Near the coastal lands of Algeria...
With an outraged roar that they could be so deluded as to intrude into his territory, the Golden Firemane Lion was on top of the Bloodeye Lizard Swarms, and began to cut and reap.
He had a noble Bloodline of Earth and Fire, the characteristic blazing mane announcing his presence, and his golden fur gleamed like metal in the desert sun. Massive claws reaved out with fans of killing force, and the scuttling small army of sand-colored Lizards sweeping towards the Pyramid shooting ruby-red flaming beams out of their scarlet eyes got to enjoy the full attentions of an outraged Great Commander shredding everything about him.
He didn’t really need the help, but I pounded Lizards down with steady blasts of coldly brilliant Greater Shards, sending the scaled bastards from the Sahara flying in frozen pieces, not even bothering to Chain that much and really reap them.
There were only a few thousand of them, and no Ruler with them. Their bloodline was nothing, so the Lion had no problem dealing with any and all of them. Bloodline Suppression alone was enough to cripple most of them, and the tougher ones couldn’t get through his golden hide, or endure the shredding claws that didn’t give much respect to their armored scales whatsoever.
It took the two of us less than an hour to clean them up, the Lion specifically getting the kills and feeding on the Commander Lizards driving this attack, while I cleaned up a lot of the Warriors who had little to no value in the big Cat’s eyes.
I drifted down next to the elephantine Lion, who was studying the sands in the distance defiantly, looking for some signs of invasion to his new territory. “I feel nothing, Elder,” I told him calmly. “I think that is the last of them.”
He rumbled a rough reply, but his pride wasn’t directed at me. He idly watched the crystal stones that were all that was left of my targets come to me and vanish, while I let his slaughtered kills bake in the sun. There were already plenty of Vultures and Bugs circling and getting ready to clean them up.
He rumbled something else at me, and I nodded. “According to what I saw, Jackals, Vipers, and Lizards held the territories now covered by the Pyramid. They were already the weakest tribes if they were living on the fringes of the desert. There’s some fighting going on to the south, but it will end soon.”
The lone Lion turned away with a sniff, and began to trot for the Pyramid five miles away, clearly visible over the sands.
Very pointedly, we could head directly there and weren’t affected by the Curse of the Sahara.
The Pyramid I’d made here was only a twenty-stepper, and one with steep, conjoined sides that meshed together, not really steps to it at all. It did have four broad areas on its sloped sides where a powerful Beast might rest as they wished, and a shadowed area within for taking cover from the elements, with sets of great stairs at north and south leading up to that middle chamber.
The Lion idly hopped fifty feet into the air to his new bedding area once we got there, high enough to enjoy a lofty look around the landscape. He breathed in, and the faint glow of the Formation in the stones beneath him thrummed with Earth and Fire Magic.
It was a wonderful place for him to stay and cultivate, and that was without the Seeds that were being mixed and congregating in the chamber behind and below him.
“You can sense them gathering?” I asked the Lion calmly, making sure there were no problems with this arrangement.
He turned around and focused on the Pyramid, the Mana trembling under his paws as he looked into the Formation. He could feel the Seeds gathering as the potent power of the Domain of Infinite Sands was siphoned away, first forming new Spirit Seeds of Earth and Fire from that power.
In addition, it pushed the expanding power of the Domain back, away from the coasts where people lived, and away from the sea.
I could see the effect already, as the ever-present sands stilled, settled, and the coastal water and weather began to return and turn the land green once more. It would never be a rain forest, but there would be grass and streams in this land once again, as there was before the desert came.
And, well, it would continue if Infinite Sands High Emperor didn’t try to get rid of the newest addition to the constructs stopping His domain from expanding, draining it to make sure it had no power to keep growing.
The Lion rumbled agreement, able to sense the Seeds forming, two each of Fire and Earth, birthed every three months. Every four Spirit Seeds could be merged to form a Soul Seed, and four Soul Seeds could be merged to form a Heaven Seed that would mature one season later.
The Lion was entitled to half of them as the guardian, a cultivation resource that, combined with the Formation on the sleeping platforms, made this an incredible treasure, one able to support an entire pride if he could lure them here. He was merely a rogue young Lion, looking to form a pride of his own, and this was a great avenue to making one. If he didn’t attract one, he would only get stronger, until they came of their own volition.
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I’d also recruited him, and no others, so he couldn’t be chased away from here. It was basically an Emperor-dictated position!
The Pyramid Domain was only forty miles across, instead of the usual double, required, like the Obelisks, because it had to be able to withstand and siphon off the power of the massive Saharan domain over there.
It took me much less time to make an Obelisk than a Pyramid, even a simple half-Block (ten-foot cube, instead of twenty) twenty-stepper, but the Pyramids covered much more area and made a much bigger cushion zone than the Obelisks did.
I went over with him how we’d be coming regularly to collect our half of the Seeds; how if he attracted other Lions they’d also have to promise to guard and protect, and it didn’t mean they’d get more Seeds, he’d have to share his own. However, the Platforms would be available for them, and that alone was a very nice benefit.
He agreed, the burning tuft of his tail swishing, and I gave him a big hug and head-to-tail cleansing in Phoenix flame that drew great rumbling purrs from him before flitting off to make my next one.
The southern border of the Sahara was mostly in Beast Territory, and Obelisks were proper and good enough for them, things they could actively defend, easy to put up again if destroyed in the clashes that were already happening... but the Beasts liked their Obelisks, liked their Seeds, and were totally willing to fight for them.
Having the duty be given them by an Envoy of the Emperors helped, too. It made their territory virtually inviolate from other tribes in the south, their only fighting was going to come from the tribes of the Sands to the north.
To the west and north of the Sahara, most of that territory was Human, with the desert actually coming right up to the Atlantic in some areas... and even driving it back with the sand!
In those areas, Pyramids made more sense, establishing a wider buffer zone.
Doing so, however, naturally tore that territory away from the desert Beasts living there, which was instant cause for a fight. The Sand tribes either had to come down and get rid of the Pyramid, or they had to fight other tribes to get back into the domain of Infinite Sands.
Few of the Human communities in those areas had the power and influence to man the Pyramids and fight off such attacks, even with the incredible potential of the Seeds that could be harvested from them, or the accelerated Earth and Fire cultivation atop them. However, hiring mercenaries who might be willing to do so for a share of the Seeds was definitely a possibility, and so Hunter duties were quietly going up in Hunter Guilds across Africa for those who might want to earn an Earth or Fire Seed for a few months of work.
The rest of the Seeds would of course be used to help lift up the local communities, even if it meant selling them for cash to help in other ways... such as sending the young to learn at Coralost Colleges or Academies.
Those Seeds also made them a target of thieves eager to steal them, totally willing to wipe out some Hunters or Great Beasts for such a prize haul. The inability of such edifices to be affected with normal magic was really a problem, however, and the fact no such raiders lived more than a week after attacking such things was also a bit of a downer.
Somehow, we had the ability to reinforce any one of them with full teams of nastily-experienced Mage-level mages fully capable of driving off all but the most elite attackers... who would then be identified and their time left alive measured in days at best.
The fact that the Mediterranean was among the least of the seas affected by Aquatics performing coastal invasions didn’t help the problem, as the Pyramids and Obelisks seemed nothing but an opportunity for the many Families of mages who lived in Europe just across the Sea.
On the other side, Families on the northern shores of Africa were also quick to volunteer their services if they could, to the point of rapidly putting up dwelling compounds around the areas of the Monuments to take advantage of the land that was rapidly being reclaimed!
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Weeks later, a government office near Cairo...
“I cannot put up any such Pyramids on the eastern side of the Sahara, gentlemen. I am quite sure you can understand why it simply is not possible.”
I was in a meeting chamber with a number of Egyptian politicians and military officials, which in this nation were often one and the same thing.
Also, every single one of them was affiliated with a Family. Families had long ago subverted the power structure of the ancient civilizations here, probably helped out by living descendants of the noble and royal Families whose long-dead ancestors still dwelled in the Golden Sands Death Zones of the country, the massive area claimed by the Undead around the Valley of Kings, where both their long-dead and living Medusan servants dwelled freely.
As the Pyramids and occasional Obelisks between them had marched slowly east along the northern edge of Africa, there naturally had been a lot of powerful individuals very interested in what I was doing.
Some had probably thought to stop or extort me from what I wanted to do, claiming it was their land and I had to pay to do whatever I was doing. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t stop me from building, as I did so within the Cursed Domain of the Sahara, and so the Pyramids were completed, pushing back the sands of the desert.
Their magic was completely unable to affect the Pyramids, the rains started coming in, and they couldn’t access the Seeds inside without my permission to do so. Truly a frustrating situation for them, as they could only benefit from it, they couldn’t monopolize and steal ALL the benefits for themselves.
That was how this meeting had come about, as some of the Egyptian forces had reached out to inquire as to what I was planning to do ‘for the benefit of the nation’. They even had enough people to garrison a Pyramid and hold it, given their long history of conflicts with the Death Zone of their nation.
But it was largely fruitless.
The five men and one woman looked at me angrily, as if I was the one to blame for the situation and state of their country. I just looked back at them, completely unaffected, and only the fact that one of them was a Sage left me any shred of respect for them.
Blue, Red, Red, Brown, Purple, Blue-Red. Yeah, there wasn’t a whole lot of work I wanted to do with these people after seeing their Auras. They were basically a great snapshot of what happened when you let Families take control of a national government and partition it up between them.
They were definitely wondering if there was any way they could capture and take control of me, but their glances at my Staff and its Tokens were keeping them in check. They had Infinite Sands Emperor’s whole damn desert right there to their west. Did they really want multiple Emperors coming down to wipe them off the face of the world for messing with me?
No, no, they did not. The Church of Light had some half-hearted adherents here, but in actuality the biggest outside organization with influence here was the Acropolis, as the Death Zones kept the demand for Healers constant.