“Ahaw Camazotz, Lord of the Temple of the Moon?” Briggs’ commanding voice boomed out in Necrus, having no desire to learn ancient Aztec just to talk with this damned thing that was dead before the Human tongue had arisen to sweep the globe in a reverse Babel effect. He had Endure slung on his thick shoulder, ready to move at a speed this thing would likely not believe... and certainly wouldn’t expect to be dangerous.
“What is this? An intruder without magic dares intrude upon my hallowed palace?” sniffed the reclining giant skeleton, looking Briggs up and down as if he were some new species of particularly stupid monkey. “Begone, fool. Let me speak to your general properly!”
It waved its hand, and a devastating wave of crimson-black magic coalesced into a thousand soul-shredding jaws that swept towards Briggs, quite able to tear him apart body and soul.
“I am the general,” Briggs replied affably, totally ignoring the scream of the coming jaws boiling up to devour him... and they hit his Source Sun and burned away instantly, just little hisses of impact as his Source field ate away their structure and form, reducing them back to ambient Mana that flared and fell into thick white mist about his feet. “Given such weak magic, I gather I was mistaken.” He unlimbered Endure and pointed the twenty-pound Rune-carved head at full extension without effort, the Greathammer seething with power the surrounding undead had to avert their gazes from. “Bring out your master, creature! Commander Briggs would deign to speak to it!”
The reclining boredom of the skeleton faded slowly at the challenge and insult. It straightened on its throne, and then rose to its full twenty-feet of height, picking up two ancient Macahuitl carved of what looked to be black bones with jet diamond teeth, gleaming with fell energies about the jagged spikes and blades upon them.
The undead troops between it and Briggs marched with deft precision out of the way, opening up a clear path a hundred yards between them.
“I am Ahaw Camazotz, mortal worm!” the skeletal Sage rasped in interest and anger. “Let us see how you call my magic weak, mortal!”
The ancient Weapons in his hands lashed out, crossing in an ebon stream, and crescent arcs of darkness lashed out for the mortal with such effrontery.
“Pathetic.” Briggs was completely unshaken as he didn’t seem to move, but Endure’s head was somehow precisely at the meeting points of those two bladeshadows of surpassingly lethal force, flung at him with the full force of an Undead Sage.
There was the faintest of chings, and the bladeshadows bounced off the Hammer’s head as if meant to do so, reflecting off to two and ten o’clock respectively.
The undead still had their own Wards up, but they were not expecting the awesome power of their own lord’s terrifying strikes to be smashing straight into them, or deflected so easily! The shields and fields of magic writhed and crumpled as multiple layers were carved through, the startled Undead barely able to keep the bladeshadows from sweeping through them and carving hundreds of them apart!
Briggs just let Endure fall to the ground, the Sunstone inset in the top of the Greathammer glowing and pulsing as Endure pulled the necessary power out of Briggs and fed it into the Enruned Gem there.
Briggs’ progress in making Stars had been slow, steady, and unending. All the energy to form the source Stars and the Mana for them had to come from within him, so making them was a thing of slow inevitability and time, not a surge that could be overcome with unlimited vampiric Mana accumulation and done in no time at all.
But that didn’t mean Coralost didn’t have another Sage nobody knew of!
The Sunfire Sunburst didn’t have all the extra pizzazz of Seeds and things that a Powered could put into the magic, but it was still a Sage-tier Spell, and it was still amplified and purified by the enchantments of the Hammer that was actually channeling the magic... and the power of Endure was QUITE impressive.
The Sunburst wasn’t small, either. Forewarned, the humans behind him had closed their eyes or relied on their own Devasight or Light Resistance to resist being blinded, but The Light of Heaven, filled with Holy power, Disruption, Vivus, Banefire, Soulfire, and all the good stuff, blew out in a glorious new dawn in the dark chamber, drawing screams from countless Undead throats as it rose in pinks and oranges and golds, chasing away the darkness, and the Dark.
The unstable shields that were meant to protect them, the darkness of the shadows, all blew away under the rolling wave of purified Sunlight that swept over the undead. It blew over half of them directly to white ash instantly as they failed to make a Will Save of 38 against the accompanying Disruption.
Even the Ahaw flinched and covered its sockets against the blinding Light of a new day laden with so much terrifying magical power, its black bones smoking and corroding in The Light. The spell certainly wasn’t enough to kill it, but it was very distracting, very painful, and quite blinding while it lasted and ate away at its Shadowy defenses.
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It lowered its Macahuitl just in time to see a blur of motion, and couldn’t react in time as the hurtling form, having covered a hundred yards in just a second or two, brought Endure down right onto its skull.
Endure wasn’t spellcasting, it was just pulling out Mana from Briggs and sending it through a predetermined form, empowered by its own magic.
Its own anti-undead Magic, complete with Dreadskull!
The Sunburst went off at point-blank range, basically solid Heavenly Light at that point, while the THOOM of Endure breaking the sound barrier and crashing into the Ahaw’s skull echoed through the room. The nearby Undead all screamed and shook, just before the next explosion of The Light slammed into them, and swept almost all of the survivors away.
WHAM! A circling blow, and a Dragonstone Macahuitl exploded, carrying on to smash into the overgrown Sage’s wrist. The Sunburst exploded again, and the black bone was incinerated, the phalanges spinning away and burning up as they did so, a glowing mist blazing on the cracked center of the lurching skeleton’s head.
Briggs was standing on the air, his Source Sun fully out, Interdiction up so nothing could be Summoned, nobody was playing dimensional tricks, and he was in the face of the bastard so it couldn’t Cast, only flail at him.
It was probably a little astonished when Briggs grabbed its wrist, stopping it in place, and proceeded to hack its wrist off in another explosion of The Light.
Much of the black was gone from Camazotz’ body, the white bone below yellowing rapidly and starting to flake and crumble. Its skeletal wings battered at Briggs, shattering as they did so, even as the skeleton tried to retreat and ended up tumbling down the back of its throne, Briggs smoothly following it right down.
THOOM. Its jaw went flying and disintegrating, The Light ignited inside its head where it should not have. THOOM. Its ribcage lit up and shattered, shards of Burning bone flying in all directions. THOOM, its pelvis became ruins, its legs flying away uselessly.
The thing couldn’t even scream in the face of so much of The Light.
Briggs raised Endure high, glaring down at the blinded, misshapen skull, the stumps of its arms still waving, fleshless wings disintegrating as they flailed madly.
---
On the other side of the Pyramid, a certain someone smiled wildly as Tremble took on a deadly Ruby hue, and dropped down on another Ahaw that considered itself a Jaguar God.
---
-EVERYONE OUT OF THE PYRAMIDS WITH MAXIMUM SPEED!- Briggs’ order /thundered in the Marktell.
All over the Pyramids, the instant evacuation protocols went into effect. I blew an open course from the bottom to a room cleared by the incoming squad, and everyone took off down it with maximum speed, me being the only one to grab Skulls or Stones as we did so. The seven mages at the bottom holding the Walls there intact booked with everyone else. Void Magic carried them instantly to the edge of the chamber, and then Air Magic sent them hurtling along at terrific speed, towing the non-Flyers on Disks along the curves, Void-jumping to the end of any straightaways.
The Undead Hunters exited the Pyramids at dead runs, the shouts of the officers driving them to keep running, keep going!
---
The deathscream of Tezcatlipoca matched the THOOM and Sunburst that tore Camazotz’s head off its shoulders. Briggs grinned at the mental image of Sama grabbing the severed head of the undead fuck who had called itself a god of the sun and exiting the room as the shocked undead there looked on, Ding! Ting! echoing behind her as she, too, became a blur of lightfoot in motion, moving at impossible speed through a Pyramid that was starting to shake around her.
He did absolutely the same thing, because the men who had followed him were now way out ahead in getting the fuck out of a shared demiplane whose owners and controllers had just catastrophically died less than one second apart, and torn open the entire control matrix of the Plane in doing so.
If just one had died, the other would have been able to repair the damage and assert control of the other side of the structure. Their deaths so close together made that quite impossible, and now this demiplane, and everything within it, was doomed.
Like Tremble, Endure could totally Teleport along the straightaways, and Briggs only had to hoof it around any curves or corners between the pulses of Dimensional magic that effectively amounted to Linejumps. He could feel the space all around them destabilizing as he caught sight of the rearguard of the men, less than a mile of twists and turns to go, and to their great surprise caught up to them in another flicker of teleportation magic.
“Let’s go, people!” his great deep voice laughed, and spontaneous laughter burst out of everyone’s throat as they realized their Commander had survived and caught up with them without trouble. “I trust you lads cleared that place out hard.” He sent a knowing eye at Big John, who grinned widely and nodded.
“Man, never thought I’d use Sage Magic to power a Telekinesis spell to steal so much stuff so fast!” the squat KIA mage chortled back. “I got it all, bunch of Gems and Jewels, and all the Commander and better Skulls!” the Void-wielding Big John laughed. “Hey, I was totally going to bring out the Clan of John and send them stomping through those bastards! They are totally miffed they didn’t get a chance to come out and have some fun!”
Fire Titans armed with Dragonstone Vivic Weapons were exceedingly dangerous when brought in as a rampaging Beast Tide. They enjoyed the heck out of it, too, as they’d demonstrated against the Undead above ground more than once when Big John got excited. They found the Broom Closet pretty boring and dull, but Big John did bring them in long enough to get the Clan of John at least partially equipped.
“Full speed for daylight!” Briggs roared, and the pace picked up markedly, even as ominous booms and vibrations chased after them with a disconcerting howling and pressure changes involved.
------
I actually caught up to Briggs’ crew, dragged them in my tailwind howling and laughing, and we blew out of the main doors of the Temple of the Moon at nearly the speed of sound, thousands of Undead Hunters tumbling in my wake. The wind didn’t let them go until they were past the Warding Walls, which were already humming in readiness as the Pyramids were glowing with great cracks on them and starting to crumble and implode.
But everybody was well out in time as the things started to fall in on themselves, and I took up position above them, weaving in dozens of Vivic Seals at Low Imperial to take on what was about to come vomiting up...