Publio Colignistroni’s wife, a half-Sage of wicked reputation, was probably the first Archmage to be killed by a Warhammer reducing her head to the thickness of canapes for the past few thousand years. Nobody used melee weapons nowadays, after all.

The Great Family of the Colignostroni, who even the Synod stepped warily around and dealt with as necessary evils, had suffered the kind of bloody reversals that legends are made of. Would-be allies, underlings, rivals, and enemies looked on in cold fascination as members of the Family died, one after another, somebody out there not giving a flying fuck about their power or the consequences of killing off a Great Family.

Sometimes it was by accidents right out in the open, no magic at work, yet so artistic and dramatic that nobody thought they were just bad luck at work. Getting smashed into by a car, only for a pane of glass fallen from a twenty-story window to cover two hundred yards and come slashing by to take off your head just as you got back to your feet?

How does an Air Mage fall off a cliff and die, smashed to broken bits on the rocks below? A Poison Mage and their assistants all die in a lab explosion, faces twisted horribly and flesh melting in the face of the vapors released, which had to be incinerated with incredible haste or risk taking out an entire city nearby?

Smuggling ships went missing, lost at sea. Airplanes dove into mountainsides. Scions simply vanished, never to be seen again. Secret accounts were emptied and lawyers committed suicide, leaving behind damning confessions which started three other blood feuds, even as their elders were being cleaned off one by one.

Whole buildings exploded and caved in, burying branches of the Great Family entirely, and still no magic was found to track and trace anyone by, only twisted and broken shattered corpses left behind in the infernos that resulted.

Sama had never had any reservations about killing Sages, especially those who preyed on their own and treated the lives of those they were meant to protect like chaff and cattle, playthings to be used and abused at their whims. If that meant Humanity had fewer defenders, tough dogshit! Those Sages weren’t defending anything worth having, anyway...

Tremble’s mastery of Teleportation magic was extreme, given how much she could practice it with Sama’s incredibly deep reserves of normally-unspendable Mana. A good chunk of Sama’s Mana had to be reserved to pay for Soul Magic Tattoos, Soul Feats, and the benefits of her Rantha Bloodline, but the colossal capacity of the Galaxies and Universes of this world left many, many thousands of Mana Points free to be used to ‘port around.

Sama ghosted into the bedroom of Sage Ojibwae, Titled as the Black Thorned Sage. Gabon definitely needed him to defend itself from the Aquatics, even if all he did was defend his palatial home in Libreville. It freed up other mages to protect other locations, helping one another out while leaving Libreville to Ojibwae and his stooges.

Mmm, this meant Libreville was going to lose its Sage. That didn’t bode well for the citizens of Gabon.

On the other hand, wasn’t that the Violet Cardinal of the Black Curia, looking like the wicked seductress that she was?

Sama stared at the two, cloaked in Hide in Plain Sight, ki drawing shadows across her, leaving no scent, making no noises, generating no body heat, the magic around her silent and still as the grave. Even two people as Aware as the two dozing lovers were couldn’t feel her presence.

Tremble flushed Ruby-red, and Sama moved.

---

“Damn!” Glenn swore, flinching at what he was looking at. Everybody tensed despite himself as he clutched at his eye.

There was no reaction from the building nearby. Nobody else said anything aloud, and Glenn looked quite embarrassed that he had.

-Just saw Sama take the woman’s head. Or rather, didn’t see her. Just a flash of red and a blur of motion, and that Sage is still clutching onto a headless corpse right now,- he /hissed out locally to the others.

-She meant what she said. Like she always does,- the Mick /said fatalistically. -Tie off that Eye and hook it into your Visual File. You know she’s going to want all of us to see his face when he wakes up and realizes what happened. Shouldn’t take long as she cools off... how’s she not spurting blood?- he /asked professionally.

-Alchemical coagulant on Tremble, instantly seals the wound. She gets the sap for it from Lily,- Tox /informed everyone.

-Gotta love a woman who cleans up after herself,- Bjorn /pointed out, and was instantly pelted with pebbles from all directions for that observation.

-Talking about me?- Sama /interjected, suddenly standing among them, a new, serenely-sleeping head of a beautiful African woman hanging by long braids from her hand.

-Naturally,- the Mick /replied without batting an eye, earning a flash of a smile from her as she held out the new head for him.

-I think this is the Violet Cardinal of the Black Curia. I believe we’ll find out soon enough.-

-Don’t you ever get tired of adding to your workload?- Red /wondered for all of them, and she just laughed softly.

-Back to Coralost, we’ll get the Whites started on our trophies.- Nobody had any objections to that. The White Necromancers were chosen specifically as pursuers of justice, and this sort of thing was their job. The Mick just nodded and they all piled off the roof of the store they were currently standing on, back to the ground at the back of the shop.

Temporary ground Circles rose up around all of them. The Mick wasn’t quite good enough to spin up the Portals to anywhere that Lady Fae could, but a Teleport that could cross the entire world, going back to the Great Seal at Coralost made precisely to accept these kinds of spells?

Void Magic glowed from the Sigils beneath the KIA team and Sama, wafted up over them, and then swirling winds erased the now-empty Circles brought up from the packed dirt, leaving no sign that anyone had been there at all.

------

The Elephant’s Graveyard, East of Gabon...

It was millions of undead, and tens of thousands of Medusae, Snakes, and Scorpions. The vast majority of the creatures were naturally Warrior-Level, guided and led by Commander-level Creatures, with the occasional Rulers looming over everything and guiding them.

Twenty-eight Shards Chaining through twenty-six different targets was over seven hundred separate impacts, which didn’t include the Bursts which could really tear apart any tight clusters of them swarming unwisely around one another.

One Mana, to wipe out over seven hundred Warrior creatures with one flight of Shards, ignoring Paired, Admixtured, and Echoed, which could each double that number.

I always left the Fastcast option open in case of spell ambush, which happened pretty much all the time after the first display of open brute force on their end had failed. Nothing said ’Hello, how the Hell are ya?’ like a Paired Spellflare into the teeth of the two most powerful incoming spells, and then Countering a third one while reflecting it back at its tosser.

Greeting the Pharaoh had been my primary job as soon as my Mana was back up. Playing King of the Hill (Hell?) was alive and well in magic-dom here, where the big guys fought one another, whoever won capable of cleaning up the little guys with much less effort. You either stopped the major power of the other side or you were going to get mauled, it was just the truth of things.

The Pharaoh had flooded the area about its Pyramid with millions of its servants. Their collective magical ability was no joke, especially the half-Sages among the undead and the handful of Noble Beasts he had with him.

It was not enough power to dare the collective might of the King Beasts gathered around the Graveyard and looking on with murder in their hearts. The collective power of the Tribes that could be summoned by said Kings was enough to give even the Pharaoh pause.

The golden neme-adorned twat ascended in a Chariot pulled by flaming skeletons, looking pretty cool and dramatic for a three-thousand-years dead mummy. Its armies were marching out below it, its commanders were bowing obsequiously to it, it was taking dramatic spins through the air and defying the condemning eyes of the onlooking Beasts...

And about then a four-fold set of Split Shardrays smashed into its fancy magically-protected undead flaming horses, blew them to less than powder, and Chained on right through to smash into it and its suddenly un-drawn chariot.

Undead were the #1 enemy I was optimized to fight. Fiends came close, but they weren’t as vulnerable to Augmented Healing, Imbued Healing, Positive Edge, and Necropotence as Undead were. Add in the power of Disruption and its double damage plus potential instant kill, a Dreadskull of my own, Wrath’s Anathema to Undead, the Sacred Metas increasing spells a die size and adding +50%, Shards emulating Holy Water for some additional Alchemical pep bonus damage, and it went without saying that I had a lot of Holy Water available for this occasion.

And because it was a twat, I expended one of my Smites on it, too.

I blew that Pharaoh and its gaudy golden flying chariot back across the valley, crashing both into its own Pyramid, steaming and sizzling and making a nice crater of impact on the stones of its own domicile, doubtless wondering when it had ever been hit so hard.

Its advisors and minions naturally leapt to its defense... but they weren’t Sages. That was a huge problem... for them!

Sure, sure, turning themselves into Undead made them impossibly tough and strong, and they got tons more Mana, too, effectively meshing the strengths of Beasts and Humans. The fact the change also made it very, very difficult for them to improve further didn’t matter to most of them. They were near the top of the power curve anyway, and since they weren’t going to die of old age or grow weaker, their power and positions in the afterlife were assured.

But the magical defenses of all Casters in this world were so, so dependent on Tiering. Using lower-tier spells against a higher-Level Caster was an exercise in frustration as that 1/10th power jump did its thing.

It got worse when said enemy Caster was loaded up on natural Immunities, Spell Resistance, Elemental Resistances and Protections, had a tripled-up Death Ward, and just to be contrary, Interdicted the area again so the Undead couldn’t try any Summoning nonsense without ruinous Mana expenditures... and I could just Banish the creature back to where it came from with a literal Word, which I was sure they wouldn’t appreciate.

The Pharaoh had been a Human Sage, so it had five Elements. Unfortunately for it, one of those Elements was the Undead Element, which was basically a modified Summoning Element, and so useless right now, only good for supporting its Domain. It only had its other four Elements to fall back on, which still gave it a massive Mana advantage... except one of those Elements was Fire, which was totally useless against me, and, well, I had Argent Magic.

Was I soon taking on four high-end spellcasters at once? Yes, yes I was.

They couldn’t instant-cast the higher-order spells. Oh, they could get them off quick, there was no doubt, but requiring six to twelve seconds meant they had overlapping periods of spellcasting.

Paired Greater Arcane Fusions meant throwing out four mummy-blasting Counterspells or Dispel variants was totally and completely viable. I’d catch one in a Counterspell effect, totally turn it back on the Caster and ADD the Spellflare to it, and the others I’d just Spellflare on them in midspell.

I didn’t even have to add full Mana to the effects on my end. The underlings were Archmages, and my Spellflares had more Spell Penetration power than all but the loftiest of Sage spells. 343 Mana was enough for any and all of their spells, without any doubt.

That much Mana only took out 1/7th of the Pharaoh’s spells, however. That was also perfectly fine, because as soon as the spell lost any one of the seven Star Palaces that made up its Starry Heavens, it dropped right back down to an Archmage-tier spell, and I could tank the gutted spell with aplomb.

That left my Fastcast option open for additional instant pummeling or Countering the attacks of the Medusae, Serpent, and Scorpion Rulers down below assisting them, who also wanted to contribute. They were trying to use Earth Magic to drag me down to the ground, but alas, it wasn’t Stillflight, and heavy gravity effects could be annulled with light gravity and reverse geo-magnetism; too bad, so sad!

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Word of the day: That headdress that Egyptian Pharaohs all wear? It’s called a neme!