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The whole planet was now very, very Interdicted against outsiders like them, and they were not happy about it.
All of the little holes they’d punched into and through the Veil were now shattered and blocked. The ones under the sea popped free one by one as the mounting pressure solidified the Veil all around the planet, harmonic resonances building towards more and more perfection, forcing the holes away before their masters could grab for them, shattering and splattering them.
A perfect Veil about the planet, restored.
Not incidentally, that one Netherworld Conduit connected to the Beast World also tore free, spewing vivic energy wildly into the Aether with all the other broken Conduits. Suddenly the Lords realized that massive infernos were starting to spread on their own planes, threatening the planar integrity of their home realms.
The mix-up keeping both sides occupied ended abruptly, and they sped off to address their own problems.
Which meant they were distracted...
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His name was Indra. He was in charge of the religious efforts of the Church of Light in India and its hundreds of millions of souls. Avatars and asuras, devas and devils, were all part of the great duality of Light versus the Dark in that religion, and there were still a lot of faithful believers in that country, even if they weren’t fanatics about it.
They had contested with Ibram and His largely Arabic followers sometimes, too, but that was mostly tribal-level stuff.
He thought I’d missed His Light Conduits, just like the ones over Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, but the problem with making the things unanchored to truly material points is that they were much less rigid and strong than the Dark Conduits.
So as the Light Conduits over Mumbai, Delhi, and the other great cities popped one by one, each failure exploding in vivus and spreading through the Veil with ever-greater strength, whiplashing Conduits fed back into His realm of perfectly ordered servants raising ever more monuments to His glory and the power of His Laws. They exploded through it, immolating countless bound souls and really messing up the ordered perfection of the place.
It was a bad idea to attack Him if He got to His Realm first, so the Beast Lord and I hit Him just before He did.
Paired Admixed and Quickened Paired Arcane Fusions slammed into Him out of ambush, carrying with them a full and wonderful assortment of Curses, Enchantments, and Words of Power that crashed against His mind and soul at exactly the perfect moment to take advantage of His focus and belief that He was going to be safe, and nothing was coming after Him.
Negative saving throw modifiers stacked onto one another as His resistance to magic was Assayed and torn through, and He reeled as the Judgement of Heaven sank into His body and soul with the Condemnation of the Most High and let Him know He had been judged and was found completely unworthy.
Then the Beast Lord impaled Him from behind at a full charge while Indra was reeling from my twelve spells and nearly two billion in Mana lashing at Him.
Pure instinct blew a billion Mana out and away as He screamed, forcing us away in an explosion of solid Light that impelled Him into the safety of His Nirvanan Realm, the Heavens Westward, and the power and security of His domain and Demesne settled about Him.
We were already fleeing into the Aether, using His own explosive reactions to elude His senses and any possible counter-attack as the Aether roiled and swallowed the both of us. He could only gasp and stagger as perfect Seven Elemental Fires burned through Him, devouring His power and scarring His perfection, while the Condemnation made sure He wasn’t going to heal from it anytime soon.
Three of the four Lords of Light were now Cursed, and one of them was now heavily wounded, the same as the Netherlords. They had nothing to fear as long as they remained in their own Realms, but if they ventured out, they were incredibly vulnerable.
It also meant that if they wanted to really start throwing out the Realm-level magicks, they were going to have to sacrifice their Demesnes and all that built-up power to do so!
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“I imagine they had not the slightest idea you could be so incredibly sneaky, Elder,” I complimented the towering Ki-rin whose eye was taller than I was.
“A lesson I would be happy to teach them again!” the Beast Lord pronounced in satisfaction, delighted with how our attack had turned out. “What is the next move?”
“Force more Mana expenditures on them,” I answered promptly. “I aim to assault this Isolation Barrier they’ve put up around our Realms angrily and repeatedly with Argent Magic, which is specialized at removing such things. They will have to expend ten times the amount of power as I do to keep the thing intact, and I don’t believe they can match my ability to regain Mana without consuming their own Realms.”
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The massive star-filled eye narrowed thoughtfully, excitedly. “And they will have to come out of their Realms to keep it intact. It was set up by their combined efforts, such as it is...”
“Any of them who are Cursed already should be Elder’s first target. If one comes to attack me openly, I will be forced to reveal myself and I will make sure to Curse them directly.”
“Mmm. They will be forced to make difficult choices...” he deduced, nodding approval at the strategy. “The longer they put off the decision, the worse the position they will be in.”
“And if we can distract them from the underlying foundational problem, the longer it takes them to realize it, the worse the impact when they realize it, Elder.”
“Do you think they can simply be forced off and cut their losses?” the Beast Lord asked narrowly.
“No.” Hope was absolutely silent on that chance. “If they are willing to consume their Realms, they have enough power to beat us. If they win, they can claim Earth, and if it takes a million years, they can still eventually regain their power, wrapping the world in isolation as they sit and rebuild what they lost.
“I will say if they fall to a certain point, they will be willing to cut the Beast Realm free rather than have to deal with you anymore.”
His long tail swished at that welcome news. “A good thing to hear for my Realm, but it appears you must fight to the end?” He realized sympathetically.
“Yes. Each side involved realizes that if they leave the other two to fight and can stay out, they win, thus they will not let that happen once they know three sides are involved. No one is going to believe any of the others will leave at this point. Even if I depart in the Broom Closet, I will be returning in the future, and they will realize it.”
“Ah, thus you have made it nearly-impossible for them to stop you from doing so, and if they don’t know the consequences of you getting away...”
“Even if they win, they will lose, but the price the planet will pay is beyond what I am willing to let everyone else sacrifice. We’ll do our best right up to the end...”
“One does what one must for one’s home,” the ancient Lord of the Beast Realm agreed.
“One does.” I cracked my knuckles. “Let me set up the first bashing on the thing, and see how they all respond...”
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I wove a spell through the Aether that began to seethe and boil in the spatial turmoil around me as the harsh and uncompromising Light of Argent Magic began to flare in the roiling chaos around me.
Ahead of me was the Isolation Barrier raised thousands of years ago by the efforts of both the Lords of Light and the Netherlords, making sure nothing else saw their prize and grew the fight beyond the two forces.
Perhaps soon they’d both be regretting that they’d done this, as with other players they could have stayed at a stalemate and at least been able to passively leech this mortal world at next to no cost to themselves, freeing them up to get lucky elsewhere and find a fat world they wouldn’t have to share... as no doubt they had in the past, to get where they were at.
The Isolation Barrier was a colossal spell, at least a trillion Realm-class Mana involved in its construction over time and perhaps more given the paranoia involved in it, especially with the Beast Lord around.
That was fine. That was just a numbers game to me, and lots and lots of Mana was just more fuel on the fire to the Spellflares I was going to land on this thing.
It was a Formation effect, supposedly impenetrable to any non-Ritual effect, especially if the Nodes of the Formation couldn’t be found. It was also self-healing, self-repairing, and self-generating, not needing any infusions of Mana from the two sets of makers to keep the interwoven effects going.
Their spells were meant to be concealed against Realm Lord-level Awareness, making the Nodes impossible to spot and thus also impossible to deal any kind of enduring damage to the thing.
Invisible to Awareness did not mean invisible to Valence XX+1 Divination spells. Infinite Comprehension of the Weft of Reality was an order of magnitude higher in effect than this Formation, which had to sacrifice some complexity for raw power.
And so, I could see the Nodes, and that’s what I blew 160 million Mana behind a Spellflare on.
The explosion of magic covered over a hundred miles of radius, were we actually in a realm with solid space, although my spells were effectively creating space and time so they could take effect on the Barrier. The shock permeated through all the interconnected and crossing dual Formations at work here, and there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that all of the Interloper Lords felt the Node of the Formation shatter.
There was, however, hesitation to move out. That was, until the second Node blew up at another significant point, and suddenly the Interlopers were boiling out of their home realms to nearby Nodes, ready to pump Mana into the Formations and keep them up and intact.
The Beast Lord picked on a Netherlord this time, and it was no accident that it was the same smug bastard who had invaded His Beast Realm so many years ago.
It was also not an accident that the Netherlord was also one of those who I’d managed to Judge in my earlier infiltration.
The Interlopers flared enough of their presence to make sure they all knew where the others were, meaning everybody knew where everyone was. Even the heavily wounded Balefire Lord and Indra, who remained behind in their Realms, were raising their Auras so everyone knew where everyone was, no sneaky tricks to be unleashed on one another here.
The Beast Lord wasn’t nearly so kind. If the Netherlord was more alert than his counterpart of the Light, when the third Node blew off less than a minute of travel away from Him, He found Himself distracted for just a moment as He spun around, trying in vain to reach out and discern who or what had launched the attack that was crawling with malevolent, destructive energies through the artistry of their Great Barrier.
Like the Lords of Light, He found out that a multi-Element True Realm Lord Ki-Rin coming out of the Void and between the shadows of Light and Air and Chaos could be one sneaky bastard, but only after He took a Seven-Element Charge in His cloaked backside, and the Beast Lord dumped a LOT of Mana into the effect.
Everyone knew who was responsible for that, but what could they do? The Beast Lord faded into the Aether, cloaking His Aura as the Shadow Lord screamed and fled, bleeding multi-hued flames. If they wanted to do something like camp the Beast Realm, that meant they would have to split up and be vulnerable to the same tactic... especially those who had been Judged!
The Cursed Lords quickly gathered to those not Cursed, standing guard as those best able to get Mana back rebuilt the Formation Nodes with infused energies, quickly fixing the Nodes that had been obliterated.
It was a feat they were going to have to repeat again, soon...