The ley line fed back towards the Slow Zone’s wall, that wall just as massive as ours, and disappeared inside of it... followed by a plunging spear of reinforced reality cracking that temporal barrier and driving onwards inexorably.

It wouldn’t run around the formation like a line of detcord. It would burn itself out as ley line after ley line erupted, then go quiet for a short time before the massive flow of energy built up into some key Obelisk once again, and blew that one apart, starting the ignition process all over again.

It was inexorable, because there was a pulse of power coming from the far side too, overcharging the circulating energy, making it so they couldn’t shut the flow down or regulate it. It would progress backwards, Reality Shard by Shard, until the Formation, the work of hundreds of millennia, was destroyed.

If Brother Bonescythe had reported correctly, this was the angle that would have located Hagmom right above the ley line when she came out of Linejump... and it was highly likely that the ley line path was the one most used when she Teleported to Zone borders. If she was really quick and had a Contingency up, she could have gotten away in time... but then again, maybe not; it was moving pretty fast, and bringing some magic disruption with it.

I didn’t think it could do enough damage to kill her if she was caught in it, given how much Health Qi she probably had. But all those Hags and dragons and elite giants that were with her? I was betting a good chunk of them had died from a killstrike launched from hundreds of miles away.

Her first and instant reaction would be to see what had become of her base of operations, which I expected to be fundamentally trashed, as if a nuke had gone off there... and if she connected her palace to it, goodbye to all her hoard of so many years, and probably a good chunk of her Hagdaughters.

Bye, sisters. Too bad, so sad that I never got to know you... Tremble tittered quietly with me in the distance. Yeah, I was hitting her from ALL the angles.

Her Grand Formation was in ruins, the plans of millennia were undone, and the sky was cracking open, Reality was intruding. She’d know that come the dawn Outside, this entire Reality Shard was going to collapse, and eventually so would the entire Fifth Ring, the massive world that she had ruled over for uncounted years was now going to vanish to... somewhere, maybe into nothing, far beyond her control and power.

Her plans were ashes. It was likely her strongest minions and daughters were dead.

She was an Exemplar Annis. While she could be sly and cunning, at heart, she was a butcher and a slaughterer. She was an Empress because she had ruthlessly killed anyone who got in her way. The size of her ego was obvious after catching an Exemplar Elephant, her deeds dominating those of the other Empresses.

She’d want revenge. But she’d have to find us, and she’d need what help she could find to do it. I was going over the many, many scenarios possible, given a high level of Witchcraft and access to dragons.

I truly didn’t know her well enough to make a truly accurate prediction. I could infer from her use of her minions, how they responded, the disposition of forces, and so on, but there was a limit based on the fact that I didn’t really know her.

But I had met her before; several times in fact. A copy of her had come across Dream to try and stop me, and failed.

And so, I’d left more bait behind. The monkeys, the Rockborn, the berserkers, and rest of the Ironblood, and the dragons were all still mixing it up in the neighboring Zone, and now had no restrictions on movement with the collapse of both Obelisks.

So, she’d want revenge, and Messages were flying back and forth, with scrying to back it up, and would confirm that intruders were still there and fighting.

So, she would have a target. She could quickly confirm that her army had lost us three, and the angels and their helpers had escaped from the undead as fast as they’d come...

The Elephant set down gently next to us, Brother Shadowknife’s small figure standing on that noble head.

“Ready for your Mark and opening your Chakras?” I asked patiently, having listened in as Brother Shadowknife chatted him up.

The Elephant blew out a breath of air that was tantamount to be a declaration of war. I held up my black box, levered off his trunk, stepped off a gleaming tusk, and set myself atop his head. “This will only take a few minutes for the Mark. I’ll put you in contact with the other Elders once you hook in. Opening the Chakras will happen after that...”

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The air in front of us was cleft open and aside, forming a temporary Portal to the Astral Plane.

We ducked through it, shifting quickly from physical motion to mental motion.

As the Elephant squeezed through, Brother AA’s Helix swirled out and sealed the Veil behind us.

“Hi, Sama!” Tremble said brightly, a glowing Amulet hanging from her guard.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Heya, Trem!” One second later, there was a swirl of light, and a hundred figures blinked into place around that Amulet, synchronized group Planar Jumps locking on that Amulet and bringing them right here. “Move!” I pointed, and without hesitation the angelic haror and their companions flowed through the other Portal sliced open in reality right over there.

Our group flowed through, concentrating on moving to actually do so, stepping through into the remarkably well-lit area beyond, a grassy knoll in the swamp, whose brooding clouds had been torn back and revealed the lighter but still grayish sky above, and the formless light of a sun millennia-lost beyond.

One hundred and fifty seconds after Tremble opened it, the Rift healed naturally, double-secured by the two Void Brothers here.

Quick illusions had screened us against flyers who might see us, but their attention was focused on a lot of fun stuff happening over thataway. I could see fire, cold, and lightning, lots of howls and growls and roars, the lads and beasts having a great time dealing with the drakes, drac-bloods, and angry dragons converging on them. Given I was helping coordinate their fight, I was intimately aware of what was going on, of course.

Briggs was up to fourteen split Dragon Skulls, and finally capitulating to the incessant pressure of the Gold Foregone song; the hyn and gnomes were salvaging skulls and blood smoothly and quickly... and they’d whipped up the Jars to hold it all, too. If they had time, they went for the fundamentallums, too, and all that stylish black wing leather...

I’d taught them so well. Mama was proud.

“Didn’t look like any problems on your end?” I noted to Wayfair, who had stepped out of riding Amber after the Obelisks fell.

“Such gloomy creatures needed a little light in their lives!” replied the succubus, who I was sure was on the fast track to becoming one of Sylune’s Heralds. “Oh, look, more reinforcements!”

The boys left behind had stacked up the dead in burning vivus, which naturally solidified the Veil and prevented teleports from coming in too close, i.e. not on top of them. That meant incoming ‘porters hit a wall and popped up in subverted clusters some distance from the ruined Plaza torn apart by venting ley lines, forming an uneven battleground with lots of chokepoints.

Oh, and nothing was flying in there. If all these winged fellows came in, King Gravity edited their flight speeds to proper physics, and Autobows were happy to put the punctuation on the corrections.

Of course, the numbers inside were limited, and the numbers outside basically were not. There were more drac being called in to support, some of which attacked in swarms, thinking they’d overwhelm any puny defenders, and were getting introduced to the concept of fighting ExLites tricked out with anti-dragon stuff. Ooooh, it wasn’t going well for them...

The arrival of Tusk Annie’s wing of Dragon-Riders was very sudden, but actually took upwards of an hour to eventually blink in all at once... which was still an incredibly fast reaction time given how catastrophic everything had turned out. Within a breath, a hundred dragons actually popped up into the sky overhead via Linejumps, shading the whole ground, and immediately announcing their presence in proper draconic fashion, roars echoing across the land and stirring the many puddles.

That most of the local puddles were rather burning with vivus and drac blood seemed to escape them.

And yeah, there was the big daddy leading them all, with a familiar Hagmom riding him... and still astutely flying at the back of their formation.

My Mask up to full power, I watched her and the dragons levitating there in midair through a hundred eyes. The dragons were looking around, and displaying their agitation at the changes.

The landscape was collapsed, all the dark muck, trees, and growth fallen and collapsed, and great swathes of landscape running bright and clear as vivic flames, superfueled by the ley line, crisscrossed everywhere and ate up the draconic influence on the land. It was too bright, I saw them snarling at the sky, and they oh-so-wanted to go right down there and beat on their enemies.

A wave of drac-bloods was sent in, trampling over the wave of Summoned demons that was now burning unwhite beneath them. The edge of the no-fly zone was strictly observed, and in went swarming thousands of blood, half-bloods, drakes, and even some incredibly eager younger dragons all up in their arrogant thinking they were greatest of all mortal creatures, now die and be lunch, thank you...

It was probably their first time seeing dragons and giants getting killed by griffons, hellpuppies, apes, a lion, and a wolf, let alone humans, hyn, gnomes, and Rockborn. Also, they had probably never seen a Good dragon before, and their eyes tended to focus on the bronze plates and shining silver skins of the dragons fighting and dominating there, ripping apart all the Mire dragons and assorted drakes facing them savagely.

They watched the unnatural coordination and teamwork of the defenders, how they rapidly recovered from any injuries, their incredible strength and durability, and I watched their trepidation grow.

And of course, there was Briggs and Elder Arg.

Every crunch of Briggs’ Hammer was a killing blow, ringing out like some omen of doom. The circling dragons’ wings and tails began to twitch in time to it, watching skulls explode, great bodies ten times his weight go flying in death, crunch crunch crunch...

Elder Arg naturally loomed over everything, impossible to miss. No creature there could compete with his strength, and his habitual means of shattering the jaws of drac and breaking their necks like they were just snakes made the watching dragons wince... and the Hags atop them very, very eager to tame him somehow. Good luck with that...

His massive lightning-crackling fists pounded and pulped, ripped and tore, pinned and trapped, rent and pulled. Lightning sizzled over him, cleaning off the gore, and he was holding an entire section of the defense by himself, throwing drakes on top of one another, stunning them, rolling them, interfering with their charges... and setting them up for hacking Axes, plunging Spears, and a whole lot of sticks in the hands of howling massive chakon and champa-ka who weren’t throwing stuff at the time... although spiked Runeballs to the head could be applied personally instead of just thrown, or just stuck to their Staff-Slings, turning the Staves into Polemaces for fun and effect.

Yeah, the Hags had built a great big powerful and high-Level world, and I’d politely opened it up to everyone beneath me. Fighting a bunch of ExLite Tens was simply not a thing anything with sense would look forwards to.

They’d grown complacent ruling over a world of their own, their only conflicts with one another. They were not warlords, not soldiers. They were just dragons and Hags, and even if they weren’t afraid of death, going into that meatgrinder and the sea of unwhite flame burning around it as their oversized minions died was just stupid.

They did have the numbers, however, and it was going to take a lot of numbers to overcome this preternaturally hard to hurt, self-healing, incredibly strong, brutally skilled, and terrifyingly coordinated fighting force they had encircled below them.