A flash of Light far behind the lines lit up everything, even halting the onrushing tide of Aquatics in place for a second at the display of some incredibly powerful magic. The Mick and Hopper spun around to stare at it, hackles and feathers rising, as that magic was NOT one of theirs!

Silver filled with starlight flashed, and the Light seemed to implode, flashing back to the source of the magic and erupting with a crazy-quilt, reality-bending mixture of energies and twisted objects spun out of nowhere as the Mana went Wild.

The Mick knew very well how that felt, as he’d been subjected to a Spellflare dozens of times. The trick to enduring the spell was letting the Wild Magic expand without resistance and let it sweep your magic away, instantly severing your connections to any active spells and not letting it bore into you.

Instinctively try and use Mana to fend it off, like you did almost all hostile magic, and it was going to be painful!

There was a thread of Silvery Light that closed on the wild flaring at the center of that display, and then he saw the dual grey-and-silver spheres of magic ripple out from them.

-Swampy,- Lady Fae /stated grimly in the Tactical overchat, so everyone could hear her, -we’re coming down. This fuckhead of an Angel would like some pointed arguments there to greet him.-

He could FEEL the outrage pouring out, hitting the Markspace and instantly swelling again, his own adding to it with the sickening feeling in his stomach turning into more burning rage.

There were a hundred thousand fucking people taking shelter behind these walls! It was nothing compared to the true big cities, sure, but the Church had fucking tried to assassinate Lady Fae in the middle of defending innocent civilians... again!

He wanted to find old Father Dent and throttle the bastard spouting things for his hypocritical shell of a religion, but it had been years ago, and the Mick had not set foot in a church for over a decade now. He’d rather spit on a Church of the Light than enter one, now... a circumstance that was rapidly becoming a shared world phenomenon, especially in any community that was actually getting raided by Aquatics, or who had lost people fighting in them.

Two thousand years of helping unite the people of the world, crashing down when it came to light what they were really doing. Lady Fae was considered the devil incarnate by the Synod, condemned literally as the Anti-Prophet who was going to deliver the world into the hands of the devils of the Netherworld... and she’d done a pretty good job of it.

Of course, the millions of braziers of vivic flame she was helping set up all around the world were also fighting directly against said Dark Magic, and some of them were still burning in Churches of the Light, since their ability to cleanse Dark Magic was unmistakable.

Hypocrisy at its best!

A narrow beam of light, something like a searchlight sweeping the area with turns of the head, whipped past and around, and stopped facing something further inland. There was a burst of flame, and then one of the distant dots was moving out of the combined Interdiction and Stillflight Field. The instant it reached the edge of them, there was another Silver flash of movement that extended off into the distance.

-Taking out the spotters. Carry on, I’ll be back shortly,- her always-calm, soothing /voice came to everyone, the echoes of the Sublime Chord’s notes dancing around it as they rose in a newly razored edge that he instinctively realized as touching on Justice and Truth.

It took a lot of time listening to her Sing to recognize the shadows of the Virtues in her Song. The Three Big Words Lady Fae knew were easy, of course, but He was hearing the shadows of others over time, as Good wasn’t just a simple trio of Virtues...

He watched Swampy’s Mark shift instantly across the field, there to meet a blinking purple dot shining in warning, descending haplessly and helplessly from the sky as that Archmage of the Synod tried to figure out how to survive his descent. Chaos Magic couldn’t warp any rules in the combined Fields, nor could Void Magic divert stuff. There was no flight, no telekinesis, no dimension-jumping, massive interference with matter movement, and not even any Summons could come out, while Magic Wings and similar Equipment were useless.

He might get lucky and figure something out, but Swampy was there to make sure something like that didn’t work, either. He’d bring up an acre of specially-hardened razor-tipped crystalline nails to meet the falling fellow.

“Fold a rock on top of the fucker and nail him down, Bjorn,” he said softly, perfectly aware that Swampy could hear it a mile away.

The Synod’s assassin was not going to survive this. After all, they only needed his skull, and if it had a couple of extra holes in it, that was perfectly fine. The Golden Hag Sama Rantha loved contributing to the cause in her own special way, and he had just felt the iced-steel touch of her deadly interest flit past him at this development.

Clearly, the Synod was not getting the message, but they had legions of fanatics who were NOT saving the world, so the Mick supposed that was only to be expected. Or rather, they were DEMANDING obeisance to the Church to intervene and protect locations that needed help...

Given they had the largest number of Sages and half-Sages of any organization or government in the world, the Holy City of Rome was basically perfectly safe from any of the Aquatics this side of a High Emperor attacking them. If people refused to believe in them and their mission, well, they just had to prove they were a Church and their mission was more important to them than money, or the lives of other Humans, right?

The Mick watched reds, oranges, and yellows winking out on the HUD, set himself a new target, and Hopper zipped into motion towards it, running over walls and bouncing between columns and stacks placed just so.

The Aquatics could use them too, but when they did, they just got themselves picked off.

He brought a Thunderbolt down on a cluster of green Piscean fish-men - was that a grouper scale pattern and head shape? - nine feet tall, watched them get blasted and then shredded by St. Elmo’s own voltage, calmly reloading as he spotted for the nearest gunners, who moved into the angles required and quickly mowed the smaller members of the new breed down.

Then he was off again, waves of red, orange, and yellow coming in from the sea on the HUD above him, firearms cracking, and those waves of red, orange, and yellow vanishing as volley fire and target selection did their things...

A Thunderbird Mage, bringing the Lightning!

--------

I watched Mighty Turk and Hopper pacing through the fallen bodies side by side, Monkey Drumming and Woodpecker Hammering almost in tandem as they dispatched wounded Aquatics wham-wham-wham peck-peck-peck. The Bearded Emperor Marmoset was now as tall as a short human, all golden of fur.

Lord Quake popped out of nowhere, something he’d been doing for much of the battle, and strafed down the thickest line of Aquatics, massive gouts of steam exploding behind him as his flame did its thing.

The instant his breath was done, he vanished. Big John, invisible atop Reynard, who was racing through the air having great fun, sent the most-identifiable Dragon in the world back into his Summoner Space to recharge his breath in safety and consideration while shifting position to the next hapless batch of Aquatics now falling back from the land.

The Sea Rulers like to use them some long-range attacks from the horizon, I mused, watching the sky explode as the misty claw they tried to hide up in the clouds lit up with a Spellflare. The Mick promptly crashed all of his Call Lightnings and dumped the full spread of them down the wildfire that blew towards the horizon, and the eye-popping discharge was accompanied with a scream that would have done Thunderbird Himself proud as it boiled out there from the Seething Seas King overseeing this particular disaster.

The eruption and disruption in the Water Magic blew past us over the ocean a few seconds later, an ethereal wave shattering a faint grip on the magic as it sprayed past us.

It was a signal for a full-scale retreat of the Aquatics. As the shattering magic swept past them, the remaining sea-dwellers paused, and then as one receded into the corpse-strewn, misting waters, vanishing from sight and fleeing back out into open waters with all speed.

“Earth and Fire Mages! Final Fangs!” I announced, slamming my hands together and pushing.

Every person who knew their Earth and Fire Magic pulsed the highest amount of Earth Mana they could, and lifted.

Sparkling crystalline teeth rose from the sea a mile out there, poking through the waves like waiting fangs of doom... which is exactly what they were.

The Wall of Fiery Desiccation doing double damage to Aquatics extended between the teeth, inflicting a horrible toll on the fleeing Aquatics as the Salt-Seed-fed Flames tore the water out of their bodies and the fires ripped the rest apart.

The sea out there was boiling as the fleeing horde streamed between the Final Fangs, and the weak were torn apart and died badly.

The spell only lasted about three minutes, but that was all it had to, as the surviving numbers of the Aquatics swam very quickly, and died regardless.

If they had been invading, they could have just taken the time to wait out the spell or break down the Fangs from a safer distance. As it was, their flight cost them many more thousands of dead, and the sea out there was fairly boiling with vivus consuming the slain.

“Down!” We all released at the same time, and the Earth Magic receded as the Fire between the Fangs vanished.

I rose into the air, shooting for some altitude, extending my Awareness out in that direction.

The Seething Sea King, a six-limbed Arthropod of some sort, felt my eyes on it, and turned slightly to look back in my direction with lidless black eyes. Its crusted shell was blackened and fused and sporting a nice big crack in it right now. Some of its stronger followers were clambering over it, puking up something to seal the crack in its shell, doubtless why it was still on the surface.

Well, fuck that thing. It wanted to spare itself some pain? I wasn’t going to fight the thing underwater, but if it was just going to sit on the surface...

-Reynard, horizon!-

Light flashed, wafted me across the leagues, and suddenly I was a thousand feet over the startled neo-Crab King below me.

I let it have all the Shards.

I’d had to upgrade to Greater Shards, as the base spell, even with Delimits, couldn’t reach my boosted Caster Level now. Since I had been leaving damage behind, Delimited Greater Shards did the job now, with a full twenty-five of the things manifesting off Perpetual Spell and riding a lot of boosts down.

They pounded down onto that crack in the King’s shell, not incidentally blowing apart the Commanders and their repair work at the same time. Paired Admixed, Echoing cycling rapidly into the mix with Fastcast, and Mage Mana turned every single Shard spell into a seething lance of plunging force more powerful than an Archmage’s Sword of Light as they rifled down into the Beast’s weak point.

Slivers of a carapace far stronger and more reinforced than steel blew in all directions to the pulsing beat and glory of the Sublime Chord. Residual energies plunged within, guided by Banespell, and began to ravage everything inside this creature. Blooding accentuated by the Mana turned those injuries into something that would Curse this bastard for years and longer.

The Commanders around tried to reach me with their magic, but a Globe of Invulnerability V+3 completely defied their magic, and their little water bullets and wave razors splashed off the globe of Fuck No around me as I poured down rail gun loads of Shards in an unending shell-rending display of prismatic energies!