-How’s the strategic situation developing?- I /asked Briggs. He was getting tactical feeds from dozens of places, Avians out scouting freely now that Turn the Sky into the Sea was down, and even some Dragon-riders from Castle Leap were out with a Marine riding along to relay and report what they were seeing.

-Sama has gutted the psychic command network of the Krakenoids, and they have fled into the Irish Channel. Their troops are plentiful yet but wavering after the Saltflower took out so many of them,- he /replied instantly, not distracted at all while in the middle of hacking and hewing through a tide of Urchin-folk who thought their bristling spines made them dangerous to him and Endure.

-The northwestern quadrant was being guided by Sea Serpents, and suffered the most when the Sky to Sea effect went down. There’s Schools of Fish and other Beasts gasping and dying all over the place out there as they can’t breathe properly, or they hit the ground and can’t do more than flop around now. Seeing Dragons in the sky has encouraged the Sea Serpents to retreat, as they don’t like contesting with their cousins above the waters.

-We’re concentrating on the Fishmen force to the southeast, as they’ve the numbers but not the power. They are in complete disarray and the Irish have a howling mad-on for the slaughter.- Briggs idly batted an Urchin-man into a cluster of its fellow, sending them all into a tumbling mass just before Hopper raced by, short wings outspread, alternately trampling Aquatics into the ground with sparking talons or raining down a solid wall of Lightning from those wings, cooking those underneath instantly.

The world-famous Lord Quake was leading a couple other Dragons in burning runs of dragonfire, spreading the love and making sure as few Aquatics could escape them as possible, while their Riders fixated on any tougher officers or commanders of the forces with their own contributions from above. Massive Beasts were rampaging to and fro, killing, killing, and more killing going on in all directions.

-I’ve got a full third of the team on SAR duty trying to keep these berserk Irish idiots alive while they vent.- Some of them might even recognize that all the miraculous saves happening to them, Beasts arriving to rescue them, a Healer somehow popping up at the right time, or spells descending to obliterate something about to kill them, weren’t miracles at all, but parts of the steady Beat thumping out from Endure while a Warlord guided his people to do the best with them.

-I’ve moved the last of the Fomorian corpses within Castle Leap and am looping around to the south and sweeping east. There’s quite a few fleeing Pisceans and Eel-folk to slaughter along the way, and their Rulers all think they are clever and can launch some surprise attacks or something.-

-Says the woman who just chased away thirty Fomorians, including their Emperor?- Briggs /asked in amusement.

-The bonnie lads and lasses with me are getting to vent a little bit more. Every time they get tired, we come up on the ruins of another town, heaps of bones, mounds of slime-ridden corpses, another destroyed landmark, some pit gibbering with unnatural life, and they get all pissed off again. At least they’ve the discipline to keep their Mana expenditure to a constant they are regaining.-

-Well, you’ve got most of the major spell power of the Irish with you. I’m going to ask you to send two of the Sages over here for oversight in case some Nobles decide to get uppity. Most of them have retreated towards the sea, so we’re mostly chasing down the minions fleeing urgently and a few who’ve chosen savagely to fight.-

-Got it. You should have eight of them on top of you in seconds. I’m keeping the rest as an escort in case there’s a blob attack. They’re staying very busy, have no fear.-

There was an actual chime as the Portal opened, and for a moment the Sublime Chord washed across the force fighting here, Cast spells flaring visibly with more power. Eight senior Irish Mages, including the Fire-Tongued and Black Raven Sages, came through the hole in the air on silvery Disks, took in the situation around and below them, and momentarily considered what to do.

A flight of Contracted Avians zipped on by them and flipped them all onto their backs before breaking formation and heading off in all directions to provide oversight, the startled mages holding onto their sudden rides in astonishment.

A line of walking Trees of diverse and mostly non-native species formed the heart of the advance elements, the great Plants acting as solid defensive towers who reached up to receive wounded mages being dropped out of the sky by Avians working SAR duty. The Irish were in awe of how well-coordinated the Marines were about such things. The skilled Healers there could fix up physical injuries in almost no time at all, allowing wounded mages to get back to the fighting speedily, while the Avians could snatch up wounded people literally from under the claws of the invaders and get them to a Healer with incredible speed.

Being dropped from the sky, caught by the gentle branches of a great Tree, and lowered down to be administered to by a Healer who could reattach a severed arm or leg and get you right back out there to the fight was a surreal experience to every one of the Irish soldier-mages fighting now. The level of coordination between Humans, Avians, Beasts, and Plants was just unreal, the impression it made something that would stick with the proud and individualistic Irish mages for a very long time.

-----

The Deep Horror Duke was a pulsing globe of unclean flesh, tentacles, multiple eyes on tentacles, and one huge eye in the middle. It first tried to drive us mad with a Psychic attack of consummate power, then lash us with flights of energy beams when that failed, all while its lesser minions zipped in to get close and try to swarm us.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Then its own Reflected gaze attacks took out its Commanders, its Psychic Attack drove its own horde into a murderous frenzy, and a hundred javelins of force buried themselves into each and every eye, blowing them all apart as the Horror screamed in shock. Its insane horde turned on it and one another, eating one another alive with wild abandon as we just looked on in appreciation.

It was kind of entertaining to see berserk Warrior-sacs of pulsating flesh eating their way into their lord and master by its eye sockets as it rolled in the air and screamed, only attracting more attention as it did so.

It gave my escorts plenty of time to bring down Swords of Light to impale it and hurry the meal of its underlings along, before a Pyroclasm cooked them all off and eruptions of Fire from the Dancing Sun Sage detonated inside the bastard to finish it off.

Noble’s cavalcade of Greater Shards I’d literally tied off and was sharing targeting data with had never stopped. I was only Casting Fastcast spells or Counters, not stopping the slaughter of the lesser Aquatics unless there was nothing in range, which in my case extended for miles at this point. It didn’t get rid of all the parasitic and infectious shit staining the landscape, but oddly enough, if all that foundational stuff was there in the morning, the resurging plant life was going to be reaching up, grabbing them, and choking the shit out of them for some more nutrition.

Three miles north and east of us, there were plenty of pyrotechnics from the Irish forces slaughtering everything they could as fast as they could, something I was operating in parallel to. There is very little more demoralizing than watching a no-miss spell attack coming in from way beyond range, slaughtering everything in its path, looping and swerving and seeking out everything whether it ran or hid, and everything around you dying.

Reynard was Blinking me from location to location to maximize the numbers I could slaughter, hundreds perishing every second, while my remaining Irish escorts made sure to finish off anything larger that I left for them to deal with.

Reynard also marked the Commanders for coming back to retrieve Crystal Skulls from them. The Irish were going to receive some nice little presents in respectable numbers, given how many of the things there were...

Pointedly, while I didn’t go out over the sea, my range totally extended out into the sea and under the waves, and Detect Aquatics XIII+1, Understand the Hearts of the Hydrous, had a multi-mile range as well, which extended right through the water.

So, it wasn’t about them making it into the sea with me. It was about making it out there and getting out of my range before looping Greater Shards slaughtered them.

King Balor had spent his power to toughen the waters against me so I couldn’t Shard the fleeing creatures, especially the other Fomorians, through it. It was very unsportsmanlike of him, but also why he didn’t attempt any nonsense like a thousand-foot wall of water to try and crush me.

These guys, I didn’t give the chance to. The waters were soon so charged with vivus that solidifying them against my attacks was impossible, and startled Aquatics a mile out and hundreds of feet down found salvoes of Greater Shards punching through them in nasty killing blows, launched from an enemy out of range of all their senses.

I killed tens of thousands of them doing that, split-firing between Aquatics fleeing for the ocean and cleaning up those already in the ocean. No matter how fast they swam, they couldn’t out-run Shards, and I was plenty ready to kill as many of them as possible, working down the southern shoreline and up around to the east, slaughtering everything on land and sea that I could in an unstopping rain of glittering death.

The only things that could have stopped me were Rulers or Emperors, and they seemed to have other things they wanted or needed to focus on as I painted the waters white around them.

It was grand and misty slaughter, Aquatics in millions dying to feed the Land they had ravaged so badly, and this time, I simply did not stop until there was nothing left on Ireland to slaughter.

--------

“Some show, aye, Fuzzy?” Sama smiled up at Briggs as he came out of the quarters they’d been hurriedly given, showered and smelling like a freshly turned farm field. He was also wearing a black kilt, as they hadn’t had anything else local big enough for him to wear.

Sama’s hand, girt in a glowing Golden soul-claw, reached into the Floating Forge at her side, scooped out some molten gold bubbling there, and proceeded to start sending it flowing precisely into the cuts she’d made onto a severed Krakenoid head, shrunken down to a quarter of its normal dimensions, the waxy bone all gleaming crystalline and its disturbing plastic flesh burned away. The oversized eye sockets looked particularly surprised at its fate.

It had been a long, long couple of days. The amount of effort didn’t bother either of them, as they’d been Sustained via Vajra years ago, which only impressed the people they were Warlording and guiding more.

Most of the Redshore Marines had Sustaining Rings, but they were still out cold for a short while after Meditating in a massive Seven Elements Ritual to reclaim their Mana. That Formation had actually been used by thousands of Mana-deprived Irish mages in addition to all the Contracted Beasts who could, many of whom may as well have been sleeping once they entered the Formation and were lost in the power and grandeur of its flow.

“The bloodiest kind,” he agreed, kissing the top of her head before taking a seat on his personal Disk, which flowed into a custom pre-set seating form for him, not trusting his weight to the local furniture. He eyed the stack of Krakenoid crystal skulls stacked up in the corner, waiting for her attention, and the two gleaming Baneskulls, laced about with Runes of gold while pale, nearly transparent red flames burned in their oversized eye sockets. “Nice harvest,” he complemented her.

Sama’s terrifying harvest of the Krakenoid psychics had gutted the normal communications of the Aquatics... and if she harvested some Deep Ones and Abyssal Eyes along the way, well, their skulls turned crystalline, too. The lack of ready information and drop in morale when the Kraks died, sometimes taking hundreds or thousands of their minions with them when they did, had a domino effect on the cohesion and fighting ability of the invaders, many of whom had simply not known what to do and obediently stayed where they were until the counterattacks arrived and cleaned them away.

It was a fuckload of killing, and Briggs had pretty much been directing all of it, much to the chagrin, disbelief, and resignation of the Irish officers who’d failed their homeland so badly. Briggs had simply thrown them into the fighting to avenge their homeland alongside everyone else, and if the cowardly and inept died instead of fleeing like they had before, well, those things happened in combat.

“Pretty sure in total numbers that Fae alone beat the entire Irish Army, and likely us,” he noted with fatalistic appreciation.