That was pretty much the scene as I came rolling up, the Skeletons preceding the Storm in a rumbling wave, but the shelter within the Pyramid that should have had its gates open to receive them... was not there.
The downpour swept in together: The Heavens Wept, and the Thunderbolts coming down abruptly doubled.
It was pure bloody havoc, only the least corrupted and thus least powerful of the living creatures below able to withstand the Rain, and they were among the first targets of the Thunderbolts. A last wild surge to try and get up the Pyramid ran straight into full-force hurricane winds driving the flaming, glowing Rain into the creatures like a descending flood, backed up by driving spikes of crystallized and Blessed ice and stone that plowed through the writhing masses of Medusae, Snakes, and Scorpions that were shaking with nausea and more than a few Elemental burns from the Rain, harvesting them and sending them down to vivus.
The Skeletons might have managed to do the same, but that whirlwind at the base, and enhanced Skyflame Funerals raging and fed by the rain, met each and every one of them with constant downpours of annihilation, punctuated repeatedly by descending Lightning.
I could see Sunny was having an unrestricted field day dropping all those things. The Sunbreasted Robin Contracted to Red so rarely got to cut totally and completely loose like this...
The Mick wasn’t even administering most of his Thunderbolts. He was just Casting more and more of the spells, and Hopper, his Contracted Tempest Runner, was pulling them down onto his selected targets down below.
Driver Sam and Burt began helping Briggs, driving Ice and Earth into the cracks and crevices of the Pyramid, leveraging them open as Endure came down with tremendous impacts, reaching deeper, deeper into the Pyramid and disrupting more and more of the complex magical systems entwined throughout it. Burt’s Contracted Arctic Moonwind Owl Bora, a vassal of Ice Phoenix Emperor, maintained the Whirlwind below as all three men sent more tons of shattered and riven blocks tumbling down the side of the Pyramid with glee and speed.
Lord Quake was out and doing the same, putting his strength and size to good use, pulling out the blocks Briggs was disrupting the defenses of, or just slagging them if he had to while Big John concentrated on keeping their defenses up.
It all looked to be going pretty well. Direct magical attacks on the Pyramid were unwise, even Lord Quake being careful about using his Dragonfire, but the disassembly was progressing nicely, regardless of the snit fits being undertaken by the owners of said edifice.
As for their minions outside, their fate was summed up by Hopper showing Swampy’s Shadow-Spearing Loon Gotcha the delicate art of tearing apart Scorpions to get at the meat inside their claws and tails. The black-and-white, star-speckled Loon had a needle-like thrusting beak strike that was sometimes called the fastest beak attack among all Avians, so quick you could barely see its shadow, and the Bird’s mastery over Sound and Water Magic was no joke, either.
Even Stormcrown Eagles knew better than to dare the range of a Shadow-Spearing Loon’s beak attack lightly, and the Loon enjoyed playing mind games with the Aquatics it despised heartily using Sound attacks with a spear-fisher’s patience and lethality.
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I watched the last of the minions wink out of existence on my Detect Dark Mana and came down from the sky, The Mick following suit.
The Seven-Element Whirlwind spun itself back into free Mana, leaving the lower areas of and around the Pyramid filled with drifting vivic mist from all the corpses burning away heartily. I landed down near one set of the four great Doors leading into the Pyramid, eyeing the golden panels with some speculation.
“Briggs, whoever you don’t need maxing your disassembly there, send down,” I called up. Sama was up there helping him now.
“I’d like to start using Driver Sam to Disjoin some shit,” he Called back down.
“Oh, that sounds wonderful. Sam, dump all the Argent you can!”
“Will do!” the taciturn wheelman called back, instantly shifting gears to his treasured fourth Element, the only mage in the world with the actual Argent Element as his own. He quickly began to spin up the dreaded enchantment-destroying spell and fill it with an Archmage’s power.
He wouldn’t be able to Disjoin the whole Pyramid, of course, but he could fry certain sections of it one by one, including reaching down into areas they’d literally have to further disassemble the Pyramid to replace!
The rest of the lads and most of the ladies came down to me. I nodded at the SAR team, “Excellent job on the defense, I didn’t see a single attack spell get through.” They all beamed at the recognition of their efforts. “You’re getting a rare chance to dump a lot of attack Mana. We’re going to trap the shit out of these doors as fast and as furious as we can. When these twats come boiling out of them, they are going to come right into Hell.”
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Even the Contracted Beasts hooted approval at that. Sneaky tricks were just what the minions of the Dark deserved!
“I’ll be on Rune construction, and I’ll tell you what to fill the things with. Briggs, how long do we have?!” I Shouted up to him.
“Dunno!” he grunted back, as he tilted a block, Sama picked up the other side, and together the two of them heaved it over the side of the Pyramid, Lord Quake’s tail smashing into it like a wrecking ball and spreading cracks through it as it bounced and tumbled down the slope, and broke into rubble before reaching the ground. “I can hold the Interdiction all day! At some point they are going to become desperate and just unload everything into opening a way out!”
“Tara, Kate, I want you to spin up an Airship big enough for everyone and keep it ready to go, that’s your job. When Briggs shouts, I want everyone aboard that thing inside ten seconds and streaking for the horizon!”
The two SAR women with the Air Element nodded and hurried away to begin spinning up the ship woven of clouds and mist and force. As long as it wasn’t in motion, they would only have to spend a tiny amount of Mana to keep it intact and waiting to get out of here.
It went without saying that every Human and Beast with the Air Element would be contributing to getting it out of here, too.
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“They’re coming!” Briggs’ Voice thundered around us. “EVACUATE!”
“Go!” I dispersed everyone’s Mana before even thinking about it at a Warlord’s Command, and everyone booked for the Airship, letting go of the magic despite being interrupted in mid-infusion. We all zipped for the Airship, even as the crew up above was leaping down from the Pyramid now missing whole chunks of its top twenty stories.
There was massive Dark pressure coming from below, seething in the much-abused Rune Formations of the Pyramid, doing with stupendous amounts of Mana what couldn’t be done with Caster Level.
The Pharaoh had probably expended at least a year of power accumulation breaking Briggs’ Interdiction, and had to be hopping mad.
Boots and claws hit the deck of the Airship, but it was big enough for everyone. Air Magic swirled wildly, and the massive sails of the ship filled up even as the three-master grew extra sets of masts and sails at four and eight o’clock. They all snapped out with the power of the Winds that were abruptly howling around us.
“On three!” The brooding clouds up above seemed to pause expectantly. “THREE!”
Everyone who could use Lightning Magic Called for it at the same time, even as everybody looked away.
The gathered Lightning Mana came shooting in from clear over the horizon in all directions, a massive convergence of multi-hued purple and violet Mana, and all of it dumped into the ravaged, shattered peak of that Pyramid we were leaving right behind us.
Nobody looked at it, even those with Devasight. It was just way too bright, it was very loud in all the tonals, and the defenses of the Pyramid had been specifically damaged by Driver Sam so it couldn’t absorb the Mana of the attack and laugh at us.
I could, however, see the bones of my hands in the shadow of the Light from the Holy Thunderbolts that came down on that Pyramid.
Even with all that power, literally a hundred massive Thunderbolts coming down at once, and some nice Circles of Power set up to enhance their impacts, we couldn’t destroy the Pyramid. However, the remnants of the top levels, and a whole bunch of stones not in the best shape on the next twenty levels, certainly paid the price for our efforts.
It didn’t stop the Aura of Dark Magic from spiking and rising behind us in a seething Domain of unliving hate, blotting out the sun and the sky and trying to expand after us, catch us... but hey, a Null AND Source were keeping that thing back, as we retreated near the speed of sound, turning back to watch for it, wait for it...
The great Doors of the Pyramid slammed open, the planar links to the Demiplane and demesne of the Pharaoh beyond restored. I could picture the massed Undead, the nobles on their grandiose flying vehicles haughtily leading the charge...
And then all those damn spells thoughtfully laden with Disruption went off in their faces.
The whole display was layered, led by my own Argent Spellflares and Forcebreakers, the combination of which should have totally neutralized any standing defenses they had up against just such a rude ambush.
Then, Seven Star Formations of Disruptive versions of all the Elements hit all those undead like the fists of Heaven.
We were three miles away. The sounds couldn’t catch up to us in our retreat, but the explosions were visible by the wild illumination they threw up to the rapidly-dissipating clouds above. The air behind us shook wildly, actually faltering and flickering as a whole bunch of contributors to the Undead Domain abruptly ceased to exist!
“Elder Koga,” I addressed a Sending to the Golden Mountain Gorilla King we were heading for VERY quickly. “Now is the time for you and your friends to flare your Auras and let these bastards know they are surrounded. If they come on out of there, you are free to rip into them as you like... but I doubt they’ve the courage to do so.”
The spike in Aura reached us well before his titanic howl, but the sudden unveiling of his full Presence and power was immediately matched from several directions as Kings and lesser Noble Beasts made their locations and power known.
It looked like a hand of shadow was trying to reach out in our direction across the miles, trying to exact some revenge for what we had just pulled off. There was a pulse from the sky, at least four circling Presences up there shrieking out their defiance, and a momentous Windblade the size of a castle chopped that shadowy hand off like picking a dandelion.
Twenty miles further back, well out of Awareness if you weren’t actually looking for him, War Talons Eagle (Low) Emperor was watching everything coldly. This expansion of the influence of the Netherworld was most unwanted, and since The Sands Emperor was doing absolutely nothing about it, it fell to the lesser Beasts to do so.
The fact Humans were the ones taking the most action was a very good thing, especially considering how busy we were while dealing with The Great Flood.
We blew past the lip of the ringed valley and immediately lost altitude, putting us below line of sight of the Pharaoh, basically right behind King Koga, who was standing atop the rim there glaring into the distance behind us, daring them to try something.