Cuzco

The Temple of the Sun.

In a heavily stylised, yet modernised section of the restored temple, the royal family of the theocratic nation, together with the governors of the Suyus and Cuzco’s Tower Master, poured over a map of the Peruvian Purple Zone, guided by their guest, a C-suite officer of the Isle of Dog Norfolk Conglomerate Corporation.

“Master Hanmoul has demonstrated a most… improbable case of haste.” The Sapa Inti, bathed in the golden light from the refracted bronze mirror angled on the ceiling, remarked on the animated sand-sculpted omni-map their guest had gifted to the Kingdom. “Is Dwarven construction… always this rapid?”

“Three weeks is more than enough to establish basic operations,” Magister Eric Walken, formerly of Sydney, then London, and now Shalkar, spoke with a hint of pride and an expression of knowing mirth. “The Rune Plates are pre-fabricated in Shalkar and relocated here using the Dyar Morkk. The rest are fabricated onsite by master crafters who have already built the same systems several hundred times in Europe and Asia. The fastest I’ve seen a station go live after breaking ground was sixty-seven hours.”

“Is such a method safe?” Manco of Antis, the very region playing neighbour to the Dwarven low way station, raised a careful hand. “Of course, I mean no offence, Magister.”

“Moreso than our Regent, you may trust in the quality and the durability of Dwarven construction,” Walken replied with ill humour. “I have permission to bring you to inspect our sites once Gwen—that is, our Regent, has concluded her operations on the Chilean Coast. There will be an extensive period of construction, and we will need your support, Master Manco, and your people as well, Sapa Inti.”

At his direction, the gathering’s attention turned to the lower portion of the map, where the Peruvian border ended at the inlet of Arica.

What they were looking at was a trading post.

But to the inheritors of a relatively younger civilisation, the planned map of the inlet was nothing short of a colonial metropolis.

“What are these platforms?” Manco continued to speak for the mind of their Sapa. “They are so far out in the ocean.”

“These are floating docklands for the Mer to conduct trade. Walken explained with patience. “Please do not be overtly concerned with the offshore extensions. I know it looks intimidating, but even so, they would house only a token of the Fifth Vel’s true mass. It's better to classify the region as a kelp and fish farm, with a few platforms that breach the surface to facilitate commerce.”

“The Mer will eat the kelp?” Manco asked. It was an important question for people whose people could be food for the Regent’s people.

“Yes. And the unimaginable wealth of fish and other lesser creatures that thrive within. The ocean cannot sustain the Shoal otherwise,” Walken explained. “Considering that the Shoal is here to deny Spectre the general length of the east Chilean coast, the farm will stretch for roughly two thousand kilometres, ending where the water is too cold to sustain the produce.”

“Then her Mer need not predate upon the creatures of the land?” The Tower Master Amaru, Walken’s contemporary, was positively amazed. “Is that why these Mer are docile?”

“The Mer’s hostility is an unnatural behaviour. You have to… whip them up to the task.” Walken assured his co-worker. “I can’t speak for all, but even in Tianjin, considering how many Mer had occupied the city’s estuaries, incidents were negligible. They live there, even now, and have become a valuable labour force. By public decree, there were no human casualties.”

“So there were casualties?” Sapa Inti wiggled a brow.

“Yes, but they were not malicious incidents,” the Magister explained with patience. “Zodiam’s legions were still here and there in the weeks that followed. Half a million bodies were buried under fire and magma, then water and concrete. Many of her Mer were uninitiated as well, merely dragged into the cause by the momentum of High Priest Lei-bup’s will. The people were hungry and homeless, and the fish were out of water. Chaos reigned. Arica cannot begin to compare.”

“I would very much like to meet this Lei-bup,” Sapa Inti said after a moment.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Walken laughed nervously. “For two theocratic leaders to meet, even if your religions don’t overlap.”

And it was certainly not because the High Priest looked as though the Void had digested him and then spat him out with a vengeance, Walken thought in silence.

Having seen the Vid-casts of Lei-bup’s preparation for the invasion of the south coast, the rest of Inti’s governors agreed.

“Let's return to the topic at hand.” Walken again meta-morphed the Dwarf-made sand map, a three-dimensional display that had integrated elements of the world-renowned PowerPoint(™) Illusion system by Magister Gwen Song of Shalkar. “As you can see, south of the Rio San Jose will be the Shalkar Trade Consortium Special Economic Zone, housing the main Dyar Morkk node. The region sits on top of a tier VI ley, which will be tapped to power the station.”

He pointed to an ornate miniature building to the east. “Here will be the Superstructural ISTC, utilising the latest Conjuration Mandala technology from Bavaria and Divination calculators from Paris. Using the Dwarves’ Repeater Beacons, it can forgo the need to interchange with Hawaii’s FedEx Tower, offering direct teleportation solutions to Europe, and certain Southeast Asian nations, and eventually, China.”

If the American Ambassador had been present, Walken was sure the man would have erupted like a volcano. Thankfully, neither he, the Mageocracy, Shalkar, nor Cuzco was beholden to England’s largest ex-colony.

A green grid overlay brought into being row upon rows of buildings in the Dwarven-deco style common to Shalkar.

“This is the proposed Arica Oceanic Resort complex, to service guests attending the Trading Consortium’s ongoing conventions. Here are the guest housing facilities and various amenities; over there are the accommodations for the workers and service staff, who are drawn from your city. For reasons, we have already planned for an influx of sushi chefs. I hope Cuzco can offer its cuisine as well.”

“Is the Resort because…” Sapa Inti rubbed his chin. “... Why is there a resort?”

“The Resort is to show that, without pretence, we come in peace and profit.” Walken chuckled, soliciting a round of soft laughter from his observers. “Once the coast is pacified, it will be a paradise. Bean-green seas, a kelp barrier to stifle both rough weather and foes, and virgin beaches as far as the eye can see with perfect supplies of cultivated seafood. Trust me when I say, the Arica Coast will be on the lips of many guests in the decades to come. After all, there will be sea-Witches wreathed with seaweeds of autumn gold, only they’re not here to aphyxiate anyone, because that would cost extra. Now, to the north—”

Walken called up more light-painted sand sculpts. “We’ve planned for multi-purpose apartment blocks for around sixty thousand residents as a part of phase one. These will be fully serviced by Dwarven artifice from Shalkar and have their own network of three overground nodes for the Dyar Morkk. The largest, Arica Station, will have a route through to your new station: Cuzco South.”

“What of this area?” the Sapa pointed to a strangely shaped crescent.

“That’s the utilities for the port,” Walken explained. “Filtration Stations, Generators, Fabricators Stations, waste disposal and warehouses, both refrigerated and for grain, generously spaced for safety.”

There was silence as the rulers of Cuzco took in the reality of what the Regent considered a modest port station for trade.

“The cost…” Manco politely coughed. “This must cost a lot.”

“The IoDNC will cover everything; we merely need your blessing. On paper, this is the ownerless Purple Zone, but we would still prefer to have the blessing of our largest trading partner in the region. We will accommodate any requests you may have, and the Regent has requested that Cuzco enjoy favourable trade conditions. After all, good boundaries make good neighbours.”

One by one, the rulers of the Suyu, the king, and their golden prince made the rounds once more, carefully observing the map sculpted from the living sand in the enormous oval sand pit, which had been levitated for the perusal of the taller humans.

“Can her offer be refuted?” Inti, their Prince, asked suddenly. “Not that we would, but…”

“The Regent will raze the coast, regardless.” Walken was not surprised to see that their friends from across the ocean were so intimidated. After all, theirs was a civilisation that rose after expelling the imperialist invaders. To fly so openly into the sun, even if the purpose were mutually beneficial and benign, would pose challenges to the unique culture and lifestyle of the Incan people.

After all, with the flow of goods comes the flow of ideas.

Would the bohemians of London take up the Peruvian flutes?

Or would the youth of Cuzco rock out to the jazzy pop tunes of Europe?

“... But if Cuzco feels unsure, the Regent is willing to leave it at a single Dyarr Morkk platform. Now, if I may have some opinion of my own—” Walken stepped back from the table. “Amaru, you know I am from Sydney, correct? And you all know what happened to the city, partly because of my foolishness.”

“We know, ñan tura, but we do not think of you as being diminished by the past,” the Tower Master affirmed Walken’s villainous origin.

“In the aftermath, when I came out from the Tower and saw the dead Leviathan bleeding Mermen all over the city, all I could think about was when, where, and how we could relocate the city’s refugees. The helplessness I felt, knowing that I could have at least mitigated this if I weren’t so blinded by jealousy, made me wish that I had perished at Sobel’s hands. What the Regent is offering, Sapa Inti, Prince Inti, is a security guarantee. She doesn’t trust Amazonia, or the Svartálfar who think of us as nothing more than local fauna, or their Dragon Matron who cares no more for her daughters than they care for us. Cuzco, for all its grandeur, is pinned between the ocean and a burping volcano.”

The lords of Cuzco listened because, as Walken had known, they could not afford not to.

The United States will not aid Cuzco without extracting the marrow from the city's bones.

Technochtitlan would sooner convert the worshippers of the Sun into the believers of the Winged Serpent via the sacrificial dagger if they were to cross into the southern continent.

Meanwhile, the Svartálfar, the Undead, and the Sinneslukare were the present danger…

“One last thing. The matter with the Black Dragon…” the young Inti raised his hand once more. “It may not be in our interest to ask, but… should we be prepared for anything there?”

“Insofar as outer Amazonia is concerned, it is under control,” Walken delivered verbatim what he could. “Her people have their… claws on the ley, as it were.”

Walken gave his host time to digest their choice because, indeed, his Regent’s compassion was no less a form of tyranny.

“We understand,” the Sapa Inti concluded as he received nods and affirmations from his advisors. “Cuzco will proceed with the Regent’s grand designs. Now, if I may ask… when will her fleet arrive?”

Walken briefly closed his eyes to perform the mental calculations. “... if I am correct… I believed our Regent is already there.”

Aristotle.

The High Temple of the Pale Priestess.

Somewhere above the shallow continental shelf of the South Pacific, the Pale Priestess of the Great Shoal Forward rested her mind from three weeks of frenetic travelling, planning, plotting and scheming.

In her hand was an Ioun Stone, a type used to record significant visions, memos, and magical data before the Americans had instituted the widespread use of data slates.

With a thought, Gwen sent a pulse of mana into the intricate Glyphs carved into the morganite gem, bringing its memory to life.

“AH–ah— Henry… stop— I… I can’t… I just can’t…”

When she had first listened to the message in the secret chamber of her private office in the Bunker, the first few seconds had turned her face into a furnace. Was Sobel trolling her by giving her a recording of her Master mercilessly railing his young wife? For several hours, she could not put it past the spiteful bitch to do just that, and so had neglected the recording.

But a few days later, curiosity had gotten the better of Gwen, and she had sat down with a calmer mind to listen to the six-minute record.

“Sufi… it hurts so much… I am dying… I am dying… Please…please…”

In the second minute, she understood. Within her whole wide world, there was no other human being other than herself and Jean-Paul who fully understood the implications behind those trembling moans.

Void Magic, when overloading the body, induced an existential vertigo. Different from the dizziness and bodily rupture of wanting to vomit out every mote of mana, it felt as though one's innards had displaced themselves outside the body, then had grown cannibalistic. When her prior persona’s turn had come, courtesy of Helena, she had dearly wished for the atomisation of every cell in her body, if only to avert that same experience.

She was sure that was why the original Gwen had perished.

Herself, the displaced Gwen, had suffered only a single episode before the Kirin pendant did whatever it did. Thereafter, she had stumbled upon Almuldj, and after that, every other incident had been tempered, allowing her to keep her sanity intact.

“Shhh… Shhh… It's okay, Lilibird… I’ve got you… Sufi, keep recording.“

“I… Let me die, Henry… please… oh God… I don’t want this…”

The recording was genuine. It was so raw that Gwen could imagine the trembling frame of the English woman as she whimpered, her bodily fluids weeping from every orifice, her body folded like a human pretzel.

“...I’ve got you… It’ll pass, it's for the greater good… You needed this…”

“Let me die, Henry… let me die… let me die, let me die…”

What Gwen failed to understand was why Sobel had given her this gift in the first place. The Void Witch had taken her brother. She had killed her Master. She had razed Sydney and Tianjin and God knows where else. There was no possibility on earth that she would give Sobel a sympathetic hug and say, “It must have been tough, sister…”

And she had seen her Master’s spell list. She’s using her Master’s spell list. She knows Henry wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine—even if he was exactly that in their shared moments.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

To have Sufina ram-rod vitality into a rupturing Void vessel…

Gwen shuddered despite herself.

Fighting her self-loathing, she silenced the Ioun Stone and stowed it away. There were no other enchantments on the stone. No espionage magics and not enough of what the Diviners would call causality to allow them to track Sobel’s future location.

It was simply a message. A proof.

That we’re all someone’s creature.

As she straightened herself, the glowing coral that made up the starry ceiling of the stage-like temple burst into pastel brilliance, signalling that her desire for solitude had passed. She had arrived to enormous fanfare, but Aristotle knew and loved her enough to understand that the Pale Priestess needed her naps.

“Lei-bup!” She called out to the dim darkness. “Attend me.”

With a sucking sound, an orifice on the floor of the main dais expelled the enormous bulk of Lei-bup.

“Mistress… your beloved servant is here.”

“How close are we?” She stretched out her body, then seated herself more formally, smoothing out he folds of her living dress, another masterpiece from Tryfan.

“Priestess, we have arrived as you willed. The Shoal’s tendrils have touched upon the coast,” the waddling, multi-limbed High Priest prostrated despite her wishes, melting into a black-gold puddle.

Within minutes, the vacant throne room burst into life.

Adjacent to her creature, lip-like chambers expelled her many ministers of the sea, from her shelled majordomo to her waverider Captains, her crustacean Praetorian Guards, and the bubbly faces of the Sea Witches with their alluring, siren-figures and depthlessly seductive eyes.

Gwen stood, allowing her amber-green kelp dress to flow out behind her like the translucent fins of a venomous scorpion fish.

The chamber, meaning Aristotle, trembled with anticipation.

She thought of Evee.

She thought of Sobel.

She thought of her brother’s cruel, petulant face.

Then her mind calmed at the thought of her Great Shoal at the ready.

“My faithful,” she spoke as her people’s Priestess, for only through the lens of her performative facade could her Mer be wielded like a pliant limb. “The time has come to make a paradise upon the Prime Material. In front of us now lies the untamed wilds of the Chilean Coast, untouched by the civilisations that have made their mark upon the known world. Yet, within the depths of its fathomless jungles, there lies a threat to us all—”

Without the need for her command, the Sea Witches sang her message to the rest of the Shoal, projecting her image and voice into the waters around and within Aristotle; from the Krill-men working the Leviathan’s gills to the Minnow-kin labouring at the rear to parcel out its precious, nutrient-rich waste, all heeded the grand wisdom of their Pale Priestess.

“My Faithful.” Her sermon continued after she took a deep breath of the converted air. “Within those woods lie the defilers, the dispoilers, the desolators of the natural world. There, in those jungles, you will find the Necromancers with their Necrophage, tailored to poison the bodies of the Mer-kin. From your twitching corpses, they had hoped to create an army, a sea of rotten bodies to drown the Land-kin’s homes.”

Iä! Iä! Iä!

Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ—

Her people were roaring.

Gwen continued.

“You see, to the dispoilers, their victory isn't about victory. There is no honour, no gain, no wonder in their triumph. They do not pine for a dream of worlds connected by the hearth and home. They who hover at the edge of existence, these Spectres… these ghasts of un-life, are a mockery to us who live for tomorrow. What they wish for is simply the cessation of what nature has bestowed. They wish to create from the reversal of the cycle of life, an empire of the mindless dead, while they are the crowned kings and princes...”

Iä! Iä! Iä!

Gwëëë—Gwëëë—Gwëëëņ—

As her words reverberated, the clamour climaxed around the Shoal. Gwen knew this phenomenon well, for the very occurrence had happened every time she had been on the receiving end of an invasion. Once the Shoal had reached a fevered pitch, the entire mass would crash into the shore, clambering over one another to grasp whatever could be torn, eaten, and destroyed.

“... But their desires shall not manifest, not while we still breathe the waters of the Prime Material. Let us join hands to claw! Tentacles to fin! As a cleansing surge of oceanic current, the Great Shoal Forward shall wipe away the stench of these blasphemers!Iä! Iä! Iä!”

Gwen allowed her final syllables to sink in. She felt high because the psychic energies of her Mer coursed through the threads that tied their Essences, lifting her through the water through sheer will. She felt no longer bound by her mortal shell and understood, terrifyingly, why the prophets of old were equal parts visionaries and sociopaths.

Her will rose to a crescendo, physically manifesting a halo of white light hovering just beyond her dark, kelp-woven hair. “As you venture forth, always remember who you are! You are the citizens of the Fifth Vel! The Choose of your Priestess! You fight for the Prime Material, your beauteous home! Now go! Go and whip these stragglers of Undeath, so that they may never see another tide! Go and exterminate these overweening sods of rot and decay! Many shall perish, but not we. If you are faithful, we shall overcome! The Undead cannot best us! These abortive defects of life! These fools of Juche, these heirs of dishonour and disruption! Iä! Iä! Iä!”

With Aristotle priming its tentacles for landfall, the whole ship listed. From the momentum affecting her body, she felt in her bones that the Leviathan was readying itself for ramming speed, where it would beach its head upon the headland, erase about twenty kilometres of the coast, then deposit them within reach of where Elvia had spotted the Undead.

A deep growl, so brassy that Gwen felt her bowels tremble, roared through Aristotle as it sighted of their foes.

The temple jumped and lurched, tempered by the pressurised water.

From their synaptic link, Gwen knew that her precious Aristotle had made landfall.

With an enormous, seismic yawn, the upper carapace of Aristotle's upper back began to unfold, sliding each panel backwards until they nestled in their fleshy rests. Sea water gushed from every orifice as the Leviathan conjoined the land, its weight grinding the ground below into a fine, muddy, lubricating paste, its armoured head carving the landscape like an enormous wedge, creating the future deep-sea port of Arica.

Hidden behind the veil of cascading water, Gwen and her council finally saw the Chilean coast with their own eyes.

Jets, propelled by the immeasurable pressure generated from Aristotle’s underbody orifices, continued to push the suburban-sized battleship forward, toppling trees with the effort of an Earthen Mage snapping twigs.

Borne by the momentum of a moving mountain, Ariel launched into the air, bringing to the Regent’s eyes a vision of a blight hidden behind wilted trees and thinned canopies of yellow and brown. At the apex, her Familiar’s celestial Aura rang out, touching those below with an irrational hope, dispelling both fear and self-preservation.

From the undercanopy, Undead of every make and size, mostly Mer but infiltrated by stitched monstrosities, poured from between the woods in their hundreds of thousands, turning the region into a continental clash of fetid swamp rot against an incoming, cleansing tide.

Gwen rose, surrounded by a seven-star crown and wielding a black blade that hid in the folds of space.

Caliban soared as a Big Bird to join its brother, its cries of “Shaa—” titulating the Undead.

Gwen’s golden eyes scanned the overworld.

Come Black Sun or Shoggoth, she had planned for every contingency.

This time, she was ready.

Her spine stiffened as golden vitality suffused her body, readying the many Maelstroms of cleansing lightning that would ravage her foes. On every front, her army sallied forth like a projectile vomit of fruit from a seafood-themed Horn of Cornucopia.

The Pale Priestess of the Deep Ones had taken to the stage, and now she must sing her dirge.

“Iä! Iä! Iä!—! I hear their weeping woe!” Her voice reverberated across every bony chamber of Aristotle’s vast interior and projected itself through its spins and fins. “Praetorians! RAISE YOUR CLAWS! Riders! RAISE YOUR TRIDENTS! SPUR YOUR FISHES! RIDE HARD AND RIDE IN BLOOD! PURGE THE HERETICS WITH YOUR FAITH!”

On the Chilean Coast, in a place marked on no map, possessing no name other than yeogbyeong gudeong-i, Oi Kuk-ryol of the Supreme People’s Assembly watched through eyeless sockets the invasion of the Great Shoal Forward.

The irony of his present predicament had not escaped the Lich, who had some seven years ago been banished from the Party’s inner circles for his failures in Shenyang.

Seven years ago, he had cornereda trembling teen unable to meet his life-stealing gaze. Seven years ago, he had drained her unto the threshold of death with no possibility of escape when, against all odds, her instructor-Magister had thrown himself between them.

In the aftermath of that encounter, the Magister had coaxed him out of the bunker, where Oi’s original body was reduced to dust by Dalian Tower.

Seven years!

Seven years of exile!

And seven years later, she had returned to thwart his great enterprises once more, in a place so far from Pyongyang that he couldn’t even contact his fellow Adherents of the Assembly.

If he still had a working heart, Oi might have torn the rebellious organ from his chest and flung it like a squirming spider into the depths of the plague pools.

The Necrophage was his triumph! His return to the side of the Supreme Leader.

A year after his failure, when he had been reborn and castigated from the ranks of the Senior Generals, Oi had been approached by a most unexpected ally, a frequent advisor to the court of the Supreme One.

It was a Spectre who called himself Malakath, an ancient, eternal being, an exile from the very World Trees they were seeking to topple, to make the Prime Material hospitable only to the Adherents of Juche.

Having learned of his recent dismissal, the Elf had taken him aside and informed him of a proposal he had delivered to the Supreme One. According to the Elf, with every Human nation so thusly opposed to the Juche’s grand purpose of Absolute Self-Sufficiency, thanks to the Great War, the Reunification was now little more than a dream.

Nonetheless, the Elf said, there were many more potential Adherents in the races untethered to Humanity’s greatest gift.

Demi-humans.

From the Green skins to the Mer, from the Were to the Anthropomorphic, there were billions more lifeforms out there awaiting the unifying purpose of Juche. What we are missing, the Elf had whispered to Oi, was someone willing to put an inordinate amount of effort and time into making a theory into reality.

Oi trusted no one but the Supreme Leader, but it would be a lie to say that the Elf’s radical proposal didn’t move him.

If indeed Oi could bring millions… perhaps billions, into the embrace of Juche, then the ranks of the Adherents would rise by magnitudes. The Supreme Leader would once more uphold him. He would be an exemplar of excellence as he once was, upheld by the Assembly to be the heart of Juche itself.

And so, Oi resigned from his position as General, and with the blessing of his leader, he descended from the lofty heights of Undeath into the grunt work of laborious experimentation.

Three years later. He succeeded.

Utilising the first wave of Oi’s Adherents, Malakath had corrupted the magnetic poles of the Prime Material, changing the flow of elemental energies around the globe.

Taking advantage of the eternal chaos that ensued in the Underwater Kingdoms, they had kept the Mageocracy’s allies in the southern hemisphere hemmed into their shelled cities.

And most importantly, Oi had made up for the loss of the Shenyang battleline by directly disrupting China’s ability to wage anything other than a defensive war by dismantling Tianjin, freeing the capital from foreign interference for at least a decade. Thanks to his creations, the motherland had room to breathe against the Chinese incursion into the buffer zones that separated the land of the living and the Undead. Even by the reckoning of the Supreme Leader, Oi’s reimagining of the Rites through the Mind Reaver catalyst and the Necrophage had been a stroke of absolute, unmitigated genius.

But then, in their moment of unstoppable triumph, Comrade Kim’s project was quashed by an unforeseen expansion of the tidal instability common to the Vels. That particular misfortune, Oi had heard, was tied to a certain Regent of Shalkar.

And so, when the Svartálfar aristocrat going by the obnoxious title of Qilas of the Suffocating Dark sent an envoy informing him that there would be a naval assault from the Mageocracy in the next few months, likely led by this very detractor, Oi had redoubled his efforts at producing the most infectious, malignant Undead Mer imaginable.

He would draw the girls’ Mageocracy Flights into the woods.

He would unleash everything he had hidden in the depthless caverns of the shallow Murk.

And he would have his revenge for the disgrace he had suffered in Shenyang.

Then… having converted her troops.

Having made the Regent into a playful corpse bride.

He would balloon his forces until Malakath brought their next meal.

Via their mind-reaving infiltrators, the numberless merchant fleets of America, the very foes who had intervened in the Great War to push back the Adherents of Juche, would arrive en masse to plunder Amazonia.

But what these hapless capitalists would not know was that they were the resource to be extracted.

They would be food for his numberless faithful, who would venture forth on those very freighters into the ports of every American city, spreading a Phage so virulent that every city and town would fester with Undeath. Meanwhile, with his Mer, Oi would dominate the coast, preventing aid from the Mageocracy’s naval forces, until finally…

Having grown bloated and pestilent, his roving tide of Undeath would turn southward, leaving America’s panting cities behind, picking up weight as it snowballed down into the unprotected lands of Technochitlan. There, crossing the land bridge, the multifarious million upon millions of Adherents, young and old, would march to subsume Cuzco to arrive at their final destination, the very place of their progenitors’ birth.

Che’ell-Cressen!

The look of impotent horror on the one who called herself the Mistress of the Suffocating Dark would have been priceless.

Malakath’s proposal had seemed a wishful dream—but what a DREAM it was! To ravage Humanity’s most puritanic nation! To topple the greatest pillar of the Axis Mundi. To unleash the mad rage of the Ancient Black herself upon an unwitting continent!

The Prime Material that remained after that… would no longer be fit for the habitation of the meek. It would be a world akin to the Primordial Age, where Elementals ravaged the world, and men, no longer fat, redolent, satisfied and sufficient, would once more realise that only through Juche could the species become the Masters of a cruel, broken world.

Only now, that dream may perish in its infancy.

This was because, here and now, a submerged mountain was pushing inland toward them.

Here and now, a million Mer were leaping off the shelled flaps of a Leviathan, hooting and howling and bawling for blood.

It was here and now that Oi Kuk-ryol realised that the time to extinguish the Regent had been seven years ago, when she had wilted before his gaze like a stricken flower.

It was here and now that Oi Kuk-ryol realised that if he failed to win this battle, he may once more return to his phylactery in Pyongyang, and he would once more walk the path of shame to prostrate his naked, skeletal form before the breathless frown of the Supreme One.

“Comrade Yun, Comrade Chang-Jin,” he remarked drily to his aides, for his lips had long since ceased producing moisture. Both of his men were Generals in their own right, one a sullen-faced Soul Flayer and the other a grotesquely formed Corpse Grafter. They were his left and right limbs after coming to this godforsaken continent, and once, they were his brothers-in-arms. “This will not be an easy battle. We must, here and now, put our souls on the line for the Will of the Juche. We will raze the Supreme Leader’s enemies; we must do this, even if we burn every Changgwi we’ve bought into this unwitting world.”

Oi needed no affirmation as he defied gravity—for he had already spotted his victim, so flamboyant and obnoxiously haloed by a holy nimbus.

“Though we walk in the light without shelter, we shall fear no living, for the People art with me.”

His dessicated body grew alive with Necrotic mana as he mouthed the final litany to the People’s Prayer, knowing that he had already won, for his future possessed only victory or martyrdom.