That left the Priest and one man, both of whom had turned around wide-eyed at the sudden interruption.

Briggs backhanded the Priest, who went flying like a rag doll, smashing into the Wards of the Formation room as they were released from contention. He twitched and jerked wildly as a whole lot of voltage disapproved of his trying to breach them.

One more beat. Endure hooked the last man under his ribs as he tried to scream, and found he didn’t have breath to do so. He was lifted off the ground as if he weighed nothing, up, over, and down to the newly-waiting spike he crashed into, nailed right down onto it as it punched up through his chest and his blood shriveled into dust around it.

Without another word, Briggs stepped away and was gone.

“Secure them all!” Captain Pedro swore, kicking the fallen Priest hard enough to break multiple bones. The shocked guards, still trying to get over the shock and the fact half of them were dead, moved hesitantly to secure the corpses, staring, and then glaring at the fallen, convulsing Priest as they realized they were all supposed to be dead now.

The previously-silenced Alarms began to go off as the guards quickly brought up more layered defenses around the Formation Chamber and knuckled down, preparing to defend the place from even more attackers.

If the two attackers who actually still had skulls mysteriously lost them before the very lackadaisical relief force came up to ‘rescue’ them, well, nobody really caught it, just the dead bodies of the Church force and six dead Chamber guards who had somehow valiantly fought off a treacherous ambush by a known Deacon of the Church!

-----

I reached out with a finger and flicked the Ward in front of me.

Silver Magic hissed and popped, crackling and destroying the area of the Ward directly in front of my position. I turned my head as the second of three very well-concealed Auras behind me vanished silently, then looked back at the shocked six undead mages as I took a step forward beyond the Ward before the localized disruption sealed itself tight.

Camazotz, the Ahaw of the Night, stared at me in disbelief as I spun Noble once, and then a High Emperor’s Star Jewel of Disruption lit up like a cold, searing star of judgement at his tip, while a Baneskull belonging to a being greater than an Ahaw settled down in black crystal over that forbidding Light that was making the Undead cover their shadowed eyes.

Black Banefire and misting vivus spun about one another in Taoflame, underscored and powered by Disruption’s judgmental energies, while Holy energies joined it to create True Wrathflame.

“Someone reached out to you and struck a deal with you,” I remarked in Necrus, which they’d have no trouble understanding, regardless of what they spoke in mortal life. “A fine bit of treachery for you to profit from. Mortal souls to harvest with your undead at their strongest, and even getting rid of a powerful human Sage with their help! What was not to appreciate?”

The last of the signatures behind me seemed to jerk, and started to move. A second later Ding! Ting! rang proudly through the night.

“As you might have guessed, none of that is going to happen. However, you have managed to piss off an Undead Hunter Sage with such nonsense.”

“You believe you can take on the four of us alone?” The rasps of the would-be god, a senior Low Sage, with another Sage and two half-Sages riding with it, their skeletal Bats hovering effortlessly in the air a quarter-mile away, clearly conveyed its skepticism of my chances.

Noble snapped down, and power gathered as Light and Water Mana came instantly to my call, a Chord of very unsettling music arising to make the moon gleam and stars wheel above. An ocean of both Light and Water appeared behind me and flowed down before Noble’s tip, and then four Teardrops of Heaven flashed out.

The Heucoitl hiding behind the shrine below exploded up to its full hundred-foot height. A dead general of the ancient empire, the feathers of its helm and station still bright and likely taken from a Water Luan, its empty eye sockets yawning blackly as its obsidian-studded war club appeared in its taloned hand, trying to block the incoming Teardrops with a wall of shadow and bones.

The sparkling Tears completely avoided the club, smashed through the shadowy barrier, and struck right down the center-line of the gargantuan shriveled mummy’s body.

Four massive waves of super-pressurized Holy Water exploded through the undead titan, eroding away its magic, its tempered hide, and bones reinforced by massive amounts of necroic power. The front of its skull was completely eaten away as the impact of thousands of tons of water blew the thing right over.

We all watched it fall, and its giant bones shatter and scatter as it sprawled over one shrine, tripped, and hit the golden sands in a deluge of glowing, sparkling Waters and shattered, scattered bones, all of which were steaming black and white flames and visibly disintegrating.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“There are only five more of you now,” I responded to its earlier statement, keeping my tone conversational. “And you should have raised your defenses...”

Oceans of Light and Water flashed, flared, merged, and condensed again. Except this time there were two sets of them, and they were all wound about with crackling silver-fractal lightnings.

They tried to get up their spell defenses, they really did. Walls of Fire, Lightning, Water, Shadow, anything to blunt what was coming at them.

My targets were the half-Sages, ignoring the other Heucoitl below that had exploded up to its full height, yanking at the Earth to block for it with golden-black sands.

Nope, I was after the two up here.

The Spellflares hit just in front of the two sets of four Tears, tearing apart their defenses and paralyzing them with the brain-shattering feedback, which wasn’t a good thing to happen when getting hit with four lakes-worth of Holy Water.

There was another explosion of decompressing water, this one lit up from within by Argent Magic, and billowing out to form a massive fog of undead-eating mist that basically swallowed the night in a sparkling, silvery cloud.

The two half-Sages and their massive skeletal Bat mounts were washed out of the sky, slamming into the sides of a lesser pyramid below as a torrent of Heavenly wrath washed them away.

The Ahaw decided it had had enough, bringing up more layers of defense as it summoned up a great wind to blow itself away from me and out of sight. I watched the two undead tumble away before turning my eyes to the Heucoitl that was trying to run as its stretched skin was eaten through over its black bones, turning it into a great moving statue leaking white mist as it lumbered on.

Four more Heaven’s Tears condensed, and if these struck it in the back, really, Heaven didn’t care when it came time for the undead to be judged.

------

“In one night, you removed forever four undead they’ve killed several times over the years, but who always come back,” Sama smirked as she put the first head onto the brazier in front of me. The woman had a vicious set to her mouth, but surprise and fear were stamped on it from where her head had been removed with surgical precision.

“In one night, you removed three assassins who’ve been working for the Synod for years, and without being caught at it,” I replied without batting an eye. “I understand word of what the Church tried to do and the undead armies waiting for them to do it has leaked with fascinating speed, despite the attempts by the officer corps to keep it under cover.”

“Yeah, it’s everywhere. The life stories of the priest and his helpers are going to be all over the place, just so people can look at the kind of zealots the Synod uses, and the Church breeds. From there, it’s a short step to where their loyalties truly lie, and the Church is going to be hobbled more and more.”

“Will they waste the money on proof of sincerity when the accusations come flying in, or will they just prattle? The fact Briggs got him alive is going to be damning, especially when he starts confessing under Truth.” I’d certainly help with that!

“They will definitely see to it that he ‘commits suicide’ before then,” Sama mused, her too-blue eyes just dancing expectantly. “I think we can have some fun with that, too.”

The magic of Summoning and Divination coiled together about the woman’s skull, wrapping around it with white threads that called her spirit to form and start answering some questions.

Questions there would be some definite fall-out for.

---------

Jehudiel was one of the forgotten Archangels. His name almost never came up in conversation among the other Archangels, and his existence was actually little more than a rumor. Most of his time was spent away from the Holy City, building up his network and removing threats to the Church as he thought appropriate. He submitted reports to Michael on a regular basis, but he seldom took orders, only requests, and he did his own thing.

None of the other Archangels doubted his faith and commitment to the cause, however. Not after reading reports of some of the things that he had done.

Threats to the Church were his specialty, and there was no greater threat to the Church of the Light than this upstart Church of Heaven and the Coralost Corporation that was backing it.

He had attended several of their services, including those given by fallen ex-Light clergy, and he had watched their performance over the years, looking for signs of hypocrisy, secular greed, and lack of belief, and had been impressed by the quiet strength the Heavensworn displayed. They truly had a fire in their hearts and a light in their eyes, and they actually tried to live the lives they talked about, and lead others into doing the same.

It was a shame they all had to die. But, doing that... was considerably harder to pull off than he had expected, even when just selecting a random Heavensworn parishioner and murdering them to send a message that they weren’t safe and couldn’t be protected.

Synod agents, even those in deep cover, had been quietly disappearing across the world for years in return for the attacks. That the Heavensworn were responsible was beyond a doubt; the rising of the Church was far too coincidental, and upticks in the activity happened every time the Church sent a message to the upstart religion.

But the lack of magical evidence was maddening, as the guilty parties left no track or trail that even the most acute of magical senses could find.

Even the overhyped Typeless magicks left trails and residues of the Mana they used. But the enemy agents had just vanished, and those responsible had left no trails behind. Even Contracted Beasts brought in to search for scents and traces with their inhuman senses had found... nothing.

His Psychic prying into the thoughts and memories of bystanders and potential witnesses had likewise discerned nothing, save possible half-glimpses of shadows or motion that could have been literally anything. Even Heavensworn he had personally mindprobed knew nothing... and as for the ones who might know something, his sense of danger flared every time he contemplated going after them.

Maddening.

More was the sensation of being hunted.

He was a master of Chaos and Psychic Magic, an expert in fooling the senses and remaking reality. He was thus also acutely aware of danger, a sense he had honed to a razor’s edge playing cat-and-mouse games with the Curia and its many spies over the years, as well as hunting renegades and mercenaries who’d chosen to go against the Church.

There were eyes around, and they were watching, he was certain of it, but he’d never caught a whisper of the spies. Their concealment arts and skills had to be profound, a fact he found disturbing and alarming if they were truly members of the Church of Heaven. It just didn’t seem to be a skillset that fit with their image.

And where did they get so many of them, and so skilled at concealment, so quickly?