The morkoth wasn’t trying to stop the trawler; it was obviously herding them into the invading force of Deep Ones. A kraken could reach right over the bow and clean the trawler up in seconds, it wouldn’t even be a fight.

Happily, Bone Marrow moved very quickly indeed.

The Mick preferred to drive with the top down on his Caddister Convertible, because he could. Lights off, Devilsight being such a dear thing, he came racing up on the trawler, a Sound Bubble of variable size centered on the engine conveniently masking the full-throated roar as he arrived.

Watersight and Devilsight combined to make it look like we were riding over a great bubble of clear air, every fish and weed, bubble of foam and spray of waves visible with transparent clarity.

So was the tentacled abomination that was the morkoth.

Amaretta shot out of her seat, thirty feet in the air in a second, her blood-around-bone Sword Piit glowing crimson... with cerulean blue flames from the Skull mounted on its pommel added on to the vivic fire also spiraling around it.

Go ‘Merika!, I promptly thought, and they both grinned despite themselves.

She could see the thing below, its main eye turning to focus on the sudden blaze of light out of nowhere, and then she came crashing down through the water, plunging right into its dark mass with all the fury and power of a Blooded Ocean Dragon Warrior.

The water exploded with burning dark ichor, and the morkoth convulsed and tried to get away. That wasn’t happening, as Amaretta stayed right with it, fluid fires lighting up the seas as she proceeded to hack into the thing with inhuman strength and plenty of chi backing up every motion, ignoring its flailing tentacles, hypnotic effects, and snapping beak as she tore it apart... and not incidentally blew some intense blood magic into it, just to speed things along.

Dark ichor blossomed into the transparency of the dark seas, and the thing began to curl up on itself.

I saw the Aura of its life flutter out, and vivus ignite over it as the body began to burn. The delighted Blooded promptly hacked off the bulbous head with its waxy skull, and kicked up for the surface.

The Mick had turned on the lights now, and the crew of the trawler was gaping at them, which was hardly surprising when you meet a fancy car on top of the water several leagues out to sea in the middle of a storm.

Amaretta came arcing up out of the water, Sword in one hand burning red, white, and blue, and massive skull dripping white vivus as the unnatural meat on it was consumed in the other.

Hey, Aberrant Baneskulls don’t fall off trees. Take ‘em where you can get ‘em.

She landed on the hood of Bone Marrow weightlessly, making no indent, and wordlessly walked over to the door and stepped down into her seat while the crew stared.

“Captain, there’s a right charming group o’ fair Delilahs Offering kicking up a singing welcome for ye about three leagues ahead, with a wee pair of squids from down where me mother doesn’t talk about farting along as pimps. Ye may be wantin’ to pull inta fair Tralee and avoidin’ becomin’ Sunday mornin’ brunch to somewhats Mother was a shrimp and Father was a toad.” He tipped his white stovepipe nicely to the captain, waited until he received a hesitant hand raised in acknowledgement, and the trawler slowly changed course to the southeast.

The Blennerville docks would take them, and they could sit out the excitement coming.

Word was already out and going out around the Estuary, of course. There were members of my Allegiance in the area, mostly local clergy and their most sincere followers, there to provide information and communication links more than anything, but also quietly laboring away with Infusing or Investing if the gold was supplied to them to help. Other than that, the Divine Casters largely contributed holy water to the cause of slowly wearing down the several minor Shroudzones in the country.

Ireland had a fairly long and bloody history, mostly related to its relationship with England across the Irish Sea, which had conquered and subjugated it repeatedly over the centuries, and been merciless in doing so. Its greater population and trading with the continent gave England a consistent edge over the Irish, and the constant clan rivalries and internecine warfare of the Irish didn’t help matters, either.

Both Belfast and Dublin had suddenly manifested Shroudzones on the Day of the Fall. The remnants of massacred, starved, and plagued victims had risen from ancient cemeteries and mass graves and taken both cities. In addition, Ulster, Droghedra, and Galway had their own smaller Shroudzones, which had stayed small when the people managed to run away in time to avoid being slaughtered by the spirits of the dead.

All the Shroudzones had increased slowly in size as wandering undead or the foolishly slain were recruited into them. Droghedra and Dublin’s Deadzones were actually overlapping, and the undead regularly shambled out to beat each other to pulp all night, only to vanish with the Curse of the Sun and reappear back home the following evening, no worse for wear and ready to do it again.

The addition of vivus to this paradigm had been slow, but now there was regular sniping going on, mounting as more and more people gained Vivic Weapons, the dangerous incorporeals were thinned out, and the undead were wandering less.

Of course, the irregular assaults of Deep Ones on the British Islands hadn’t changed, and Ireland took the brunt of them, forming the shield against the Atlantic as it did.

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

Now there was a major assault coming, and a prodigal son of the Emerald Island was also returning home after three-quarters of a century. Who knew what that would portend?

---------

The Sound Bubble had stopped the morkoth’s death cries from reaching the rest of the invading force, the trawler was moving away under slow power, and Bone Marrow was moving forward slowly as the invaders moved into the Shannon Estuary at about 20 kph, a very good swimming pace for humanoid builds.

Certain moves were being made at all the cities on the Estuary. Night guards had been hurriedly Scanned for loyalties even as they were abruptly replaced by Powered, and those who had made the watch assignments were also rapidly assessed in the middle of the night.

“Kilrush would be the easiest target, but they be passing it by,” The Mick noted, watching the progress of the raiding force with me. “Perhaps they be thinking they can raid the smaller villages on the way out, or split their forces?”

There were a lot of eyes from a lot of places watching my Commune right now, but too much noise would alert the raiders, so people couldn’t actually run around. They had to walk, or use lightfoot or Disks to get around quietly.

I glanced over at an /alarm going up. “Hound Companion of a Ranger just sniffed out a dop on the Shannon breakwall, manning the spotlights.” Up front, The Mick nodded with narrowed eyes, cutting through the surf and finally pulling Bone Marrow up onto the pebbled shore of the Shannon Estuary. “They’re checking out his commanding officer before they take him down. Oh, got a fish-fucked at the end of the line.” That would be an Innsmouth type, with Deep One lineage. The news was throwing the military commanders so warned into a tizzy. “Be right back.”

It was in entirely the wrong direction, but Teleport VII didn’t care about planetary range. I stepped back onto my Lived-Line, and went three-quarters of the way around the world to China. The Morningsuns were wrapping up their normal nightly activities, were looking forwards to even more fun, and were hurrying back to the last place I’d checked in on them at.

Briggs was heading to a similar place at 120 kph or something, and would arrive in a minute or two.

“Smaller forces holding at Foynes and Labasheeda,” I pointed out, mostly unnecessarily. They were smaller communities close to the water, but wouldn’t be hit until the main raid took place.

Someone manning the listening stations was found to have filtered out sounds of the invading army. Three of the microphones were found to have been adjusted to not pick up the pitch range of Deep One speech. There were also suspicious groups of visitors in the two villages, who’d come to look around earlier in the day...

I focused harder on the landward side of Shannon, looking for ‘unfamiliar’ presences. Ireland was as sensitive as any Land to presences that were not Her own, even if she was dozing, but local Town Spirits would also know their own people vs. outsiders.

The people in Shannon were not happy to find at least a couple hundred non-local forces had gathered in the woods north of the town. The Land was twinging them, so they were born from Ireland, but that didn’t mean they were loyal to Her...

So, someone had been bought, made a deal, or was making a move on something else for some reason. Wouldn’t know until we’d dealt with a bunch of them.

Uncle Highsun was almost apoplectic with fury that any Irishman would betray their folk to the Deep Ones, so there was no question where he was going, and he was bringing his kids with him. Whoever was attacking would learn that finding the Sun of the Irish standing in their way was not going to be a good time.

Fire and Flame declared they would take Foynes, Azaia said she’d guard Labasheeda with Legion, which left Briggs with me, The Mick, and Amaretta.

Briggs sat down on his Disk right next to The Mick. “One squid apiece,” he said, and there was no smile on his face. The Mick couldn’t even bestir himself to say anything as he pulled back out over the water, the car as quiet as a mouse, and fog began to billow up from the sea around us, melting the car into the background. Even the brightly-clad Morningsun Clan behind Bone Marrow became shadows in the mist, and there was no question of Sleipner’s stealth. The unicorn-motorcycle faded into the moonlight with Legion and Azaia, and ghosted away ahead of us.

It was only a couple minutes until we reached the mouth of Clonderalaw Bay, where The Mick turned in, heading for an access road to the beach about a mile up. On Tires of a Zephyr, Bone Marrow pulled up the wet sandy beach as if it were smooth concrete, rolled through a locked gate Knocked open with a hand-wave onto the road, and picked up speed rapidly as we headed down a dirt track just a bit above a trail.

Briggs drifted down back behind the car with Highsun and his family. Sama was currently dealing with an excessive amount of Buddhists throwing themselves at her as she chopped down their Formation Wards and opened up the way for an enthusiastic and vengeful army to come inside and express their appreciation for the Buddhist Mantra. There were a dozen Void Brothers with her doing the same thing, and the Buddhists’ protective Dome had collapsed, exposing them to a whole lot of very experienced Mantra-killers waiting outside.

I.e., she was busy. Hugs and kisses from the other side of the continent. Definitely didn’t need me there to crack it open, now that these Void Brothers had entered the ranks of the Way Too Damn Good at Their Jobs people.

Of course, they were still dealing with the slaughter of millions of once-people, over and over again. The Purification Rituals after the fighting were mandatory, as the killing intent and feral madness of having to butcher so many enslaved souls ground down on even the most valiant spirits.

The Daoists had already killed so many Chinese to consolidate their power, but the Buddhists enslaved those helpless to resist and sent them against us. It was literally wading through gore, blood, and corpses, before vivus burned them away and sent them back to the Land.

It was an utter catastrophe, but it had to continue. The Mantra could not be allowed to remain, regardless of the cost.

I still had to go into Nepal, and Hyderabad and Karachi and points west still waited for me. I could only sigh.

There were now tens of thousands of people involved in the fighting, and it was only getting higher by the day. The Shroudzones were shrinking faster and faster as people Leveled up and whelmed to meet the Cultivators.

The Shroudzones, once cleared of incorps, were testing grounds for the lower Levels, and even the Congregants who could shoot negative energy weren’t all that dangerous if you were smart. They were Karma harvests to improve your Weapons and Level, and get you used to the fighting.

If you were competent, you came to the Far East.

I had shuttled thousands of Senior Powered there over the last month, people completing their Double Helix, finally breaking into Seven, and ready to go for more. This was especially true among the Divine Casters, for whom this whole thing was basically a holy crusade, called by the Chosen of Sylune and most powerful Caster on the planet.

There was no doubt in my mind I could have dealt with this Deep One raid all by myself, and Briggs knew he didn’t need to be here. But people had grudges, love for their homelands, and needed Karma. There were a lot of young Irishfolk quietly getting ready in these villages and cities, and when the Deep Ones rose out of the water, and the traitors on land moved to aid them, there was going to be Hell to pay...