“Elder Obai, I see you’ve done some good work!” I called out as I glided up to the Undead Hunters, most of them Meditating in a Seven Stars Element Formation before a raging Wall of Holy Fire, sitting there right in front of the chamber exit to the first audience chamber on Level Seven, home of the Pharaoh.
Elder Obai was on watch, and raised his Acacia-wood Staff Brambly, made from his own Plant Companion, in greeting to me at my return. “Ho, Lady Fae! I have heard your trip went well, and the siege upon the islands was lifted!”
I glided up, tunking his Staff in greeting, along with waving to the other mages standing watch there. “Indeed, it went well. Leviathan Emperor will be a fine Totem for the islands. There is already talk of how to modify the flags and coats of arms to reflect His status there. After the showing the Whales gave them, the general attitude is that the islands gained a whole bunch of big brothers, and they should play along like good family should. There’s some who just bridle at the thought of being under a bunch of Sea Beasts, but they’ll be sorted out quickly enough.”
“One should not look down on the chance to gain some very big friends in such an unfriendly world,” Archmage Obai agreed, turning to the multiple Walls Burning cheerfully, strongly discouraging anything on the other side from attempting to launch attacks on them. “After the first few probes, there has been nothing. They are waiting for us to strike at the inner chambers, I would assume.”
“What a magnificent, explosive, violent, awesome battle of spells and sheer power that would be,” I nodded calmly, the Orb on Noble gleaming with ready power, the Dreadskull of a dead Shade Ruler burning black Baneflames in readiness. “And so?”
“We shall avoid it at all costs!” Obai and the other mages there declared back in unison, grinning broadly as they did so. All of them had an idea what I had been planning and doing, aside from locking the rotations and movements of the chambers from one another.
This was the next step in the endgame plan!
I looked at the Humans, Beasts, and Plants in the Seven Stars Formation, judging the flow of power and Auras being empowered. “Looks like another two hours to full strength for everyone. I will finish up here, and then we can proceed to the top entry to hammer in the final nail, I should think?”
“We are all anticipating this,” Archmage Obai bowed slightly to me. “This... would be the first time in recorded Human history that we have fought back a true Death Zone, would it not?”
“Some will say it is not a Death Zone, but a mere temporary incursion brought with this Pyramid, and only the ones Humanity has fought against for centuries or millennia are true Death Zones,” I answered grimly, looking at the Flames keeping away the most powerful Undead. Those abominations had dominated countless souls, feeding upon them over the flavorless years of their unlives to maintain their states and try to grow their strength.
The Pharaoh I could sense intimately, its control over the power of the Pyramid making it stand out like a lightbulb wherever it was and from whoever it led. It could certainly feel my influence, which was pushing and pulling at the reins of power and threads of control over the Edifice that it had constructed. Its thrumming hatred of me for daring to defile what it had built needed no explanation.
Alas, this wasn’t a test of Masters of Pyramids. I had physically changed the flows of power inside this structure to do things that couldn’t be altered or told to desist without collapsing the entire structure... and since taking its slayers with it was totally something the Pharaoh would do, I’d made that pretty much impossible, too.
Golden crystalline light thrummed through Noble as I reached out with Shaping Stone at VIII+1. I’d been modifying the last remnants of the Formations I was using as I walked along the connecting chamber between levels Six and Seven. Its stairway and broad approach was burned and charred slightly by some truly awesome spells beating on everything, the grandiose doors at the end now pitted, charred, and barely hanging on their hinges before the inferno of ten Walls of Fire whose anchor staves had been moved from other chambers to here.
There were no other ways in or out, using Void Magic or otherwise. I had calmly unwound the spatial connections linking the few places that could be Blinked between and made that tactic impossible, having no desire to entertain dimension-poppers coming up behind us at the wrong moment.
Ten Walls of Holy Fire would severely wound even the toughest Undead or Shade who came through here, and I could feel no living Beasts beyond of any type. The last of those had all been killed in the clearing of Level Six, clearing away the last Ruler-level Medusas, Scorpions, and Snakes the Pharaoh commanded.
Channels of command did exist outside the chambers, Void connections through space between different aspects of different rooms and the outside. I had naturally severed most of those that led to the outside, rendering them autonomic and beyond control, simply doing their job and not subject to the Pharaoh’s will. The Pharaoh had been unable to leave the Pyramid and undo my work, and could only seethe where it was currently trapped.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Importantly, it couldn’t reach across a simple dimensional division, and rooms that could rotate spatially all had dimensional boundaries they swapped between.
Two ways in, two ways out.
Did it matter how much wealth, history, and secrets were within? Well, plunder was cool enough, and yeah, the amount of grave goods in there would have added up to billions, without a doubt. Who knew what secrets of the Netherworld could be gleaned off its walls and records of its masters’ glory?
Nope, didn’t care, as I completed my final modifications and put in a remote detonator, such as it was.
By the time I wandered back through the Walls, everyone else was out of Meditation and ready to go.
I left the juniors here to watch and make sure nothing broke through. If it did, they could attempt an overwhelming assault and try to kill it, or they could run; either way worked. It was functionally miles between here and the second point of entry, so we couldn’t reinforce instantly, but they could certainly hold off almost anything while they ran until I or the Archmages could get here.
It was going to be moot in a couple hours, so I wasn’t too worried. Undead were always better at waiting than at decisive action, and the Pharaoh was now in the unfamiliar mindset of being the besieged. We had punished it for ignoring us, we had punished it for attacking us, we had punished it for waiting, and we had punished it for probing.
We had slaughtered everything around it and left it holed up in its final redoubt with its most powerful and/or favored servants to defend it, along with whatever traps it had come up with recently or over the millennia.
It probably thought itself safe enough, and it now had time to come up with something. It was a servant of the Netherworld, so there had to be some way to bring in more reinforcements and break our grip on its home.
Mmm. Well, Lord Pharaoh’s bubble was about to be burst...
---
Pook.
That’s how it started. One line of power, on one Rune Formation, severed and redirected.
Connections failed, broke, and lost power. A magnificent interconnected marvel of old magic, snipped at just the right point, began to fail.
This wasn’t just the rotating, moving chambers getting locked. Nope. I clenched my fist, and the second line of energy trying to maintain integrity pooked as well, and it was done.
Level Seven, home of the Pharaoh and its attendants, was severed from the Pyramid entirely, and from the rest of the demiplane.
The far side was collapsed and gone, but even the few seconds between had been enough time for the Pharaoh to panic, reach out with its Void Magic, and grab onto the dimensional connection here. The great doors to the inner chambers were no longer visible, adrift in the Aether’s indeterminate space/time, but there was a rippling void of magic forming here, desperately grabbing onto the intact portion of the demiplane, trying to draw them back together with raw might... and kinda failing.
It was a big level, with a lot of volume and mass to it, and it was swinging free in the dimensional pressures of the spatial pocket. This was the only way out, and now those chambers of stone, carved with Seals and Glyphs and Circles designed to stabilize the created area against the pressures of reality, were failing, running out of power... and starting to collapse.
I couldn’t hear it, or see it, or even feel it, separated as it was by what was now a dimensional chasm. I could, however, totally feel the frantic Void Magic channel that had seized this exit point and was holding on desperately.
I gestured, and four sets of poles blazing with Permanent Walls of Holy Fire between them, with all the fun vivic chasers, floated up, around, and past me as I stepped back, the Walls lining up back-to-back right in front of the truncated corridor leading to intraspatial annihilation.
Everyone was in Formation behind me, Chaos Magic swirling around to really make a nasty surprise of things, their Awareness out and waiting.
The first bulge in the not-light barrier at the end of that Void Magic doorway grew, parted, and a skeletal form in shredded robes of royal nature and attire forced itself through it and out!
...right into a Heavenly inferno of Flames feeding on the Sins it had committed without care and the unnaturalness of its existence. It screamed in utter agony, and then there was one pulse of magic entering the Chaos Aura about us, and then another one as the Formation disgorged two sets of magic, all single-targeted spells, no mass AoE’s, no wastage of magic.
The magic obliterated the Undead courtier straight off, swirls of vivus crystallizing through the motes and dust as it was blasted apart. Its skull bounced off the ceiling and the floor, whatever magical things it was wearing melted and fused as molten shrapnel bubbled on the uncaring stone about it.
The Soul Jewel that gathered on the ground as its spirit was blasted apart, Burned, and its magic crystallized was calmly swept into my Pocket with its crystalline skull.
The Void Door bulged again, our magic rose calmly; Disrupting Weapons, as well as fangs and claws dancing with Vivic Eternal Lights were readied, and together with the judgement of the Walls of Flame all awaited their arrival.
---
The Pharaoh was the last to come through. I didn’t know if that was noble, or if it moved the slowest because it had to keep the path open.
It was the only one to actually survive the initial joint assault, although the attack tore every trace of clothing and flesh off its ancient bones in so doing. Completely reduced to a skeleton, the ancient and powerful mummy glared at me, trying to muster up the power and the Will to cast a Death Curse upon me, to exert the full might of a Sage and take me and this whole demiplane with it as it died.
Its hand burned away to white dust as it pointed at me, the Dark Mana it gathered flared and helped devour it as the hungry vivus ate it and became an unwhite surge of vengeance. It screamed emptily as its Sins rose up and it was devoured. Necromancy fed life, the essence of the souls it had consumed to rise to power was in turn devoured, and its withered husk of a soul could not slip free and find another corpse somewhere to inhabit and return to power, oh no.
There was no cheering, no satisfaction as we watched it Burn, millennia of history cascading to dust, a black skull washing crystalline as its soul died, and all its magic and power condensing and collecting into a single Soul Star Jewel beneath it. Its last wail was lost in the snapping rage of the Walls doing their job, and Holiness passing final judgement on a Damned thing that had not had the grace to truly die when it was time.