Teotihuacán’s Death Zone was about three miles in radius, tightly constrained by a lot of Wards and magic that severely weakened any undead who passed beyond them... which they did fairly frequently, seeking more mortal souls to build up their forces.
It was easy to tell the border area, as it was filled with golden sand, the necrotized and yellowed bone powder of all the dead subsumed by the Pyramids over all of these years.
“I have to admit it was fun pulling all those triggers at once,” Sama grinned from atop a Disk while I hovered in the air. “There’s some officers who’ve been just begging to get tossed into the meatgrinder for years, and lo, now it’s time!”
I nodded once as the Undead Hunters gathered below moved out with quiet murmurs from Briggs. They’d only had a month of training... but it was a month of training from the very best trainers on the planet, conveyed with a lot of telepathy.
Typeless mages and wizards had slowly stolen into all branches of the Mexican Army during the coastal raid years, snatched up eagerly for their discipline and skill. Of course, killing off officers trying to use them as cannon fodder was a must, usually with Charm and Suggestion spells encouraging such asses to valiantly charge themselves into the teeth of Aquatics and die heroically.
Rapid promotions of actual decent commanders with more common sense had followed from sympathetic senior officers, rapidly building themselves a very, very skilled officer corps out of these peasants and no-Element useless fools. They had rapidly evolved into the most streamlined and hardest-fighting badasses in the whole army.
It helped to have the best Warlords in the world giving you orders when it was time to fight!
There had been some belated attempts to break up the power block that those generals had been forming, and four of them had been forced to retire, were discredited, or had even died under very suspicious circumstances.
Those responsible for those things had all perished in embarrassing and revealing ways, while the slugs they attempted to move in to take control of these troops found themselves dying from official ineptitude, raiding attacks that caught them by surprise, cowardice and fleeing battles, or just drank themselves to death somehow.
Sama had been pretty busy cleaning those people out of the Mexican Army, while their patrons/bosses all tended to die peacefully in their sleep or just vanish entirely. She had been playing rat-and-cat with the Synod in Mexico with great cheerfulness, and a lot of not-cats had died in the shadows.
“They’re all good men,” I said softly, nodding at the solid Whites and Yellows below. Some were accented with Blue, Green, or Rainbow, a few were solid Silver or Gold. Not all of them were from Coralost Communities, but they’d all been vetted by Alignment first and foremost, and then broken free of any Church indoctrination with information about some of the things the elders of the Church of Light and the Synod had done over the years. That had included many massacres and slaughters blamed on other forces, including bandits and the Curia.
As a result, none of the soldiers below were followers of the Church of the Light, even if they’d been raised to believe in its mission and the morals its masters didn’t follow. Pointedly, there were no pastors from the Church in this non-regular army unit... and many of those chaplains who were actually Good men had defected from the Church with their soldiers. Others, well, they tended to back the officers put in place as Church patsies, and so ended up sharing the same fates as such men.
The first spells were streaming out now, all from Implements made and readied by Coralost, meant to be filled with the Karma of combat and improved step by step.
There was no way we could provide pre-made Disruption Scepters for these soldiers. That was a +IV effect all by itself, and they needed both Vivic and as high an Enhancement bonus as they could manage to make that Save vs Disruption ever harder.
Making adamantine Implements for them to improve was the proper way to handle that, then using teamwork and excellent tactics to stay alive day after day while facing the Undead.
The Huando Meshing Method was doing wonders for Adepts, while Dual Element Casting was helping Novices Mesh one another and double their combined firepower. Healers who could actually fight meant there was always someone around to fix up the wounded, and Light and Water were excellent defensive Elements.
Much to their dismay, the worst soldiers and officers in the Mexican Army were being thrown into the main fight against the undead and dying rather badly against the ‘undead aggression’, while the Undead Hunters slammed into the flanks with speed, verve, and incredible effectiveness.
Sama and I being on oversight against any surprises while Briggs’ Warlord bonus stacked with the Sublime Chord bonuses they were all enjoying also helped. Anything ridiculously strong popping up could be intercepted and either suddenly removed from the fighting, or simply held at bay and pounded down by enthusiastic soldiers to get the Karma as I made sure it couldn’t flee.
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“Feathered Mummies coming in from the left,” I reported to Briggs, and seconds later that side of the Undead Hunter line was pulling back and reforming, layered defenses ready to spring up. I watched streams of Water spin across the ground and bring back loads of new Soul Crystals for the mages below to use to temper their Stars, a hidden reward that was worth all the danger they were facing.
The combination of vivus, Banefire from the Skulls being collected and empowered, the Huando Meshing Method, the +4 Caster Level bonus from the Sublime Chord, the Warlord and Heartsong combat Buffs, and the eventual Disruption tacked on top of everything were very quickly going to make this bunch of men terrible foes of the Undead, as we’d proven in Africa.
Some of those African Undead Hunters were here, too, quietly adding more foreign soldiers to the force below and providing more overwatch and defense.
Unlike Egypt, there was no massive area claimed by the Ahaws in charge here watched over by living forces, like the Snakes and Serpents of various types commanded by the Medusae there. That meant we only had to worry about undead... or maybe being stabbed in back by the other human forces involved here, who did not have all the advantages the Undead Hunters did.
“I’m going to off their commander,” Sama said, rippling and abruptly gone. I picked out the Mage-level Undead Aura in the middle of the withered corpses with their black headdresses, who spit acidic bile of great potency and whose touches rotted living flesh. The Plumed Mummy had no idea what was coming as it marched its forces up towards the living, shooting out their black-green volleys of death.
Light-infused Water Walls took the salvos, spitting and blackening as they did so, but holding as the return fire of glowing Water Bullets and Liquid Lasers came shooting back in disciplined series in return.
The splattering shots ate through the undead’s necroic flesh like water through sand, washing them away and sending them collapsing to the golden sands... sands quickly Burning white as the Weapons I’d Enchanted with Vivic Weapon cleaned them away.
“Hold! They will not reach us!” boomed Briggs’ voice, suddenly right in the middle of that line, his Warlord’s Aura bolstering their resolve instantly. “Fire One! Two! Three! Flame them! Fire One! Two! Three!”
They were only Novice spells, and so could be Cast with great speed. The defenders in the front line were recasting their Walls as they were saturated with the enemy Bileshots, but the volleys from the Undead Hunters were slamming out in measured salvos from behind them.
Light-charged Flames exploded in bursts in the back lines of the undead, further breaking up the concentration of the mummies and eating into larger numbers of them, ignoring the Elemental resistance that should have been protecting them against such magicks. A few Flaming Fists shining like the sun blew gaping holes in their formation, which only made it easier to mow the incoming lines down.
The Adepts among the Hunters opened up as the undead still out-advanced the volley fire of the Novices, and hosing streams of Light-Water sprayed across the mummies, wiping out lines and arcs of them quickly, sending steaming bones and ancient corpses flying and tumbling.
The salvo fire never let up, hundreds of mummies dying with every complete cycle. The magic hit quite hard with the Sublime Chord Buff, vivus added more, and now the undead were actually starting to smoke and Burn unwhite as they marched through the piled corpses of those who had come before them.
No undead survived dying by vivus to warn them that they wouldn’t be coming back, so they basically ignored it as a magical fire and not much more, certain they’d return to fight again.
Nope, not this time. They weren’t going to be learning any lessons and getting tougher to kill on our watch.
The order of the formation collapsed suddenly as there was an explosion of vivus, Ding! Ting!, at the back of the company, a little knot of elite mummies suddenly coming apart violently there. I could /hear Sama’s snicker as she made off with the Skulls already Burning to crystal in her handy Portable Hole, while the advance of the undead soldiers halted in uncertainty at the sudden removal of their master.
“Keep firing! Fire One! Two! Three! Flame them!” Briggs ordered with infinite calm patience, his absolute steadiness doing more for morale than any wild bloodlust. He had his Boomgun in hand, held at ready arms, but hadn’t fired a single shot. He and his men considered it a personal failure if he had to make a single shot on their behalf.
Unable to retreat, the mummies were quickly mowed down, their ordered lines dissolving into a horde and interrupting their lines of fire. They did surge forwards, trying to get to grips with the living, but the Adepts were waiting and Lightwater Streams surged out and swept away the densest clusters of them with great skill, leaving the more open formations to be blasted away by the volley fire.
The closest mummy reached ten feet away before a point-blank Water Bullet to the skull took it down, and then the volley fire was chasing the numbers backwards, concentrating as the lines emptied out, and the last of the mummies was blown into smoldering, misting bones.
“Collect!” Briggs ordered, and tasked wizards hurried out, using Prestidigitation and Mage Hand spells to snatch up the Soul Crystals as quickly as possible, Disks soon heaped high with them. The lines moved up slowly behind them, careful to keep their path of retreat open and secured.
I turned my head. “The left flank of the main army just broke and ran. We’ve got a threat on our retreat path.”
“Reserve gunners! Move out and make sure our withdrawal route is secure! All forces prepare for a pivot to the right!” Briggs ordered immediately, and streams of constant deployment orders began to flow from him. I watched the lines of mages pivot and reform as they marched to new locations, and Briggs watched through my eyes, too, using my superior Awareness of magic as one of his primary recon feeds.
The Soul Crystals swept up, that line fell back as slithering, gigantic serpent skeletons began to come our way. They were not going to like being that close to a vivus-active field like that, and were probably all going to be Burning before they even reached spell range.
Not teaching lessons to them as long as we could, that was us.
I glanced at the Awareness watching me from the entry to the Pyramid of the Sun, doubtless debating on coming out here to challenge me with some or a lot of its lieutenants. I was letting it read my Presence, enough for it to realize that I was definitely a Sage and that throwing something lesser at me wasn’t going to work, which detail was leaving it contemplating what to do.
Tezcatlipoca, the Jaguar Ahaw of the Sun, Master of the Sun Pyramid. Across the way, his counterpart Camazotz, the Bat Ahaw of the Night, would come out at dusk.