The Chilean Coast.

Arica.

It would have been nice, Gwen surmised, if she could have dropped a Shoggoth.

But a Shoggoth so close to the edge of Amazonia would be a bridge too far, especially with the fiasco she had arranged via the Yinglong to the Council of The Accord.

The summation of that, Gwen gathered from “popcorn” Slylth, who had watched from under his mother’s metaphysical wing, was brooding apathy from Quar-tath. Her aggressive passivity, the allied Dragons agreed, inferred that the Matron of the Long Night would not personally intervene. However, it was entirely up to Quar-Tath to respond at a level she deemed acceptable if Gwen crossed the invisible, ambiguous border of her tolerance.

Such ambiguities, Gwen was told by Sylth, were the way the survivors of the Primordial Age networked. Much like their unmapped boundaries and territories, what mattered wasn’t rules and regulations, but vibes borne out of Mutually Assured Destruction.

From her open-air temple, the Pale Priestess of her Mership rose into the air to observe the battle being joined. Below her clawed-greaves, the battleship Aristotle read her anxieties through their Empathetic Link and acted accordingly.

With tentacles that blotted out the sun, her Leviathan raised two of its largest tendrils, then whipped them through the air and into the forest where the Undead surged.

The effect, Gwen observed, was the stuff of Hollywood Blockbusters, for the boneless tentacles, semi-armoured and lined with barbed hooks and suckers, tore through the trees of outer Amazonia like an angry toddler raging at Janga towers blocking his way. Row after row of trees were reduced to stumps and splinters, while a rolling tsunami of pink and purple flesh smeared the Undead over the landscape, forming a gore-soaked margin about two kilometres across on either side of the pits.

The consequence, Gwen then observed with a wince, was that out of water, Aristotle had little to no control over the momentum of its own strength. Whatever sinews that once controlled its arm tore and separated as the connective tissues revolted, reducing the giant fore-tentacles to quivering, painful flesh walls as they came to rest, forming a U with Aristotle at its centre.

Nerve tremors ran up her arm as the unimaginable agony her creature suffered fed back into her Astro-synaptic link, manifesting as phantom pain. For someone with her experience and willpower, the nauseating shock was acceptable, though her heart broke for Aristotle’s immediate and immense regret.

Her Leviathan’s next move, however, was what would have happened to Sydney had Gunther not poured his soul into an alpha strike that stopped their assailant dead in the water, for under Aristotle’s colossal, armoured head, an enormous organ now distended from folded mouth-plates used to mill incalculable tons of kelp and fish.

For several seconds, quivering flesh trembled in sync with the hooting tide of Mer filing toward the Phage Pits, waiting for the signal, then—

Incalculable torrents of compressed seawater channelled from the depth of the vast Elemental Plane, fuelled by the central Core of the Leviathan, loosened upon the world a micro tsunami of its own.

Megalitres. Tens of thousands of megalitres of briny seawater poured in a forward arc like a burst hose tethered to a hydrant, instantly transforming the landscape into a miniature sea, swallowing the howling Mer and the Undead alike.

The Undead Mer reeled.

Her Mer revelled.

It was never going to be a fair fight. Gwen felt giddy with purring pride, realising just how amazing her Brother-in-craft had been to stop Sydney from suffering a similar fate. The Leviathan was a natural force, a tsunami and an earthquake. It was a tectonic land mass and water, all rolled into a single package, caged with the intelligence of a dozen Retriever brains networked for sentience.

With the landscape rapidly turning into a spontaneous lake, her Mer took to the Undead like frenzied tuna to a ball of sardines. Crabmen, once languished tanks on land, now moved with the dexterity of dancers, sliding through the water as though gliding on oil, hammering the rotten bodies into paste with their spined claws. Wave riders who had been waiting for the deluge now surged forth, becoming aquatic Centaurs as living water formed both shield and lance around their bodies, striking into the Undead Hulks with such force that limbs and torsos shattered into obscene splotches of wet flesh.

Iä! Iä! Iä! The cries rang out, half drowned by the roaring surge, mixing white water with fanatical bloodlust, blushing her skin with its psychic orgie.

Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— came the sound of the undertow as the water lost its momentum, coiling around the giant soapbark and evergreens, tearing those with shallow roots off their rocky moorings.

Then, amidst the chaos, the crackling wood, the splintering jungle, the hollering Mer and the guttural howls of the Undead, a torso-thick beam of radiant green, filthy with necrotic energy, smelling sweetly of blackened flesh, struck her Leviathan’s exposed pipe organ.

Her creature violently recoiled, just as Gwen herself doubled over in the likeness of being suddenly struck in the sinus by an Acid Arrow. A double layer of shields went up around her as her Crow Skin armour braced itself for impact, while she wilfully severed the intimate connection she shared with Aristotle. Below her, the suburban giant’s innate regeneration kicked into gear, its body pumped so full of vitality that it could afford to purge the parts of its organ that had grown necrotic like a lizard shedding a tail.

The gush of water ceased, replaced by a torrent of ichor in purple and honeyed amber, indicative of the fluids that kept a Leviathan’s mollusc-physiology active and pulsing.

Explosions of mist, conjured into place by her Sea Witches, shielded her from view as water discs by the thousands materialised between herself and the whereabouts of her assailant. Levitating via the palpable moisture, Velahi and Pelahwi placed themselves between their reeling Priestess and the unknown, joined by the gargantuan, multi-story body of Dwi, Master of her multi-coloured, hard-shelled infantry.

A second blast, coming from an unexpected position, was led astray by the multitudes of invisible and visible water-barriers conjured into place, deflected and refracted to strike the outer shell of Aristotle.

Where the Ray of Absolute Death struck, a sports court-sized block of living moss adhered to a living shell turned instantly into a life-drained husk of decomposition, erupting as a putrid pustule.

“Mistress, over yonder!” Pelawhi’s golden eyes glowed with the Sea Witches’ innate ability to perceive the veils of folded light.

The Pale Priestess, despite her limited spellcraft, was no less capable and alert, for the Crown of Thorns that adorned her brow, so painstakingly learned from Slylth Alexander Morden, finally delivered its promised utility.

Three stars, each a mote of compressed, unstable Lightning wreathed with Divination, Conjuration and Evocation, shot from Gwen’s whereabouts, quickly becoming a trio of electric meteorites as they bypassed the water shield to uncover her assailant.

Before her spells struck, another bean-green beam of Disintegration scored across the distance between Priestess and assailant, stopped only by the raised claw of her Mer-kin. With a defiant roar, Dwi rejected his rapidly necroticising limb, flinging the van-sized claw like a boomerang to the whereabouts of the beam’s origin. Milky froth poured from the Crab-kin’s socket, though with her Sympathetic Life Link, growing a newer, stronger arm was merely a matter of hours.

Gwen redoubled her focus as her Signature Spell erupted, each becoming an imploding lightning nova that expelled Magic Missiles of force at hypersonic velocities.

As her follow-up spell brewed, the deadly chaff from her Thorns revealed the semi-circle Shield of a humanoid Mage with a pale, deathly mien, appearing as nothing more than taut skin over a skeletal frame.

“BARBANGINY!” A triple arc of lightning manifested between her Kirin, her finger tip, and the Necromancer, whose bearing could only be a Lich. All three rays erupted as they met, creating a second blast of electricity that unsettled the very fabric of the Prime Material.

Gwen saw something fall away, hopefully a limb.

The Lich disappeared with her retina-searing flash.

Then suddenly, despite her Sea Witches, despite the living wall of chitin and Faith shielding her from harm, she felt the familiar sensation of something cold and invisible gripping her heart.

Her pale complexion turned instantly pallid.

Seven years ago, were it not for the interference of Eric Walken, she would have died there and then to this very same spell, a spell that ignored barriers and distance and targeted only the life force of its victim—Grasp Heart.

Gwen could not speak for the efficacy of the spell, but understood from her Master’s annotations the general theory behind it. Grasp Heart targeted the vitality of a Mage’s second most important organ, causing paralysis as the body attempted to balance its life force, only to send the victim to shock, then death. Unfortunately for the Lich, less than a split-second later, from a source tempered by distance but not severed, liquid life from her World Tree flooded her mana organ, utterly erasing any signs of discomfort, much less death.

Rather than falling, she sent out a second trio of guiding stars, simultaneously manifesting an enormous array of Empowered, Seeking, and Maximised Ball Lightning.

As her Thorns once more discovered the Lich hidden behind its spontaneous Invisibility, her spells pursued the rapidly Blinking creature, becoming living streaks of quicksilver as they sought out their target.

“Mistress!” Pelawhi and Velahi played assist, forming the moisture into viscous nets that would catch and slow her opponent as he flickered from horizon to horizon, zenith to nadir like a phantom.

Her spells erupted.

From the resulting explosion, a sweet-smelling ray of darkest midnight sliced through the blinding light, hitting her square in the chest—

—Only to be stopped a meter away by the Force Cube pane she had previously conjured, anticipating that upper-tier Necromancy like Finger of Death could only be blocked by Spellcraft that abused certain inalienable laws of space and time.

The sparks cleared, as did the thick, blinding ozone that resulted from the discharge of Positive against Negative mana.

“You have come a long way, Acolyte…” The Lich spoke with a familiar voice and accent. “To think you were at my mercy…”

Her brain threw up a dozen answers for the multiple-choice question of who her assailant might be.

“You!” She recalled a vague face and voice, for she had felt the Grasp Heart far too intimately to forget its source. “You’re the Monster from Shenyang!”

Even as their brief exchange took place, Gwen could feel her forces piling into the foremost Phage Pits. At a certain level of ingress, however, she suddenly sensed a great swarth of her creatures perish.

Out of a significant tide of footsoldiers supported by their fast-moving auxiliary Swordfish-kin, only a few hundred out of the thousand or so managed to push past the barrier wrought by a metaphysical, imperceptible will.

The condition that united the survivors was her mark of Faith. They were the bearers of her Sympathetic Lifelink, which meant they were also the bearers of Lei-bup’s misunderstood Void-grafts, which meant their survival would only further engender misunderstood bias amongst her flock.

“Impressive.” The Lich grunted. “I know not how you managed to gain such power, girl-child, but you have become far too dangerous to let live.”

Gwen agreed. With the World Tree’s blessing, she felt only nonchalance toward the effects of Necromancy’s greatest threats, that of simple, uncomplicated death. Evidently, those blessed by her life-link were also insensible to the singular power that made Necromancy one of the most potent and feared Schools of Magic on the Prime Material.

But it didn’t mean her heart did not bleed at the thought of her citizens dying by the thousands to some marauding Necromancer mass-draining their vitality.

“Touche,” she spat back a retort as the spells brewed in her mind. “I’ll send you back to your box soon enough, Lich.”

“That’s General to you, apostate!” The Lich disappeared once more.

“There–!” Pelawhi’s watery sorcery flooded the air so that Gwen could clearly perceive the displacement of water particles as the Lich displaced itself again and again. As an Undead being, it simply did not care for the fatigue caused by rapid translocation, one of the dozens of factors that made Liches Meister-tier foes that required a Tower to suppress.

CRACK—! CRACK—! CRACK—! CRACK—! Her lightning shot forth.

The Lich’s rays chipped at her Force Panes, now and then scoring a gash against Dwi or the Twins. As her closest followers, and as Demi-humans born with supernatural spell resistance and physiology, however, her creatures fared far better than Gwen herself if she were to be struck. They remained frustrated, nonetheless, for the Lich was too slippery for the Witches to catch, and even if they did, what could they truly do to an Undead as powerful as a Lich? They could not drown it, they could not hold it, nor crush it under the weight of immense water pressure. A Lich was an existence more metaphysical than physical, while the Mer were not even the apex of Elemental physicality.

CRACK—! CRACK—! Line after line of living lightning, each capable of wiping out whole troops of Mer, made the connection between herself and her target. Like WWII anti-air flak, she burned her mana pool and racked up her spell-fatigue like a novice until—

A dozen body-spans away, a black blade flashed, materialising for a mere second as it escaped from the Astral Space, meeting the Lich where Gwen predicted it would next appear.

Morden’s Blade.

Her Black Blade of Disaster, wreathed in Void.

Gwen had practised for this moment since she had learned the spell from Slylth, and had saved it to strike a singular blow against her fated foe, her Master’s Lilybird.

But she chose to use it now. Her Mer was dying, even as they gained progress, inch by inch, gaining ground with every fallen. As their priestess and the one responsible for their presence on the Chilean Coast, she had to take responsibility, for it was in her that they had misplaced their blind faith.

The Lich stumbled, its rapid teleportation and retaliation finally ceasing as the lower half of its body, just below the hip and spine, drifted away from its torso.

When their eyes met, their sockets glowed with malevolence. “Not Western Sorcery… but a Sharman technique?” For a Lich who was now five-eighths of one, it spoke with no melodrama, no rage nor pain, only mild surprise and milquetoast annoyance.

Gwen felt her back suddenly drenched with cold sweat.

She was sure that if Sobel had failed to parry the attack by her Black Blade and had been sliced as such, their story would have ended. Unless, of course, it turns out that there was yet more to Lilybird than met the eye.

“Curious. A Void injury that severs Essence itself.” The Lich stowed away his lower body with a hand-wave. By now, the Lich looked like a tattered skeletal veteran having returned from a rough tour of the Korean War. With a mocking motion, it tapped its skull-like head. “A little closer to here, and it would have been inconvenient. Alas, your success will not repeat itself, saekki.”

Before Gwen could attempt another spell, the Lich tore through space with its clawed digits, blinking toward a place deeper in the Phage Pits than she could follow.

Her fingers tingled. Her wrists were numb, as was her brain.

The first encounter was over, but their quest was not.

“Priestess.” Her Sea Witches bowed their heads in shame, as did Dwi.

Gwen dismissed her follower’s disappointment.

The Mer were fighting on land and in the air, as well as against a metaphysical being.

In the future, there would be more suitable and far better-matched opponents for Aristotle and her citizens of the sea.

Whatever the case, they had not contained the Lich, not that she had imagined they could. Yet Gwen felt calm. There was something she had ascertained by now, something very important, and it was that Sobel was not the executive member of Spectre responsible for the Undead Mer. From her knowledge and from the information the Duke of Norfolk had provided through Morrigan, Spectre was more akin to a loose affiliate of like-minded interests, some working as individuals, some as the militant wing of Spectre itself, and some as the shadowy arm of governments around the world. In this way, they were very much like the Guardians themselves, with the coalition of The Accord each having their own interests, but largely moving in a way that made good on their promises to maintain the Planar stability of the Prime Material.

Forcing herself to unclench, she closed her eyes to spare herself the overstimulation from the clash of water and bile below, where the ensuing cacophony of the battle glowered like a garbled record wailing a song of fantastical carnage, taking the moment to plan out her next stratagem.

“WOOOOooooo…oooOOOOo….”

When she opened her eyes once more, the battle had shifted a little against the Mer’s favour.

From one of the Phage Pits, a giant hand emerged, pulling itself out of the grotesque pustule like a lanced wound vomiting forth a foreign object. The pallid colossus was thin and consisted mostly of ribs and limbs, with its surface smothered with what looked like skin thrifted from the more humanoid species of Mer, such as her Sea Witches and the rare Warlock, with a bipedal Ningen as the base. Upon closer inspection, she could see that this presumed “Night Walker” variant was clearly made to emulate the mastercrafted abomination used in the Great War, only it had been adapted to empower the corrupted sea folk.

Gwen’s jaw clenched.

Her Shoal had a pair of Ningen as well.

They were, for all intents and purposes, colossal puppy-dog belugas.

Ego, it wasn’t too difficult for her to decide to commit the full extent of her reserves.

It was better, the Regent of Shalkar supposed, to have practised theory.

“Aristotle, release our reserve troops. Make sure nothing escapes,” she mouthed the words for her suburban-sized mount. “Kha-guk, take the flanks with your riders. Dwi, join Xwi and Kwi and keep pushing the centre. Velahi, signal Master Hanmoul. Inform him of our battle with the Lich, and tell him that we will be needing our insurance. Whatever happens, we shall erase this abomination from the Prime Material.”

With nought but her will, she signalled her fervent forces to tactically allow themselves to open a space nearer the centre, where the Ningen of Undeath now empowered the concentration of slavering, milky-eyed Undead Mer. Where her foes had been beaten and crushed, they were now gaining new un-life. What’s worse, the fallen Mer in her army who had not subscribed to her Essence were being spontaneously converted into zombified bodies at the behest of the pallid Night Walker.

The latter should come as no surprise to anyone.

Such was how the Humanity of a bygone age had built its empires.

Such was why the Chinese Northern Front chose cremation over honouring the Confucian rite of returning a child’s body to its parents.

Unfortunately, neither Oi Kuk-ryol nor his master-grafter had anticipated the Regent’s many bags of tricks.

From up-on-high, her Caliban began to change.

Consuming a volume of vitality that would have killed a dozen of its mistresses of yesteryear, her Death Worm drank deep from the well of the World Tree, converting the constitution of its body to resemble a being it had consumed many a year ago in Antarctica.

Night Walkers, as the legends told, were bipedal siege engines of Undeath. They were malevolent giants, crafted by the most devious of Corpsegrafters as alter-selves that inherited their death-desire to see the living suffer. They took on the likeness of their creators because they were, by intent and design, stand-ins for their Masters who could not attain Lichdom.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Thereby, the Night Walker that Caliban now manifested from its maleformed, chimeric body was a manifestation of its Mistress, born from the strangest dreams of her erstwhile life, conjoined by the idolatry of a faithful congregation of a billion and more.

Originally, a long, long time ago, the Faith of man had brought the Nazarene back to life.

Now, that same faith, misapplied, would bring forth the Pale Priestess’ avatar.

As Caliban descended, long, lithe limbs extended from where pale white hands of the Dapeng had pulverised flesh and bone like tubes of yoghurt, clad in flesh-like ivory. Its bird-neck distended, becoming serpentine and strange until it settled into a tapered waist, completed with the likeness of sharply formed shoulders and modest bosoms. Her feet, formed only of two stiletto-like knife points, slid into the murky swamp water, her body half-levitating as she advanced. As a final, climactic triumph, a waterfall of void-ink fell from her faceless head, formed of tens of thousands of eels, each tipped with what had to be her signature eye-less lampreys with their circular maws.

Gwen herself stared slack-jawed at the projected imagination of her followers, now three storeys tall and fabulously in its unfathomable, titillating, cat-walking stride, wearing nothing more than the birthday garb of a fertility goddess.

Weightlessly, heralded only by a foul wind, the avatar willed into being by the faithful fishy millions, made a soundless wail from a face with no mouth.

And in the ensuing psychic tinnitus, save for the undulation of the sloshing sea, her Mer…

Her Faithful…

Erupted.

Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä!

Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ— Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ—

Still safe in their spliced dimensional space in the Murk, the Necromancers could hear nothing other than the roar of the Deep Ones.

Flanked by projections, Oi Kuk-ryol stared from sockets with no eyes at the shapely avatar of Undeath approaching their most prized creation, the Agmaui Geoin.

“Oi-seonbae, what are we even fighting?” Chang-jin, the crafter of the abomination, begged for clarification on the abomination now approaching his abomination. Its visage confused him because Undeath, with the sole exception of the Vampiric Counts of Eastern Europe, was not an aesthetic affair. Undeath was entropy, decay, disease, extinction and then rebirth. It wasn’t alluring and performative, like the strange phenomenon of this… mi-chin nyeon Night Walker from a Red Light District in old Shanghai. “First, you said we were fighting the Mageocracy; now we fight the In-eo. But we are not fighting the in-eo, are we? What is that, even?”

Oi had no answers for his Hubae

in the craft of Undeath.

His second aide gently coughed.

“Seonbae… some of the in-eo are resistant, or outright immune to my Mandalas Circles,” General Yun, their Reaver, was also perplexed. As a Soul Sorcerer, his spells rarely failed against the living. Between his death-dealing and Chang’s corpse-raising, they seldom met foes who were their equal. “Are they Ordo affiliates? Only the Ordo possess the means to enable Abjuration en masse.”

Oi had no answers for that either. If he had, he wouldn’t have needed to erase the contact points of his wrecked body just to adhere and mend his undying partitions.

It was now obvious to all three of Juche’s finest faithful that they were underprepared and unable to fight the monstrosity outside. Within the hour, they agreed that there was no saving their Phage Pits, nor the half-decade of work Oi had put into the Chilean coast. Yet, who could truly blame them? As the Masters of Undeath, they were the devouring Tide, not the fodder being devoured by a Beast Tide.

When was the last time any nation of Undeath had ever fought the Merman en masse, a race that should possess no interest in a corrupted domain?

Worse still, outside of Land Gods that had to be subsumed, or the Purges orchestrated by the heretical Ordos, when had Oi and his ilk ever fought a force with resistance to the highest manifestations of their Supreme Leader’s Faith Magic?

Were they fighting a Goddess? Or an Apostle?

For this, Oi also had no answers.

He was a true Adherent, and he was long past emotions like fear, uncertainty and dismay, even as he intellectually acknowledged such manifestations of his former self. For his aides, however, their failure to attain Lichdom meant that they were invariably subordinate to the mortal weaknesses of men.

“Comrades,” Oi’s voice was measured and cold. “Take my research into the Murk. Trust not the Svartálfar, who has left us to this fate. Take what’s left of our creations, and try to find a way back to the Holy Land. So long as the Phage can be recreated, the Holy Land will have numberless volumes of fodder for its crusades.”

“What of yourself, Seonbae?” Chang-jin, as usual, was being sentimental.

“I will delay The Regent, or at least, make her regret coming here,” Oi replied without emotion. Perhaps it was because he would soon face the Supreme Leader again, being banished to his phylactery for the second time this decade, or perhaps there was still a rare hope that he would succeed in maiming the girl. “Make haste, comrades. Do not tarry. Here we areoutside the reach of our Divination beacons and Contingency Rings. Here, there are no second chances.”

Both Chang-jin and Yun saluted Oi with all their heart.

Oi gazed upon their malformed, pockmarked, scarred faces.

His companions were old men, long hardened by war, who had known nothing but death and Undeath since their teenage years. Like all of the followers of Juche, they once dreamed of harvesting blood-hued fields of ripe sorghum. Then the imperialists came, first from the cursed nation of Nippon, then from across the oceans. What those unending decades of war had taught the Adherents of Juche was that any land they did not blight and infect was immediately taken from them. Both Chang-jin and Yun had come from renowned families, though they were the only living descendants, for though the “survivors” had perished in the famine, their bodies continued to serve. The Supreme’s war against the world wasn’t over a banal competition of resources—it was existential.

Oi watched his old companions retreat into the Murk.

Whether they could breach the liminal space between Amazonia and the Holy Land was beyond his care and out of his bony hands.

Now, he must contend with “The Regent”.

Very quickly, Oi mentally filtered through his spell list.

Horrid Wilting, his most potent spell, rapidly drained life, moisture, and vitality on a metaphysical tier. Unfortunately, his opponent could cut the efficacy of the spell by half with their watery nature, then again with her unnatural vitality, then again with her Affinity for Positive Lightning.

His staple Mass Life Drain was largely useless against her as an individual. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fıre·net

Greater Harm, and even Exhaustion, felt like feeble choices against a being who was most likely the Vessel of a patron unaffected by mortal woes.

But—there must be a caveat, Oi mouthed to himself.

Even Faith Magic operated on a degree of equivalent exchange.

Here in the Phage Pits, he had bathed in death for half a decade. His pits were nodes of liquid agony congealed into tangible misery, then focused with dire Necromancy to breach the realm of causality, creating a plague so virulent that it infected the Cores and transmuted the very nature of the Mer.

The karmic cost he paid, if Oi had to tally such a thing, was unimaginable.

If he now expended everything against the girl without reserve, for how long could she resist? How well-loved was she as a Vessel? And how tenacious were her mortal conduits of magic to contain her owner’s divinity?

There must be a limit. It was a gambit, Oi decided, that he was willing to stake.

From his Storage Ring, Oi retrieved a scroll he had kept for a very rainy day in Pyongyang.

It contained Energy Immunity, a very rare spell scribed by a Magister under the control of the Supreme One who had exhausted his soul to craft a dozen such Abjuration masterpieces. Each required the Core of an upper-tier Lightning Beast, the expending of which offered the Mage elemental negation to a significant degree.

He next retrieved a Creature Core, about the size of his palm, that glimmered with a golden inner light. This was the heart of a rare, near-extinct Dragon-kind who had inherited the blood of a True Gold Dragon. By consuming it with his Necromancy, Oi could Empower his Necromancy and vastly increase his ability to repeat the highest tier of spells.

He had other trinkets as well, but against a Mage as powerful as The Regent, Oi felt no need to invest in mundane buffs that interfered with the purity of his craft, for theirs would be a spell exchange lasting mere minutes.

As his final chant quietened, Oi felt the sub-space of the Phage Pit tremble.

The Mer were upon them now. The waters were invading the Murk space that housed his sanctum, and her million-strong minions were flooding in like the noon tide.

I shall pay the price, Oi decided with admirable conviction. To put the Apostate in her place.

Gwen Song, her worshipness the Pale Priestess of the Great Shoal Forward, watched with consternation as Caliban performed its gut-churning duty.

Upon the enormous mud field of plague, muck, murder, and mayhem, her silhouetted likeness had met its opponent, a Grafted Ningen, appearing as a pair of long-lost albino siblings.

Putting one dagger-like heel over the other, paying no heed to the howling tide of hooting Mer chanting their litany of madness, Caliban reached over with slender white arms as large and long as interconnected segments of trams to embrace their opponent.

The Ningen Walker, far more obtuse, though larger and more bulky than her creature, raised a scar-strewn hand to parry the attack, while its own face split open to reveal a depthless organ walled with ivory teeth and armed with the distended tongues of dismembered whales.

“Cali… don’t you dare…” Gwen watched with hair-raising horror as Caliban swiftly snatched the Ningen by the wrist, then pulled it closer, taking the creature off balance. Its actions were performed with haste, but for their scale, everything appeared to move in slow motion. “Oh god… OH GOD…”

Her creature’s full head of living hair, modelled after the fabled Grecian Medusa, swung across the closing distance between them like the wind-whipped leaves of a sensuous willow, latching themselves onto the Ningen Walker.

The two bodies, both pallid and white, each slick with foamy lather and polluted from the waist down by brine and gore, met with the force of colliding Towers, sending up such a wave that the Mer and Undead below were washed away.

Caliban, seemingly pleased, then gripped the trunk-like neck of the Undead Ningen and aggressively leaned forward, an undesired lover to the core.

Gwen’s eyes darted from left to right, looking for someone who shared her disgust. All she saw, however, was the worshipful gaze of the twins and her remaining bodyguards, looking upon the obscene spectacle as a divine miracle.

“SHAAAAAAAA— SHAAAAA—” As anticipated, Caliban performed the very act she loathed the most.

The colossal female’s featureless face split open from brow to navel, birthing a wealth of void-tinged tentacles. In an instant, the Pale Sorceress, so lithe and slick, so obscene as to corrupt the very imagination of her followers, grew bloated and enormous, changing its entire silhouette.

Before Gwen could mouth a horrified “Lei-bup, what have you taught Cali?!” Her creature’s newly unzipped maw closed upon the hapless Ningen, swallowing its upper half with the likeness of fungal tissue undergoing spontaneous osmosis.

Gwen felt something indescribable enter her conduits and instantly commanded Caliban to keep its gains to “herself” while she cleansed herself with Golden Essence.

As two drunk lovers, the Walkers then stumbled across the battlefield, their mutual auras sending the Undead into self-destructive frenzies. Hulks tore themselves apart, the risen dead assaulted each other, the Mer, and even the inanimate earth. The Undead shock troops, the numberless and armoured Crustacean Mer, tore off their own limbs to pace in death spirals that churned the receding waters, no longer sensible to their directed hunger.

“Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä!”

Below the giants, her Shoal embraced itself as though caught in the throes of a frenzied breeding season, their glossy eyes drinking in the sight of Caliban tugging the Ningen colossus back and forth, clambering upon its foe like a wallet of wet flesh.

Gwen’s mind revolted, her sanity revolting more so from the knowledge that somebody was watching, and that once this scene got out, there would be no end to the teasing she would face.

Finally, after what must have been an eternity, the Ningen stumbled upon the edge of a Phage Pit and toppled backwards. Caliban followed, an obsessive lover incapable of letting go, sliding bodily with the Ningen Walker into the diluted pool of decayed soup, sending up a vertical torrent of filth four storeys tall.

“EE—!”

“Mistress!”

Both her Kirin and the twins called out in alarm as her mind snapped back to full focus, knowing that the Lich was down there somewhere, ringing the second round bell.

A barrier made of transparent Force manifested at once, while her Crown of Thorns hovered a dozen inches from their usual rotation, maximising their seeking distance.

The space around them suddenly shuddered, obfuscating their foe’s point of entry.

“DIE—!” A thunderclap, accompanied by a sudden and inexplicable dimming of the afternoon sun, caught Gwen and the space in which she occupied.

Her heart seized.

Her senses dulled.

Her body grew cold, then suddenly hot.

Vitality drained from her body like a tide, but not nearly enough to exhaust her.

Her Thorns, six of her seven wards, flew outwards toward the invisible space where the attack had come.

Ariel, using its own mana and of its own volition, irradiated the heavens with a sudden criss-cross of violent, amber lightning.

From her hands, another self-seeking spell, that of an Empowered Chain Lightning, instantaneously crossed the distance between her and the assailant to strike at her target.

Lightning, lightning, and lightning erupted at once, creating such a rush of air that a few surviving trees below her were blown apart as a concentric ring of white water laid the muddy forest floor bare, displacing the refuse of war.

In the middle of the ongoing heavenly tempest, another “DIE–!” rang out, this time making her innards gut-punch itself as her conduits filled with Negative Energy.

As before, the Golden Mead was far more than sufficient in restoring her, though her concentration was at its limits, and she felt on the verge of projectile vomiting every ounce of acid her digestive system contained and then some.

A third DIE, delivered with conviction and force, would have incapacitated her for at least enough seconds for a combination attack from a supplementary caster hidden in the Astral Plane, or a well-aimed Disintegrate or Destruct.

But there was no third Power Word.

Instead, a vertical aurora of prismatic light, so quick that it was nearly imperceptible, shot into the chaotic sea of revolting electricity, criss-crossing space and time with such haste that to the mortal observer, only a single blast of heated-fuelled irradiation had transpired.

A split-second later, an upper-tier Abjuration spell Gwen had only ever seen in the Encyclopedia Arcana manifested, forming a complex tetra-tier Mandala in less time than it took for her to blink.

A strangled cry erupted from her lightning cloud—then silence.

Catching her breath, she made sure that Caliban was bookending its obscene ritual and that Ariel was safe, then slowly levitated upward to address the help she had called from across the ocean.

Originally, the help was intended for Sobel.

But here was an opportunity of such immensity that she could not help but consult with her betters and request an intervention.

“Hmm, I think we’ve got it,” said the voice of the golden God phasing into place beside her— a being far more radiant and divine than the Pale Priestess in all her pale glory. “Oi Kuk-ryol, you said?”

Gwen nodded.

In the sky above them, stunned and unable to Teleport, Translocate, Gate, Blink, or even activate Contingency, was the five-eighth of the skull of one North Korean General, about as large as the size of Gunther’s palm.

Gunther made a few arcane gestures with both hands, conjuring something like a decahedron prism. A split second later, Oi’s head appeared within it, unable to speak, unable to protest; its eyeless socket glowed with shock, confusion, and disbelief.

“Where’s the rest of him?” Gwen asked, her mind still in awe from the power of a Gunther when given ample preparation time and the explicit advantage of a sneak attack from a distance undetectable by its target. It was the very tactic they would use against Sobel—though the conditions of its use would be rare and difficult to manufacture against a foe that knew their Master’s spell list, and had known Gunther since he was a child prodigy.

“Here and there… alas, his equipment did not survive my zealousness.” Her Brother-in-craft grinned most affably, pointing at a vague distance where a spontaneous cremation had occurred. “Well done, Gwen. If it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t have been possible.”

“I beg to differ,” Gwen studied the container holding Oi’s head. The outcome of the battle would have been very different if Liches also had the power of friendship and family. Alas, when it came to God-King theocrats, the reflexive thing to do was to cut off failures like a gangrene limb. Perhaps that was why every reign had a use-by date. “So he can’t escape? Go back to Pyongyang? He can’t use Juche magic to… implode himself?”

“Not with the Dimensional Lock and the Anti-Magic Mandala active.” Gunther brought the Lich’s head closer so that she could study it like a pigmy fetish. “It’s just as well that this is a Lich that’s on Mycroft’s list of known belligerents. Give us another General from Pyongyang who hadn’t tapped his head at you, and we would have no idea where his Core might be stowed. Without the Core’s destruction, a Lich can re-create its body without limit. Ironically, without its destruction, there’s no returning to Pyongyang.”

Before Gwen could continue, her Caliban tore itself from the meniscus of foetid plague water, once more in the likeness of The Pale Priestess and not the Bloated Woman.

Thanks to its haywiring presence, the Undead were rapidly dwindling. Between the Caliban-induced suicides and her resurgent Mer, it was merely a matter of mopping up the stragglers, then digging through the Murk for Oi’s reserve troops.

Gunther gave her a wilting look, demanding what she was thinking in choosing Caliban’s present likeness.

Gwen wilted. “Look… this isn’t voluntary on my part. The Mer aren't big on clothing.”

She willed Caliban to return, only the Void Fiend refused, instead enjoying its time as a worshipped being surrounded by the low-thrum of Iä! Iä! Iä!

Her Kirin asked mentally if it should coerce its brother.

Considering Caliban’s credit, Gwen relented.

Gunther snorted after holding his mirth for a minute more. “You know, if the tabloids ever get hold of this…”

“It’s a Night Walker,” Gwen said seriously. “Do you seriously think I’ll just let it loose where living humans can take pictures of Cali like that? What would the Ordos say?”

“Give it some robes, probably.” Gunther rubbed his chin, then burst into laughter. “Ha! What would the Ordo say? What would Elvia say? What would Mycroft say if he saw this, hahaha…”

“Gunther!” Gwen pouted, her mind skimming the thought of the blonde she had left to learn her own lessons. By now, Elvia should be leaving the Murk, assuming Ruxin had made himself and his displeasure known.

“Alright, enough,” her Brother-in-craft shook his head, then shook the head of Oi Kuk-ryol like a festival goodie bag. “I shall take this to the Ordo. Perhaps they can do something. If not, the Relique Keepers at the Vatican will find a way to extract information from it. If not, we’ll make sure it remains in stasis until the heat-death of the Prime Material."

Gwen looked upon the Lich for what she presumed was the final time.

It. Gunther had said. It. It. It.

A part of her felt…

Did I just feel pity for this creature? She quickly dismissed the thought, which was joined by another unwelcome recollection, that we are all somebody’s creature.

“I can do the honours if you like,” Gwen said. “You should probably go back to Sydney before someone finds out you’ve teleported halfway around the world through the Dyar Morkk.”

“Yes, about that. You’ve done something incredible, Gwen,” Gunther looked toward the Phage Pits contemplatively. Her brother-in-craft then moved to pat her head, but stopped and patted her on the shoulder instead, shaking his head. “How the hell did you even manage this? Our Master dreamed of this, you know? A world connected by Divination and the Towers. We barely managed to reconnect Europe before Sobel happened, and he lost the fire to keep up the good fight. It took the world another three decades to interlink the two continents—and now I’ve traversed from Sydney to an Amazonian Black Zone in less than an hour.”

“I think a lesser Mage would have puked their guts out somewhere near Ruxin’s,” Gwen purred at the approval from Gunther, so warm that she felt her belly healing from the Power Word Deaths the Lich had tossed around like confetti. Still, she had to give credit where it was due. “Their mana conduits would have been shredded by the time they arrived at Shalkar, much less taken the Planar route to Deepholme.”

“Trust me, you did good,” Gunther said as he reinforced the cage holding Oi with yet another hovering Mandala. “Now, both Alesia and I can hunt Sobel as well, wherever your Dyar Morkk can take us. Still, I can see you’ve got work here. A lot of work. There’s a bounty on Oi, by the way. Would you like it delivered to Shalkar?”

Gwen thought about the HDMs she possessed both on paper and in Shalkar’s vault, as well as Ruxin’s lair. “Yeah-nah. Donate it to charity?”

“Good call. I’ll inform the METRO to get on it.” Gunther gave her a very casual, very Australian thumbs up. “Now, Message Hanmoul for me, will ya? Allie will want to know what has transpired before I head to England.”

“Safe travels, brother,” Gwen bowed her head, then did as she was told. “Done. Tell Allie that next time, we’ll find Sobel.”

Her Brother-in-craft watched her warmly, then gave her a final, affirming nod. “I will. And remember, no matter how confident you feel, don’t solo Sobel.”

With his final words, with the phantasmagorical likeness of a saint answering the Rapture, Gunther’s visage flashed, then was gone.

Gwen took a long, drawn-out breath, steadied her mana and her vitality, then turned her attention below, where a grinning Lei-bup had materialised somehow, from somewhere, and was now leading a chant to praise her Paleness.

“Shaa–Shaa–— SHAA——!”

“Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä!”

Later, her High Priest would direct her to erase all traces of Oi’s work and prepare the region for redevelopment.

For now, Lei-bup was worshipping his Pale Priestess in all her Venus-glory, glazing the purring form of a proud and posing Caliban with an off-tune choir from all three of his sound-producing organs, joined by the sea-song of a million prostrating Mer.