open, or hack through a jaw.

Leading his pursuers into a couple Gatling Grits on full-auto tearing burning lines through the clusters behind him was only to be expected, of course.

He ran straight up the walls without too much effort, the Water Bullets and liquid lasers being thrown at him completely ignored as they hit his Sun and the Mana went away, reducing them to simply showers of water, if that, and those couldn’t get past his ki, let alone his Armor.

I didn’t stop shooting as I went back up and over the Barrier wall, because there were just a lot of things to shoot at. The whole Boondocks was soon swarming with the creatures, and they probably wanted to clamber up the wall, but the Earth mages were on the job forcing them off it even as the Aquatics tore at it and tried to scale it.

Riding up fountains or pillars of water just made them big targets. If they rode in a wave, being atop it meant they got picked off, and being IN the wave meant getting flattened against the Barrier’s patient resistance.

-What happened with the Archmages?- I /inquired in Markspace, as the area around me was thrumming with Sound and Psychic Mages passing messages in a frenzy.

-There was a massive force of Aquatics out there, as well as another Ruler from the Sharkmen Clans. They were waiting for a massive disruption in the defense, and they didn’t get it, so the charge which was supposed to happen didn’t go off like it should have,- /reported one of the team members who’d been working the top, Jill Grossman.

-Guilty party?- Briggs /asked calmly, in a voice that said he already knew.