“As I said earlier, the gods are more varied than the Elements, with their own goals, Awareness, plans, and counter-plans. How you deal will depend who you deal with.

“Those of Evil are like the Netherlords: they will always deal, but you may not like the price they want you to pay, Elder... although if it is in their interests, they might well give such knowledge away to sucker you into another deal. Merely remember that Evil always, always wants to get the upper hand, the more of it the better, and they have no empathy and do not care about what you want, and your morals and pride concern them not in the slightest.

“The Lawful, like the Lords of Light, want at least equal value, but in the end, they want your obeisance. They give fairly well to those in their service, but you must truly have something they want if you deal with them otherwise, and willing fealty is the price they desire most. Once they have your obeisance, of course, they might never let go, and then it is they who determine what you gain.

“The Chaotic are completely unpredictable. They may ignore you, punish you for asking, give you all you want without a care, demand your servitude, challenge you to a fight to prove yourself worthy... all such things depend on who and how you approach, and when, and are beyond your control or mine. Most of them trade favors for favors reasonably well, but your status is so low, a favor demanded of you will be... strenuous, to say the least, and likely completely random and also uncaring of your desires when it comes time.

“Those deities who strive to remain neutral will engage in a dicker-fest of exchanges, looking to profit off the deal, but not unduly so. It will be bargains and favor-trading in the most ancient of styles, but without knowing what they want, you will be at a disadvantage.

“Dealing with the Good will be predictable, above the board, fairly transparent, and extremely annoying to many when they demand the same in return. They have little sympathy for lapses in moral character, they definitely do not want to be aiding their enemies with such exchanges, and they counter selfishness with equal measures and more. If your goals are broad, noble, and worthy of support, they may well give you everything you desire, and perhaps more. Generosity from other Alignments is a reason to be suspicious. Generosity from Heaven is a reward for a generous soul.”

“You judge Heaven harshly?” He was amused.

“I am of Heaven. I know how I deal with those who want something from me for nothing, and what those people are often willing to do to get what I have. I am generous with those who share my goals and outlook, and have no incentive to deal with those who do not share them in the slightest. Good can be exceedingly peevish about dealing with those not supporting its goals and methods. It is the single biggest thing that annoys the other Alignments about them the most. Judging a deal by its morality instead of its benefits REALLY annoys a lot of beings.”

“I see.” And He did, probably without a doubt. “The goals of Heaven are not MY goals.”

“As is true for most people and beings, Elder.”

“Indeed.” He found that amusing, and my acceptance of it also amusing. “When will you act and reveal yourself to them?” He inquired, curious but not forceful.

“Only when I must. Revelation that this world has an effective Realm Lord will buy a small amount of time... and then things will turn utterly and grimly serious very quickly.”

He contemplated that circumstance, picturing what might happen. “And you do not know how much time you need.”

“No. We will delay until the last moment, for maximum success chance. Much depends on how powerful the isolation barrier actually is.”

“And the fate of all depends on that moment. Thus, the further away, the better.” He nodded in clear understanding of what was required. “What should I do?”

“Sulk.” His huge eye glanced at me again. “They are expecting you to act petty, proud, and peevishly. Accommodate them.” I turned my head to the north. “Of course, if you happen to start the process of raising some erupting volcanoes under the Warded cities of Italy while you are doing so, well, that’s just them underestimating how poignantly prudent a pissed and proud potentate of a High Emperor can be. I know you don’t need Old Mountain to help you, Elder, but him doing so will make things much easier and subtler for both of you, especially if he’s obviously floundering about uselessly, unable to do anything against such mighty workings of the Lords of Light...”

“Disguising what is truly going on.” He seemed to like the irony of it all. “Yes, let him know to act obviously, and I will go to work beneath what he is doing.”

The Netherworld was going to lose Pyramids and Dead Zones, and the Lords of Light were going to lose cities.

“I will not be able to do anything to their center of power in the nest you Humans call Rome,” He warned me. “The defenses there are spun by the Lords of Light themselves.”

It meant he’d probably tried in the past, but I waved His worries off. “We’ve had the means to bring those defenses down for years.” His eye slit contracted as he stared at me. Hey, Sama did a lot of fun things in her undetectable downtime wandering about that place, as they were going to find out sooner or later. She was going to press a button, a lot of non-magical explosions were going to take place, and some very powerful City Wards were going to collapse at exactly the wrong moments.

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Pity them. Fireworks for the rest of the world to celebrate their passing.

---------

And so yet another month passed, as small Pyramids were erected atop the existing Seals, synched up to harmonize with one another, and lit up, one by one. Nice incremental stuff, watch the ants work and do their stuff, while armies crashed Below, and other things worked below the line of sight, too...

---

“A-one and a-two, and a drop it! Pyramid away!”

The four sweating, concentrating men at the edges of the Pattern trembled as Sage-tier magic rumbled around them, all the internal gates to the Broom Closet closed for the moment and redirected here, opening up to show the dark stone down below them.

Planar motion was a useful thing. The Pyramid actually settled on the ground, but looked like it kept falling as the planet moved and whisked it away from the Broom Closet.

With a hiss and a snap, the forty-stepper vanished from sight even as it turned on, the smooth sides of it seething with Runework that lit up with ever-hungry vivus, and began to feed.

The denizens of Machu Pichu were definitely not ready for a vivus-producing Pyramid and its Domain to pop up right in the middle of a Dead Zone. The undead who saw it arrive didn’t have more than a few seconds to wonder what the Heaven was happening before the first pulse of vivus blasted out into the Pyramid’s surroundings and obliterated everything within a quarter-mile.

Vivus writhed over the surface of precisely-carved basalt, Runes too perfect to look at straight-on Burned eagerly, and Dark Mana spiraled towards the hungry stone floating right over the unseen, hidden Conduit that was buried beneath the tomb city in the mountains.

There was another pulse, and more undead perished in the blast, this one reaching out to half a mile... and the ground underneath the Pyramid shattered into vivic dust, falling away beneath it and revealing the blackness of the buried Conduit far below, which promptly began to Burn very intensely, indeed.

---

The KIA lads and SAR girls would be popping up in China as if they’d been there for some time, convenient when you can just step through a Portal and arrive somewhere discreetly... or leave and come back, which was what they’d done.

My turn. I could feel the abrupt shift in attention as one of the Netherlords caught what was happening at Machu Picchu, and started to act considerably too late. The Make-u Pee-u Pyramid was made at the same time all those little twenty-steppers in Egypt were, was already pre-harmonized and resonating away, plus it was pretty empty and had a lot of juice to suck in. Machu Picchu didn’t really have that many undead to contest with, and they were all Burning in the tight solid vivic fire now.

In the distance Below, countless undead were going at one another in a brawling match of planetary proportions, the fight covering an area roughly the size of India with vicious, no-holds-barred physical combat as the Pharaonic Forces attempted to seize the Ancient Capital Conduit of China and return to the Mortal Realm to enact their vengeance.

The Chinese Undead weren’t having any of that, and the Netherlords hadn’t stepped in to force them to work together. Whoever won would have the favor and the eye of the Netherlords, proving their might and worth and gaining whatever rewards were offered for success in this venture.

The undead wouldn’t die. They were just being torn apart with unrestrained savagery, then rebuilding themselves new bodies from the remains of the destroyed ones. A little thing like being violently disassembled wasn’t going to do much more than hurt them for a short time.

The Pharaohs formed a powerful assortment of spellcasters... at least, the ones that had survived meeting us did. On the other hand, the Chinese undead had much more powerful monstrous undead and Undead Rulers, some at the levels of Emperors themselves. Egypt had nothing to rival the pure mass and power of the Mountain Zombie, for instance... and China had nine powerful Undead under its Emperor, who was more than a match for Khufu at his best.

Fewer in number, greater in power. The Chinese were having nothing of all these Egyptians, and all of the undead having nothing better to do than rip and tear all day and all night, the fighting just went on and on and on.

Which was cool. It gave me lots of time to do my stuff.

Specifically, while they were out there beating on the undead, the Pharaohs weren’t guarding the Conduits to their own personal demi-planes, especially the Pharaohs that were perma-dead. Their little demiplanes were just floating there, perfectly safe inside all those Sealed Conduits, nothing to worry about...

So, just who might be flitting inside, dropping in some teeny-tiny ten-step Pyramids in out-of-the-way areas now conveniently abandoned by all these hard-massacring undead? Nobody that they knew, surely. After all, they didn’t have to worry about infiltrators, spies, covert ops, and anything like that. This was just a slugfest.

Yessir, that’s indeed what it was. While I was planting bombs inside all of their precious Conduits here...

Distractions, everything just distractions...

------

I stepped out of the Archway and tossed the trigger to Briggs, who caught it without taking his attention from the spread of the Undead Hunters all around the Ancient Capital.

“How are they doing?” I asked calmly. Unlike the Egyptian undead, the Chinese Undead were not restricted in how far they could travel, only in that they could not do so under sunlight. They would simply return to the Ancient Capital when banished at sunrise, save for the mightiest of them with the magic necessary to defy the sun.

The last upsurge of the Undead here had occurred when someone figured out how to introduce gravewaters to the clouds and completely block the sun, basically allowing unlimited amounts of undead to manifest rapidly and freely as long as it was raining... and the bastards had made sure it rained a long time. That had been quite the disastrous situation, as Mok Fan had related, only alleviated by the last descendant of the Undead Emperor taking up his ancestor’s mantle and commanding the Undead to retreat.

That soul was now leading the fight against the Egyptian Undead. How much he’d fallen to the Dark Mana was now immaterial, as this whole place had to go!