“That woman is scary,” Big John murmured, the Chaos Magic that had doomed the General vanishing as quietly as it had been put into the mists, which were even now being swept away by Air Magic from above blowing through from the north.

There was a company of Michigan Marines serving in the northern end of the harbor. They had worked out the whole Formation of initial attacks that had chewed up the initial waves of the attackers for remarkably little Mana cost for their effectiveness. The fact that the KIA team had been secret contributors to the effort was something that would be disguised by bringing in another company soon enough, and ‘superior coordination and magical resonance.’

It was easily two or three times the normal slaughter that had been expected, and so well ahead of the normal defensive effort the Shoreguard here would have accomplished. The shunting of the invaders’ thrust to the south didn’t materially change anything, merely moving the casualties taken from the north to the south side.

A push to the Aquatics’ thoughts here and there by Burt, and the scenario that Sama had designed had unfolded like a deadly flower opening up. The local merc teams began to get mauled, out came the General, the fighting escalated, in came the fog, Glenn applied the Chaos Magic as the Shoreguards panicked and abandoned their positions, and General Lance Blank and his escorts were delivered into the hands of the enemy.

“Five left. Four,” Glenn counted off, peering in that direction with the Divination Magic he so loved. “Three. Two. He’s the last one...” They felt his magic, saw the Lightning and the Fire combinations the twat was so proud of going off, trying to fight against massive Water and Psychic Magic flailing at him madly... “There he goes.”

The explosion of purple-red flames as he suicided in desperation, not willing to be devoured and his brain plumbed and his soul enslaved by a Krakenoid, was impossible to miss, even from a couple miles away.

The Psychic scream a second later would probably be blamed on the last eruption of death-spurred Lightning Magic plummeting from above, the towering Spears erupting madly and cooking everything in the area as they blew apart at the death of their controller. The lads knew better, aware that Sama had just assassinated the Krakenoid Queen under the cover of Blank’s death throes. Half-a-dozen others joined their queen as Glenn held up more fingers, more Aquatics out there perishing abruptly.

There were more Psychic Aquatics around commanding the attack, but the shocking loss of their Queen was proving devastating to morale and sanity, and the group could feel the invasion stall with experienced eyes.

A thunderous mass of Air, carrying a heart-felt father’s scream, came coursing down a dozen Atlanta city streets, sweeping the invaders into the air and chopping them apart with razored winds. It fell upon the breakwall defenses and thoroughly sliced apart anything outside the water there, including most of the earth and stone defenses. The wind blew the tide the Aquatics had ridden in on hundreds of paces back, chewing up anything in the way and hurling sprays of scarlet-stained seawater and scaled bodies hundreds of yards into the air. Waters and corpses came down roughly the same droplet sizes across a massive area of crimson rain.

“Would you say the old man is motivated now?” the Mick commented, as Tox bent the killing winds around their position up on a repair bay’s rooftop.

There was a flicker of motion and Sama was abruptly standing next to them, even the Void Magic users among them not feeling her arrive. The liquid red hue of her Blade flicked in her fingers and was slowly sheathed behind her, the only sound it made a delicate and satisfied ding-ting! in their thoughts. Grasped in her other hand was a rubbery-skinned, vaguely femalish, pale scarlet-skinned skull nearly three feet tall, cut off at the neck, lidless black eyes staring in astonishment, vivic flames merrily at work on the remains of its unappealing flesh.

Sama glanced over as The Mick’s phone rang. He looked back at her, and picked it up without looking at the name. “Yes, Mayor Coolidge?” he asked, Swampy’s Sound Magic continuing to make sure they were not heard, but everyone could listen. “A half-Emperor might be coming in? You’ve lost General Blank?” He fought to keep the smile off his face as he looked down at his shoes. “There’s no way I can bring in a full company that fast, Mr. Mayor. I can bring down me and the officers in for some fast reinforcements, if the money is right...” He looked up, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. “I’ll float it past them, sir. One second, please.”

He turned around, gave the rest of the team a big shit-eating grin, and even the reticent Tox joined in the return smile. “They said sure, sir. We’ll have to gear up, should be there in about ten minutes... Oh, you still want to hire a Redshore company? Mmm, well, now that the General and his team are all dead... oh, yes, it’s on the news already,” Sama was looking at it on her phone. Modern reporting up to the minute... with Coralost technology! “You add an immediate combat premium to that price, and we’ll negotiate further after this tide is done. Uh-huh, send out an email to validate it, and we’ll get things in motion. You’re welcome, sir. We’ll be there soon.”

He hung up, looking at the phone, then over at Sama Rantha, who just lifted a knowing eyebrow in his direction. “It’s like the fat fucktard just couldn’t wait to move once the General was dead,” he shook his head in bemusement.

“The fighting got within half a mile of City Hall, I think,” Swampy spoke up confidently. “He’s a Mage, but he’s probably hiding behind his desk right now after feeling that counter-pulse.”

“He’s never seen combat. He’s a third son of the Coolidge Family who has coasted by on connections all his life. He’s only Mayor because the Russlers, Blanks, Westenbaughs, and Schillers couldn’t agree on one of their own to take the job, and he’s more popular with the rank and file,” Sama informed them. “He does a decent job for a glad-handed smarmy fair-weather Brown, even if he’s just a paper Mage.”

“That was pretty damn scary how that all played out,” Red spoke up for all of them. “Very impressive, Captain Sama!”

“More Fuzzy than me. Tiny little nudges across a lot of people, especially once there’s a direction to go in, make him real good at getting what he wants to happen to happen, and Fae was contributing a whole bunch of charge-up hereabouts, using some batshit-crazy Fate-pushing behind Fuzzy’s Source influence. Still, it was a good plan, and who knows how much we actually needed those little touches. Probably kept a bunch of people alive, though.” Sama flipped her phone closed as she flashed them an absolutely killer smile, the sight of it enough to rock them back on their heels. “Well done, gentlemen. You got rid of someone who absolutely needed to die, get to sleep better at night, and now get to arrive and save the day!

“Make sure you put on a very big show. We want as little to be remembered about this twat as possible, and spinning it as he drew in at least one half-Emperor to attack us with his death throes means we’re going to heap more shit on his name. If he’d been there at the start of the wave, things would have gone much differently, too.

“In the end, he’s going to be known for dying as he lived, of ineptitude.”

The Mick put his hand on his chest, sighing dramatically. “We’ll just have to make do with that, Sama!” The others all nodded with appropriately falsely sad and pained expressions on their faces.

She winked at him, took a step, and was gone, so smoothly the Mick could only whistle at how she did it. He knew it was her Sword Tremble actually pulling off the Teleport, but damn, he couldn’t feel any dimension-bending at all!

“That’s as frightening as the two of them basically staging this whole event,” Red murmured, and the others grunted assent. Briggs was always there Warlording behind the scenes, and they could hear Sama Singing to the Michigan Marines who were in Allegiance.

“So glad she’s on my side,” the Mick said without batting an eye. “Now, you lazy, overpaid, gluttonous and slobby in-landers ready to go save the fine, valiant, spirited true warrior lads and lasses of Atlanta?” he asked theatrically.

“It’s cutting into my nap time, but sure!” Big John promptly shot back, his dark eyes gleaming. Lord Quake was going to get a lot of publicity shortly!

“I’ll get on the wounded quickly,” Red nodded, his eyes on the tide that had been pushed back by the Killing Wind, and was now surging to the return, crimson-hued and all.

Fists came out, stacked on one another, and a tingle of seven Elements of Magic swirled through them all, instantly harmonized with the ease of men who’d spent countless hours in a Seven Stars Formation together.

More magic crackled, and they were gone, Blinking to where they needed to go.

---

It would be later called the Crimson Clear of Atlanta, because of just how red the waters of the harbor grew from the numbers of Aquatics who died. Three Sages ended up clashing with a half-Emperor and two more King-Class Rulers, and although none of them died, the devastation wrought out to sea was extreme.

And yet, despite all the absolute carnage, within an hour after the battle ended the waters of the whole harbor were cleaner and more pristine than anyone could ever recall.

The KIA officer team came on duty with instant explosive results, rapidly taking over the defenses even while standing in the forefront of the fighting, issuing orders and making changes and shifts on the fly with the cool ease of those who seen all of this before.

It was the first time Tox’s Sundrop Lily Vine in its Ruler-evolved form made an appearance, winding a long path along the harbor breakwall where hundreds of flame-spewing Flowers blossomed and beamed death into the incoming Aquatics, basically securing the entire southern flank by himself as the rest of the team took it to the enemy, earning every bit of their pay.

Red’s Healing Phoenix Flames and Sundrop Seed nearly caused a few despairing souls to die of heart attacks when it swept over them, thinking they were goners, but instead the Fires began Healing their injuries with scalding speed. He and Sunny saved hundreds of lives outright within minutes, and then took over combat restoration duties, sending hundreds of wounded Shoreguards back into the fight quickly and starting on those with more severe injuries.

If a certain Sage noticed the things that his son had once tried to kill those eight men for were being used to save Atlanta now that he was gone, he said nothing.

Tier-5 Archmage Elements enhanced with various Seeds put on quite a display, and eight Archmages suddenly being on station while displaying such combat skill and fighting spirit meant the much-loathed General Lance Blank was forgotten about quickly.

If stories of what he and some of his cronies had done in the past started to circulate with great speed, that only meant that his empty-casket funeral was kept a private family affair. The Blank Family swore a murderous oath of vengeance against the Krakenoids who had killed him, and all Aquatics in general!

------

Much as they had feared, Atlanta’s Falcons, Braves, and Hawks suffered a great blow to their reputations after failing to defend the southern littoral, to the point where they had even abandoned their positions and had to be bailed out by Sage Blank himself. The Michigan Marines were loudly lauded as the lynchpin of the successful harbor defense, which had only been more successful the more the dead General Blank’s orders were sidestepped.

Warlord Briggs himself, commander of all the Redshore Marines, came in personally to oversee the redesign of the harbor’s defenses and overhaul the training regimen of the Shoreguards. Mayor Coolidge desperately wanted him to stay on and take over personal control and command of the Shoreguard, but he naturally demurred, noting how many locations he actually had complete command of and thus responsibility for.

Briggs did leave behind a Team Captain hailing from southern Illinois with over a thousand hours of littoral combat experience when he left. Captain Pawley took over the reins with remarkable ease. Although he was only a Mage, there was no denying his focus and drive, his grip on authority, or his adherence to his task. If the local Archmages didn’t like it, they swallowed their pride, sucked it up, and in the days and months that followed, they realized it was the best decision they could have made.