The raindrops were pounding in Briggs’ Tremblesense like a zillion tiny hammers, but that didn’t stop him from sending off a few Commander-class Undead Elephants a little faster, even as he watched their blackened ivory tusks pit and burn and decay, washing away in front of him.
Better safe than sorry, after all.
Much of the water was running into the massive moat dug out around the city, and the Beasts in there were simply dissolving in the Holy Water entirely, vanishing in the tens of thousands as they did so. Eager Plants were drinking in the Blessed waters and bursting into bloom in every direction, reinvigorated and re-energized by the magic in the rain... and by the vivus pouring into the soil, being absorbed into their roots eagerly and greedily.
And then it was done, ended between one second and the next.
But the magic wasn’t done, as the countless drumrolls of the rain seemed to echo and condense and reverberate as they gathered within themselves, and the searingly white clouds above pulsed once.
Briggs had never heard anything so Loud, and yet so gentle. It should have blown out eardrums, cracked stone, and stopped hearts. But this was true Thunder of the Soul, and every single creature that Heard it echoing in their souls with impossible, unbelievable grandeur and goodwill, looked to the skies, and the Heaven that lay beyond it.
Twenty Smiting Thunderbolts came down out of that cloud-puffed blue sky onto King Magogo.
They saw the flash of The Light two hundred miles away, sweeping up into the sky with grace and purity. The bones of the King Honey Badger were clearly illuminated against the flaring of the descending wrath of Heaven, and more.
They could see the soul and spirit of the Honey Badger King, wormed through and riddled with festering, corrupted blotches of Dark Mana, get Burned free and clear as he was finally able to die.
Any normal Light would have burned out the eyes of anyone who saw it, but this was The Light, and it was seen with the soul, and heard with the heart. Every living creature that saw it felt their hearts swell with a glory and grandeur they had scarce imagined, and knew they’d touched on something more profound than anything they’d felt in their entire lives.
The few Undead Beasts who’d survived the deluge shattered in the wake of the Thunder and the Light brought about by that colossal twenty-fold Sage-tier Thunderbolt, the Dark Mana’s hold on them dissipating as they did so.
Briggs eyed the updates pouring through the back of his head in clipped, analytical fashion as multiple Awarenesses scanned the area and downloaded a collected view of the situation.
Not many of the Undead Beasts had managed to get into the city proper. Those that had managed to squeeze between the watching mages and Contracted Beasts had still been on vivic fire, and had eventually Burned down before they could wreak too much havoc, as it was generally the smallest and least dangerous who had managed to scamper past the defenders.
“Unsummon any Called Beasts,” Lady Fae’s Voice cut through everyone’s thoughts, while Briggs eyed the many thousands of disintegrating corpses covering the ground in mistfire.
If they wanted to plant this area with something, like herb gardens or the like, this was going to be a helluva harvest. Briggs made a note to inform Archmage Obai about that, and see if they couldn’t get some rare Seeds planted for what was going to be a bumper crop, even with the Contracted Plants getting a nice meal out of things.
She was having them Unsummon their Called Beasts because... they’d have to Interdict the area again by force?...
He turned around, and looked at the gleaming skeleton of King Mogobo.
Very tellingly, it wasn’t on vivic fire right now, and totally should have been. It had been baked clean by the collective might of the Smiting Thunderbolts, not a shred of flesh or fur remaining on the hundred-foot long remains, but it should have been Burning vivic.
He felt the hissing sensation on his Sun Source, rather than hearing it. Blackness sprouted on those bones, and began to spread.
“Seven-Star Purifying Formations around King Mogobo’s skeleton, NOW,” Lady Fae went on. “Briggs, Sama, get inside it.”
Briggs grinned at that, watching the darkness grow like oil over those purified bones. A second later, one spatial shift, and he was standing inside the massive ribcage, staring up at the spine. An eyeblink later, Sama was standing next to him, watching bars of blackness roll up all around them as they stood on the King’s breastbone.
Four groups of mages, each arranged in a seven-point Star with a mage able to use Void Magic in the middle, were floating in the Elemental Pattern. Crystal gleamed on the ends of their Staves as they slowly and uniformly began to cast ‘Fireball’, except by Element.
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The three groups of Undead Hunters were all at the Mage Tier. Seven Mage-tier spells gathered like that was effectively an Archmage-tiered spell.
The KIA boys were all Archmages, which meant theirs was a Sage-tier spell.
The skeleton that should have been falling apart with all its connective tissue gone instead shuddered as a dark radiance ignited inside the blackened skull, razored teeth dripped necrotic poison, and the skeleton of King Mogobo rose to its feet as an unbelievable amount of Dark Mana ignited around it.
The four Purifying spells hit that head exactly together, while Sama and Briggs hacked at the skeleton’s darkly gleaming spine.
Resonance effects piled damage higher and higher, the smaller spells feeding into the central bigger one, all focused down a narrow chute of Void Magic swirling the entire thing into raging anti-undead Arcane Fire with all those Seed Effects and Disruption streaming down.
Dark Mana was devoured, and the skeleton jerked back as Arcane energies blew over the fleshless skull, crackling and raging. It started to move, and then a second set of conjoined ‘Fireballs’ hit it.
Briggs chortled under his breath. Fireballs were basic combat magic. They could be unleashed every six seconds, which didn’t seem like much, but when you were shaking off a Stun effect pulsing through your animation matrix, it was exactly long enough to maintain a stunlock!
The Arcane fireballs slammed in like hammering clockwork, the wash of high-Sage magic breaking all around them. Sama and Briggs alternated pulsing out Interdiction Fields as the Dark Mana pouring into the skeleton tried to escape, to rip open the dimensions and bring up something else from Below.
Instead, it ignited and raged in a growing blaze of vivus, unable to break through, pouring into the ground like an unwhite waterfall as it was devoured and tried to keep up with the steady, pounding damage through the vessel of the skull and the conduit of the spines.
They were cleaving through the spines and shattering the bones, but the flow of Dark Mana was just continuing regardless as the slivers refused to fall. Briggs and Sama pulsed out their own Arcane blasts through their Weapons and into the waves of darkness surging past them, turning the segments of bone to less than ash. They made wider and wider gaps as they chopped into the ribs and everything around themselves with wild abandon, disrupting the flows of Dark Mana, igniting innumerable threads of vivus the bombardment exploded into countless new wounds and bonfires.
It had no ability to retreat, nor to advance. The infused skeleton could only writhe and rock and try to recover, and was given no chance to.
The final hit was just like the one before it, one hundred and fourteen point-blank anti-undead blasts of Sage-level Fireballs later, but it was finally too much. Threads of vivus had infiltrated the final structure, growing like tiny invasive weeds, and this time, the arcane fury blew through the entire thing, and the Dark Mana’s structure didn’t hold.
The skeleton of King Mogobo shattered, and a distant scream of thwarted fury echoed forth from the bones as they went flying for hundreds of yards in all directions... but this time, they were on vivic fire.
----------------
Briggs and Sama slammed to the ground, waiting calmly as the pea soup of vivic mist around them began to settle, looking around carefully before their eyes settled on the skull of King Mogobo, the only part of it that hadn’t gone flying.
A skull which was now starting to shrink as it crystallized, vivus burning harshly over it and condensing it as it chased away the last of the necroic energies that had flowed through it.
“The claws are staying intact, too,” Sama pointed out, pointing at one that was sticking out of the city’s wall, and it wasn’t Burning, either.
Fae was drifting down with the KIA boys, the Undead Hunters and the Wolverine Hunters moving to join them. “They’ll make great Staffs for those interested,” she noted to everyone, pointing around. “And all those Commander-level Skulls for Undead need to be salvaged.”
The many Plants around, all of them now in bloom in much brighter and purer colors than any of them had ever displayed before, came rippling to life as the Fire and Ice Celestial Roses woven through them bowed and danced. Roots and vines emerged from the ground in all directions, including in the flooded moat, and began to gather the crystal skulls that had been left behind.
Archmage Obai, grinning broadly, soon joined them with the other mages of the city, everyone watching as the Plants shuffled the crystal skulls along and stacked them up in a neat pile, along with retrieving the twenty claws of King Mogobo.
“We should be coming into Libreville in an hour or so,” the stooped Elder Oscar Schwartz of the Wolverine Hunters mused to nobody. “Someone should go tell Sage Ojibwae his request has been fulfilled.”
Knowing laughs rose all around. Archmage Obai looked up from where he was in quiet discussion with Elder Polanski, the Plant Archmage of the Wolverine Hunters, and Briggs, along with several of his own Plant Mages, urgently discussing the possibilities of what could be done with the ground here after the massive vivic infusion.
“I will be happy to notify him and thank him for his generosity!” Obai called out, but then his expression fell, glancing over at Lady Fae, who was looking northeast. “I have a feeling this matter is not yet over, however?...”
Everyone went silent, looking at the silken-haired Sage of Coralost in their midst.
“What’s going on, Fae?” Briggs asked grimly, knowing it wasn’t likely to be good news.
“Reynard followed the whole trail of King Mogobo. It wasn’t hard, given the sheer amount of Corruption that was left behind. We have to do a Firesweep of every patch of ground the Corrupted Mogobo passed over, and the sooner, the better.” She turned on the Wolverine Hunters. “I’d like to hire you to get that done. We’ll supply the Firewall; you’ll need to sweep the entire backtrail, which goes for hundreds of miles, as fast as you can.”
The Wolverine Hunters looked at one another, and just nodded. It didn’t sound like that dangerous a job, and it was necessary. “Done!” Bierlien agreed readily, not about to turn down a Sage, and knowing that the job would be listed in the Hunter’s Guild, and garner tons of contribution points as a societal need, even if they weren’t generous with the money... which he doubted would happen.
“Reynard actually found a few other Nobles on the way, and gathered them up to follow the backtrail. They located it about ten minutes ago.” Her glum expression had everyone tensing even before she said anything.
“There’s an Egyptian Pharaonic Pyramid sitting smack dab in the middle of an Elephant’s Graveyard out there.”