-Upgrade the alarm to a Duke or King Shade is coming through the Rift,- Sama /sent out coolly, not riding with anyone, taking her own route casually to cut through the highest density of Undead and Shades she could in passing, not slowing down a whit as she did so. Her Arakne Arms were out, and she was harvesting Undead skulls for our Baneskull collection. -I believe that should qualify for a full Regional Alert.-

-Everyone’s happy that Briggs registered this before it happened, so they can’t blame us for it going cock-eyed, right?- I /asked no one in particular, and dry /laughs came back around the popping of vivus and firearms.

-Imagine if that incoming arse didn’t need to spend most of its power on keeping the Rift open for however long,- Sama /sniffed. -Its Domain would probably hit the horizon without an Archmage or Noble Beast here to contest it.-

That would be a bloody death sentence for anything living in the area, as it could literally bring forth an army anywhere and everywhere within that Domain. The combination of vivus eating the Dark Mana and its own expenditures trying to stabilize the Rift was keeping the area under its control much, much smaller.

-------

The scouts reported a three-mile end to the Manifestation Zone, even as the skeletal hands wedged in the Rift behind us slowly parted, and a great leering head rose slowly in between them, looking out over the mortal world with pitiless empty and soul-devouring eye sockets.

There weren’t too many targets, and the train of mortals leaving a swathe of unwhite behind them as they ran away was naturally something that attracted attention.

Alas for it, we were also the ones tossing up more and more interference, and with Interdictions up to prevent death by what happened next.

The sky darkened above us... and was immediately countered with Light erupting all around our formation, boiling and seething as it beat the darkness back and prevented it from slowing and swamping us. Still, the ground went black, and the shadows lengthened and began to congeal and gather and rise everywhere, all around us.

But, uh, around and AWAY from us, unable to pass the Interdiction raised about us and reinforced with vivus... vivus that exploded as the Gatling teams, Skyfire Funerals accented with vivus, and someone’s Chained Shards erupted wildly among them.

I preferred Darts because I didn’t like spending Mana, but this was reap and harvest time, and I could not allow anything to get in front of us. The end of the Manifestation Zone was about a half-mile ahead, so, it was teamwork time.

Walls of Light-infused Water flowed to our sides, intercepting blades of shadow and dispersing them in splatters of ink throughout them, blots rapidly devoured by surges of Light and vivus. Fire exploded down our sides as Sunny and Lord Quake helped contribute to the infernos, while I scythed down everything weak in front of us with Chains that didn’t miss... and isolated the creatures tough enough to withstand them for attention.

The Gatling crews promptly hosed those bastards down with streams of unwhite tracer fire from their Infused weapons.

The Earth mages concentrated on getting everyone out of there. Driver Sam had headed up the Earth Drivers for the teams, mastering the Adept-level Earth Wave for speed and power, getting everybody the fuck out of danger if at all possible, and they had taken his lessons very seriously. The whole fighting force was in a wedge formation tight behind me, magic interlinked and bulling forwards, while excess Earth mages were throwing up walls and berms to the sides and flanks to intercept any more magic being tossed our way.

Except for Sama, of course. She was totally fucking ignoring everything the Shades were doing, shadowblades and bolts and chains and stuff just dissipating like they didn’t exist when they hit her Null. The not-quite substantial creatures were popping like firecrackers as she started her Cleave Train through them, laughing wildly the whole time.

“A sea of scum, risen forth,

Whatever shall I do?

More scum that burns as the world turns,

The Land, She drinks Her stew!

TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”

I could tell just by the way the fucktard rising slowly over the trees shifted its attention to her that she was annoying the utter piss out of it with her no-selling all of its minions like that. Some were attempting to flit after her, but Sama was not moving slowly at all, and if they flowed in front of her, well, that’s where Cleave Trains did their best work.

Even some of the men who’d watched her butchering Aquatics for hours on end couldn’t believe the way she was tearing through the Shades around us, while still moving faster than we were. I just smirked and lit up the area ahead, wiping away the chaff in explosions of multi-hued Force and Fire, and the Gatling Teams chewed through the rest even as they writhed and burned.

---

It took less than a minute to come out from under the Domain it had erected, which didn’t stop the attacks coming from behind us. It did mean that we could turn around and return fire as we wished, the formation flowing past our tip into a reverse wedge as the glowing, infused Water Walls all shifted to take the attacks from behind, and sniping attacks ranged out to show our dislike of their continued efforts.

Then Sama took a hard right, zipped through the numbers seething at the edge of the Shade Duke’s Domain, and the attacks from within it dropped right off. We watched hundreds of eruptions follow her as she blew through a quarter-mile of enemies in about twenty seconds of obliteration, speeding up as she did so!

“And that, everyone, is why she’s Da Boss,” I informed everyone, quiet monosyllables of disbelief greeting the sight as she arced around after us, run-skating with casual speed that was overtaking us without any effort. A few shadow attacks flew after her and disappeared into the ripple of her Null...

Duke Fucktard over there exhaled annihilation, right down the trail of irritating vivus we’d left behind. There were flares, and then the vivus was snuffed, overwhelmed by the thickness and power of the Dark Magic, like dropping a ton of gasoline on a bonfire. It swept right towards us, and a lot of hearts leapt into throats...

“Pshaw,” I sniffed, and Sama was right in the way as she turned and sent a Null Strike straight up the middle of it.

You couldn’t even see the Strike unless you were looking at the Manafield, and watched the magic just melt away in front of her. That howling blast of congealed shadow, which could have just wiped us all away, split harmlessly to the sides of our tight wedge, turning the landscape on either side of us to bubbling black ooze as it did so.

The Paired Spellflares also hit the spell to either side of me, a rare opportunity to double up on something like that.

The vomited stream of darkness was unmade, the tight coils of Dark Mana were unbound, vivus ignited as the spell went wild, and then blew backwards every bit as fast as it had come, converging and spearing straight for the maw of the Shade Duke.

To its credit, it clamped its mouth shut in time, but that didn’t stop the Spellflares as the momentum sent them crashing into Duke Fucktard’s face. A horrid, soul-stopping wail of hate and agony assailed us as the spell blew past its skull and into the sky.

Its whole Domain trembled and almost collapsed, the vast army of Shades there reeling as if drunk.

Almost collapsed. Almost drove it back. It brought its elongated, inhuman head back down, its base warped smile burning around the edges and eaten away with vivus, clearly more ‘infuriated’ than ‘a widdle bit pissed’ now.

Presences were moving in from the north and east, Archmages hurtling here at all speed to contain the incursion. Lesser mages would be arriving as fast as they could, transport planes probably carrying a bunch to be deployed as paratroopers. More would be coming, including from the south.

In terms of cost, this operation was no longer worth it for the Realm of Shades. It had already harvested basically everything it could. The troops it was losing to vivus it was not going to get back. It could not hold the Rift open, nor repair the magic of the failed Ritual without help from this side... help that it and we had already killed off.

Did it recognize the vivus acting against it? Furthermore, did it care? If it was told to open this Rift, and failure wasn’t an option, did it matter? Especially if it thought it could just die and go back to the Netherworld?

Most of the lads wisely averted their eyes, not wanting to look at the thing, keeping up with the Light-Water Walls, and new Earth barriers that were slowly starting to display crystalline Runes and Patterns that sparkled, crackled with Lightning and Fire, and reinforced the other Walls.

Sama and I, not so worried. The Shade Duke tried to worm its way into my mind until the first Negapsi Reprisal crackled off into the distance, followed by two more as it kept trying, and it eventually stopped the attempts to invade my mind as its own Will recoiled in sharp pain at the rebuffs.

Sama just Cackled at it. Damn, that had to sound so annoying...

A Void Archmage crackled into existence to the flank of us, probably startled he wasn’t right above us, warded out by Interdiction. He nonetheless glided down towards us, staring at the Shade Duke over there with great trepidation, but already working on eroding the force of its Domain with his own power.

“General Tracey Fields of the Ohio National Guard!” he announced from above us, standing on air with effortless TK flight. “Who’s in charge here?” he growled, having someone to vent his ire on, and looking around for the tuneless Song that seemed to be influencing his magic.

“I’m sure that Shade Duke thinks it is,” Sama laughed up at him. “Sama Rantha, General. A pleasure to see someone finally made it here to help.”

His face twisted at mention of her name. “What did you bloody do, Miss Rantha?” he snarled.

“Stopped a Black Curia force from establishing a permanent Dark Rift in the middle of America?” she responded, completely unfazed, and just the slightest edge of her Cackle making the man twitch as he realized she was not taking his tone well. “Perhaps we should just have let them finish it and turn a fifty-mile radius of the Heartlands into Hell on Earth, by your tone?” she suggested, her words rapidly finding a razored edge that had the General twitching as they bit in.

Ki-enhanced speech can be pretty nasty to face.

“No! No, that is not what I meant.” He blinked as he looked over all our numbers. “You don’t have a single Archmage with you?” he blurted out in disbelief.

“There’s one standing on air above us right now,” Sama reminded him coolly, “yapping when he should be working.”

He flushed despite himself at her rebuke. “I am waiting for others to arrive while I assess the situation!” he bit off, his eyes looking east where something was coming in with the speed of a master Air Archmage.

“Well, the head and shoulders of a Duke of Shadow are wedged in the Rift, being kept open by its power,” Sama drawled slowly, in much the tone one used to lecture a child. “I imagine that if you beat down its Domain and pound on it a bit, it will lose the ability to hold on, get forced back down to the Underworld, and the Rift will close.

“Or, you know, you can sit around and wait while it Summons in ever more Shades and Undead, like it’s doing while you gab here. All the same to us. I’m not bringing my people back in there.”

He’d likely seen her cut that line of shadowstuff in two, the resulting lines of goo blazing merrily to either side of us and making that obvious wedge split right in front of the formation where she was standing. Also, when the blast had ignited it had shot right back along the path of destruction the magic had left behind, a line leading right towards the Shade Duke. Said bright white line was feasting merrily and not going out.

“I’m sure you did quite enough,” huffed the general, not amused by her in the slightest.