The Heaven and Earth Formation was fully charged by the might of multiple Sages, and the Thunderbolts came down with screams that bounced undead from their feet, sending voltage discharges dancing over all of them for a mile beyond the Pyramid themselves.

With each screaming discharge, a Thunderbolt thicker than a man pounded down on that Pyramid, filled with so much writhing discordant energy that there was no way it could be absorbed.

The top of the Pyramid blew off under the first bolt, sending flaming rubble exploding away for over a mile. The follow-ups crashed down into it, blowing more of the rough stone blocks apart, tearing and ripping through the ancient tomb-creation, and the Undead and Shadows still alive about it could only writhe and watch as it was torn apart.

Twenty of the awesome blasts came down from Heaven, and they blew the upper levels completely off the Pyramid of Djoser entirely, collapsing most of its domain and completely chewing through the single entry to the structure as they smote it.

The Sealing Team was on the job within seconds after the Thunderbolts ceased, while the Undead Hunters basically plowed through the thousands of reeling Undead trying to recover from so much Thunder rocking their souls. They generally didn’t have the time to before they were set upon by thousands of Disrupting spells and annihilated.

Briggs watched the Sealing go up, and the Conduit to the Burial Plane within the Pyramid was Interdicted. The Seal could of course be sabotaged and disrupted, but once Sealed, the majority of the power coming into the Pyramid was disrupted, which meant its structure and very architecture were now vulnerable.

Earth/Water Mages roared and hurled out the Rock to Mud spells with great enthusiasm. Carved blocks of limestone lost their shapes and began to flow down and away, coursing across the ground in an actual flood of mudrock that was blazing with vivus as the death energies that had soaked into them for over four thousand years began a liquification of catastrophic proportions.

The Pyramid still had to be essentially intact for the linking structure to be opened up again, and that wasn’t going to happen here!

The thirty-some Pharaohs in their Pyramids in the distance were looking on in shock and dismay as the very first of their magnificent tomb structures was destroyed and reduced to burning muck that feasted upon the Golden Sands of the Pyramid’s domain.

Khufu, the mightiest Pharaoh in his Great Pyramid, was probably quite incensed, and if he was smart, pretty nervous, Briggs mused, watching a monument to ego, power, and death that had endured for millennia getting reduced to vivic-burning sludge in less than twenty minutes of effort from Earth/Water Mages. The Undead Hunters screamed in vindication and long, long-awaited vengeance as the very first Pyramid in Egypt, the one that signified the first Human ruler selling out to the Nether Realm, was reduced to nothing but rapidly-drying mud in the sun.

“Back it out!” he bellowed, Warlord’s Voice carrying as he tacked on tons of side commands to his officers through the Allegiance and Marklinks.

The defensive assaults to the flanks, holding back the smaller forces from other, neighboring Pyramids, intensified for a moment as the Undead Hunters pulled back with the smooth speed of control, practice, and trusting his commands in life and death circumstances.

They had their vengeance, and they could gloat over it later, the surge of Glory for having accomplished something no Egyptians had been able to do for thousands of years meaning the local recruits were riding a high like none they had ever experienced as soldiers for their country.

The Mummies and Skeletons about them coming apart under Disrupting spells couldn’t stop the living as the soldiers pulled back with speed and discipline, leaving no openings to be exploited, their powerful Casters happily exchanging brutal spells with undead Commanders and Beasts without any hesitation and generally getting the better of the exchanges.

While the core Undead Hunters came from Michigan, and the next strongest were all recruits from Coralost, the greatest number of them now were natives of Mexico and Egypt. Even with absolute filtering, there was no end to the volunteers wishing to join up and help with the seemingly endless battles the force under Commander Briggs was fighting.

Now, now all those months of battles had culminated in a true, verifiable success. The tempered and hardened troops, all of them Adepts, so many close to half-Mages after the most hellacious, demanding environment for tempering Stars and growing their power and skill imaginable, had become the most devastating military force of its size ever seen in Egypt, and likely in the entire world. With tiered Stars giving every soldier the equivalent of Seeds, Disruption on top of them, the Huando Meshing Method giving everyone punch, and the versatility of the Spellhouse Spells, soldiers had defense, offense, utility, and Mana beyond any other troops of their levels, and they were letting the undead know it in no uncertain terms.

That said, their confidence had to be based in iron discipline. Briggs had called off attacks many, many times in the past, because he wasn’t going to exchange their lives for early success when keeping them alive meant multiple later successes. The soldiers knew it and loved him for it, driving themselves to get better faster, to work together more seamlessly, more quickly, to anticipate and respond before he had to tell them.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

And if they were willing to take the Allegiance Oath to Coralost and the Redshore Marines, they could get Marked, and their path to Mage was basically assured, a level of power the vast majority of soldiers would never have been able to see in their lives.

Indeed, many of them had never expected to max out Adept during their military careers, wanting only to get out of a potential death sentence of unwanted but necessary service. Now, however, those who made Undead Hunters wanted nothing more than to stay one of them for their entire lives!

“Let it go, lads,” Briggs whispered, striding along with his soldiers, looking out dozens of eyes from within Markspace to measure the situation and respond accordingly. Interruptions, sudden kills on Commanders, breaking the enemy’s timing and discipline, fracturing their formations, and slowing down their movements; these were all invisible things during a battle that all added up and turned things into clusterfucks for his opponents, whose field commanders never had the experience or insight to appreciate what he was doing.

Undead had great problems coming up with anything original, innovating, and adapting to new circumstances. They could recall past successes and replicate them with great ease often enough, but they had few answers to Briggs’ Warlording of the men save more power and more bodies, the latter of which normally just meant more victims and more confusion during the fight.

The former meant the Archmages and Sages were allowed to move in response. The less the strong had to flex, the better it was for all the soldiers. He had driven that lesson into their heads, and it had borne fruit. Becoming stronger and stronger and giving the powerful less and less to do meant that when it was time to do something, they were even fresher and stronger and ready for it!

His voice breaking across them cooled their elation, bringing them back to the present as the Mass Disks began to flicker up. The men piled on board them back-to-back, not relaxing, spells still ready to hurl against a surprise attack or another force of flanking undead as they pulled back towards the border of the domain, and the edge of the golden sands.

A lot of those sands weren’t golden anymore, Burned away by vivic fires stealing across the yellowed bone and reducing them to less than dust. After so many months of battles, huge sections of the Pyramid domains were reduced to normal sand, leaving the Pharaohs there incensed at their mottled lawns, but unable to do anything about it.

The Pyramids and their domains allowed the undead to defy the sun, but also bound them to the domain, so raiding beyond the edge of those domains was very difficult.

The only exception to this was mirage techniques, where an image of a Pyramid could be broadcast to another location, allowing the undead to manifest there and attack beyond the range of the actual Pyramids.

They’d only tried the trick twice, and both times Fae had detonated the mirage and eradicated all the undead within a half-mile of it in doing so. Tens of thousands of them eager to fall upon the defenses of the city of Cairo in range of their attacks had been obliterated in seconds.

That Red and the other Silver Magic users could pull off the same stunt was not something that had needed to be revealed yet...

-Hold on that retreat!- Sama’s /voice rippled across the Markspace, and the whole army of Undead Hunters coasted very quickly to a halt, startling the Hunters for only a moment before everyone started looking around for a threat.

“Pyramid Mirage behind the dune to the north!” Glenn Called out across the entire force, turning all eyes to the massive wall of sand that marked the edge of the Pharaoh’s domain, lands where the Undead’s former Beast allies had ruled and dominated until being repeatedly slaughtered and hunted down by far-too-effective Human forces.

Those with Markspace access could totally see the wavering thing in the satellite imagery coming from above, too, which Sama had caught for them.

That meant their escape route out of the Pyramids domain was not going to be an escape. An entire undead army could manifest in front of and around them... if it had not already.

“Tox, give me a Tremorpulse and reading.”

Two dozen gold and green Vines burst from the ground and blossomed into fiery red Lillies, their stamen igniting with golden fires.

The soldiers on Disks floating just above the ground heard the woomph of the pulse of Earth Magic going out, and the ripples in the sand and dust as it blew past them at ten thousand feet a second. The mages flying overhead by various means circled slowly, eyes tracking as they did, looking for signs of instant ambush.

It only took a long breath before answering ripples came back, were picked up by the sensitive roots of the Sundrop Lily, and deciphered. “We’ve got a full undead army ahead and to the right, buried in the dirt and ready to spring up,” Tox’s grim voice carried to everyone. “There’s more undead coming in as we speak from the direction of the Mirage.”

The eyes turning to Briggs only saw him smile. “Ah, they want more punishment today, thinking we’re vulnerable without Healer Fae present. Precisely, Captain Tox, are they outside the standing Pyramid domain?”

“Yes,” the Silent Iron Sage answered succinctly.

“Pity them, but it’s been a long day. Driver Sam, Colonel Red, Flare that Mirage right now.”

There was only a flash of burning motion as Red Firejumped past the dune and Driver Sam just latched onto him. Everyone saw the prismatic swirl of Chaos Magic erupt in a huge vortex in the sky, and before any possible attack could come from below, there was a flaring descent of hard Silver Light as the Sage-level Spellflare went off on the projection.

The detonation of the Mirage blew out and sideways in a crawling, writhing display of magic going wild, all of it chased with Vivus and Holy energies. Any spells en route to the two Sages detonated in mid-air to add to the display, and everyone watched as the wall of unleashed energies smashed into the dune there and levelled it, giving them an unrestricted view of the havoc being unleashed over on the undead who’d managed to come in, and now found themselves in a screaming and hungry vivic inferno.

“Mirage domain collapse,” Glenn reported, and there was another woomph on the ground, followed by yet another ten seconds later. “Manifested army is discorporating!” he proclaimed for Tox, the results apparent as the Sundrop Lillies folded up, withdrew into the ground, and were abruptly gone, no need for the Flower to be out.

Briggs just pointed ahead with Endure, and the Undead Hunters swept back into motion, the frustrated Undead racing after them unable to keep pace with a whole army skimming the ground and riding powerful Wind Trails.