I moved off by myself and started spinning up the Weather Summoning Magic. It was magic that crossed multiple Traditions and the Elements inside them, so the Theurgic boost to it was very impressive.

It technically wasn’t a lot of storm to prepare, given the Caster Level I had. I just didn’t want to warn the Undead of the fact that Heaven was going to fall all over them. So, build it up slowly and subtly, just another squall passing by in this equatorial nation, evening rains as common as the moon rising, only they were going to get something a lot more powerful when these skies opened up.

So, while Briggs, Sama, and a bunch of Mace-waving, Staff-bearing Undead Hunters got ready to really make somethings’ lives uncomfortable, I got the magic into place.

-------

Most of the Elements that people could use actually didn’t have very good options for stealth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones best at it were the Dark Magicks, especially Shadow. That was especially true for avoiding the magical Awareness all magical creatures gained as they grew more powerful.

Wizardry, happily enough, had no such issues. There were many, many options for stealthy infiltration and approach, anti-divinatory defenses totally capable of avoiding Awareness, and communication and sensory options that wouldn’t alarm any watchers.

So, the group didn’t go in with Staves blazing, because that would have been stupid. No, no. Mass Invisibility spells, a spread of Astral Wards and Non-Detection, spells to suppress scent and sound and even to calm the winds were trotted out as they flew or Cloudskated straight in over the slowly-dying trees to their target.

The Dark Mana was infecting the formerly vigorous plants of the Graveyard, once grown rich on the leaking Mana from the bones and flesh of deceased Noble Beasts. The ones that were mobile were now aggressive, lashing out at anything that lived, which meant all the minor animal life had been slain or drawn off. The other plants around such Plants had been destroyed as they rotted out from within, becoming something far different than what they had been.

Here and there were areas of golden sand... except they were not sand, they were the finely ground yellow bones of the dead, polished and gleaming with necroic energy, spreading like a desert of death through the green and the silent, oily waters that were also condensing the Dark Mana from the Netherworld into pools of poison and worse.

There were no aerial patrols, but they saw plenty of great Animated skeletons, whatever dark spirits were empowering the white and yellowed bones making necroic energy burn at the joints and in the eye sockets, slowly drinking in power from the Pyramid ahead of the group in a slow, patient attempt to regain some of the true power the bodies they were inhabiting had possessed in life.

The area around the Pyramid itself was a carpet of golden sand, an undercurrent of crawling shadows beneath it that made them all snarl silently to see it.

Those were the unmistakable Sands of the Pharaohs, the declaration of their Domains and territories, slowly expanded over thousands of years as their harvesting of Humans and Beasts alike grew and grew again. The one around the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx extended for miles, all of it harvested from dead Humans...

They could also all feel the power emanating from the golden tip of the Pyramid, both broadcasting necroic energy and calling out to the spirits of the dead for many, many miles around the Pyramid. Whatever died for a great distance around this edifice was doomed to be drawn into the Pyramid and be rendered down for power and fuel, or turned into yet another slave of the Undead Pharaonic Sages who dominated them.

There were legions of undead employed around the Pyramid, both creatures of Shadow in mockeries of human form and clothing, and many skeletal corpses, wrapped mummies, or lumbering zombie behemoths.

Joining them were more than a few of the Medusa species, both Scorpion and Snake variety, tauroid creatures with power in Earth and Curse magic, and perhaps Psychic, Sound, or Poison, depending on the type and how much they had mutated.

There were a great number who were Commander-level, but only a few who were Noble. It said something about the true power of the forces inside the Pyramid...

Very tellingly, the Archmages and any Sage-level Undead were not in evidence. Standing guard duty was something for their minions, after all, while they enjoyed being at the top of the undead stack, one way or another...

-I am so going to enjoy this,- Briggs /murmured into the Marklink, Endure having stopped thumping automatically so they would not be detected.

-Ho, Stygian Swordmasters.- Sama’s eyes were gleaming as she picked out a precisely-disciplined unit of shadow humanoids in armor, all of them armed with blades at least as long as they were tall. -They think swordplay is how much Dark Mana you can gather into a Sword Wind.-

-No need to bombard the armored Shades with ranged attacks, everyone,- Briggs /told everyone, and they all fought back grim smiles. Everyone knew where Sama was going to be delivering a lesson on real swordsmanship!

-Haven’t seen any Vultures of any kind. Perhaps they deploy with the Phantoms from inside?- Burt /conjectured coolly as they swooped in towards the top of the Pyramid. They were all on Disks seconded to them by Lady Fae, with dozens of extras along for the ride. Why? Because they would make a convenient walkway around the top of the Pyramid!

-Awww, that’s just too bad for them, then,- Sama /mused aloud. A lack of flying forces was something they were only going to enjoy.

Hackles rose on their skin as they closed in, but the Death Wards all of them had gained long ago, active on their Bracers, made sure it did not harm the living, even if they swore at the feeling of dead Spirits, probably just randomly slain minor beasts, seemed to slide by them, helplessly drawn into the Netherworld Vortex within the Pyramid. Identifying the array of narrow passages leading into the Pyramid through which the spirits were harvested was quite easy.

-Special project. Someone drop some Vivic Eternal Lights in those things and stick ‘em tight,- Briggs /ordered as his big boots touched down. Disks zipped around in a walkway about ten feet below the tip of the Pyramid. Briggs looked at the golden cap of the thing, plainly carved with a great deal of skill and invested power, and just grinned.

Burt, Glenn, and Big John put their heads together, rapidly coming out with a meshy spring-ball anointed with Sovereign Glue that would open up after a few seconds, anchoring them to the edges of the tubes down and out of sight.

Any spirits being drawn past were going to hit the vivus and be immediately sent to the afterlife, do not pass Go, do not collect additional necroic energy, as the power which bound them Burned away. The owners of this Pyramid were not going to be receiving any additional power for being in here until they figured out what was happening with the vents... and if he did things right, they’d just think it was a consequence of him blasting out chunks of the Pyramid.

Briggs took an invisible stroll around the top fifty feet of the four-hundred-foot edifice. It was tall enough to be seen over some of the smaller Graveyard trees from a distance, the golden ‘sands’ of yellowed bone about it making it very obvious from overhead, at least once a spotter got past the omnipresent cloud cover and the persistent mists from the lifeless waters.

He marked important Runic circuits that deserved his attention, Endure thrumming with eagerness in his grip to be about reducing this thing’s effectiveness way, way down.

The most important point, however, was going to be setting up an Interdiction and feeding it with a lot of vivus. That was going to make it impossible to open up the passages to the extradimensional pocket plane occupied by these Pharaohs inside their Pyramids, realms halfway between those of the living and the dead where they reigned with all the power of gods over their servants and minions.

The vast, vast majority of their troops, servants, slaves, and minions were inside that pocket plane, toiling away for the glory of their masters for eternity, death just an unending torment, and even destruction just meant hanging around until a corpse was regathered and supplied them so they could be returned to slavery.

It was an absolutely horrible thing to imagine, the afterlife nothing but torment and enslaved toil to the powerful who made it there before you, and it had been going on in the Egyptian Death Zones for four thousand years.

Briggs’ eyes flickered as he thought about Fae and some of the things she had told him about the world his inherited memories came from, the sheer number of undead that had claimed it, and the war to wipe them all out as all those billions of undead came for the living.

Just the look in her eyes when she talked about undead of any kind was an indication of just how seriously she took their presence here, and the sheer array of Holy powers she had to act against them was immense.

King Magogo had been such a pain to deal with because his Skeleton had ended up with nearly as much Mana as he had while alive, and so they’d had to stunlock the Skeleton with Disruption magic and Burn through all the Dark Mana trying to keep the thing undead and moving.

The undead here wouldn’t have nearly the same level of cushioning or protection, and so Lady Fae was going to own them, as were the teams of Undead Hunters using the most advanced Formation Magic in the world, teams of seven emulating spells a whole Tier higher in effect when working together.

Seven times the Mana for forty to eighty times the power was a huge benefit!

Everyone got into positions, illusions cloaking them from the unaware forces below, even as they slowly, carefully, and grimly got to work putting all sorts of special surprises into place for the big reveal.

------

-We’re good to go,- Briggs /told me, and I just /nodded back in reply. My Wings popped, and I rose into the sky, leaving Mighty Turk behind with King Kojo and shooting up rapidly to a point where I could see the golden capstone of the Pyramid in the distance.

Injecting a Dispel Item with 343 points of Mana, an Archmage-tier spell, was more than enough to extend the range that far. Above and behind me, arcing around the valley, towering storm clouds surged and billowed in dark whorls high into the sky as they closed on the valley of the Graveyard, but the energies that bubbled within them weren’t part of any natural Storm.

Target lock established! Pyramid recognized! I could feel the presence of the thing through my Title, the network of energies that worked simply because of it using the proper form... but nothing like those that empowered mine. These seethed with blood sacrifice and harvested souls wrung free of vitae and used to infuse a monument to arrogance and horror with magical energy and the essence of doomed souls.

I launched my spell at that network of energy and the Domain it had established.

Argent Magic flared and crossed the sky like a bolt of Heavenly lightning, smashing into the golden stones of the side of the thing and shocking the heck out of the undead guards standing about on duty in the forest at the attack coming from nowhere. The more powerful and responsive instantly braced for an attack, turning in the direction the attack had come from, but also looking back to see the whole Pyramid instantly burst out crawling with writhing serpentine coils and discharging balls of Silver energy.

The Domain of the Pyramid that was protecting them popped like a soap bubble. The pressure it exuded, comforting to the undead, unsettling to the living, vanished instantly. Suddenly the sunlight wasn’t shadowed, the light was beating down on them and undead were hurriedly calling on Shadow Magic to protect themselves, even as the towering clouds thundering faintly in the distance collapsed on them and began sweeping across the Graveyard at distinctly magical speed.

---

Atop the Pyramid, Briggs put his foot down. A burst of Source Sun Aura flared out and over and completely encapsulated the Pyramid, even as the feedback and disruption from a Dispel Item powerful enough to momentarily disrupt an object weighing millions of tons dissipated.

With the same motion, Briggs wound up, tensed, and uncoiled so fast his Hammer couldn’t even be seen. He smashed Endure into the capstone of the Pyramid, and quite literally knocked the block off, a massive crater in the soft gold impacted, cracking, and sizzling with Dark energies also getting eaten by hungry vivus as the keystone for delivering the Pyramid’s power went flying like a toy, not a solid lump of metal weighing hundreds of pounds.