“Up. So, we’ve got at least one Planetar or its equivalent there?” Sama asked sharply.

“Yes. Most of the others have splintered off in different evolutions to help lead and direct the souls there.”

“Can you invite them down here? We can get them outfitted. I doubt there’s a competent Heavenly smith yet.”

I blinked. “That’s... actually not a bad idea? Although keep in mind that a Planetar is a Ruler-level Angel here, almost a half-Emperor. Celestials can get mind-bendingly powerful in this place, equal to or higher than Beasts, they are the equivalent of a Transcendent Bloodline. Their stat line is not what it was in the game, or anything even close to it.”

“Ah. So a King Planetar is a new and untried Angel. Got it.” Her eyes twinkled mischievously. “I bet all his opponents will be thinking the same thing.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure their default form is going to be quite large, if not Titan-sized. They can probably size-change fairly easily. I don’t know if they’ll know any morphing, however. It’s not a natural magic to this world.”

“Ah. Interesting. So, they might not even have any Valence Magic at all, and be unable to learn it?” Sama tapped her chin thoughtfully.

I kind of winced. “Correct. However, they should be able to access Silver, Healing, Blessing, and Divination Magic without any problem, and probably Plant and Light, too.”

“You should clarify ALL this stuff. If we want them able to act on this plane and able to fight well on others, they are going to need our help, at least until the gods get back and can actually Fiat them proper Gear and stuff for their status.”

“Yeah... and there’s an intermediary plane somewhere close by I could use to do the Summoning, if need be.”

“Funny. It’s like the Creator of the place was thinking ahead about certain necessities that might be required.”

“Sounds like an absurdly smart person or something. Should invite her over for tea or something, then shackle her down to pick her brain while I go out for a long vacation.”

“Tempting, but bird in hand and all,” Sama clucked at me.

“Curses!”

“Naturally. Curses is what I am best at ripping apart.”

“Oh, go mindlessly make some Blocks,” I groused at her.

“Some of us don’t yet have a hundred thousand Blocks worth of boredom behind them,” she reminded me.

“Yes, yes, it’s amazing and relaxing for you. It’s just more work on my stack.”

“It’s totally quantifiable progress. I think that’s why Briggs and I like it so much. Patience isn’t hard to come by, but this is just solid engineering that only we can progress, and the rewards, well.” She smiled toothily again. “A private dimension the size of a small moon! Oh, the things that might be possible!”

“The disasters we could breed!” I proposed forthrightly.

“The cataclysms we could cause!” she crowed in agreement.

“The destruction!”

“The despair!”

“The deranged duplicity!”

“The delicate dolor of dumbarse domination!”

“I’m gonna frame that and put it on your door, and tell Briggs you were talking about him!”

“You lie horribly, you know.” Sama reached over and patted my head consolingly. “Leave the lying to professionals.”

I rolled my eyes. “You hate to lie. You’d rather say the hateful things and then just beat people up if they can’t take them.”

“So proud! You get me!” Sama chirped happily, giving me a warm squeeze. I was much, much stronger than a normal human now, and my crystal bones still creaked.

Still, she had great hugs. The world got so calm and peaceful when held by her, nothing else coming in to distract me, zzzzzz...

---------

I hadn’t been checking up on this project much, because it was less important and relevant with the constant littoral combats going around. Now that the creatures of the sea had found out there was a huge amount of rot in their midst, they had naturally left off going after us for population control and turned on one another.

What it meant was a lot of mages were suddenly freed up to do other things. And the most important of those Other Things was getting rid of The Great Flood.

While our defenses were noteworthy and determined, we were outnumbered by the Aquatics, and without Wards and static, powerful defenses to weaken them, overpowered. While Humans could be safe if they were far enough inland, for the most part, millions had still died around the world as coastal lands around the world outside any Wards were invaded, and the tougher, stronger, and much, much faster Aquatics massacred any living creatures they found, and often a good chunk of the vegetation, too.

The Great Flood was empowering them and invigorating the Aquatics’ attacks on land. Many island nations had been overwhelmed and wiped out, only the most elite managing to flee the repeated attacks, a rare few able to withdraw far enough up and inland on island mountains with Wards up to keep at least some people alive while the Aquatics raged over the lands below them.

The Philippines and other Polynesian areas had been extremely hard hit by this. There were many, many islands and whole tribes and clans wiped out, and their homes would likely never be repopulated. I noted that a lot of the ones celebrated as tourist destinations and island paradises were among them...

The Great Flood had to go, and we were going to do it. The only help the Great Beasts were providing is that no Beasts were going to bother us while we did so.

The North American Breaker Pattern was located up in the middle of nowhere in the Great Plains. In another world, it would have been up on the North Dakota/Canada border. Here, in this world, it was just another stretch of endless golden plains of shoulder-high grass, with herds of oversized deer and buffalo grazing in the distance, hunted by equally oversized wolves and the occasional rare smilodon.

Really, there wasn’t a tree to be seen anywhere. It was all just a sea of grass.

Humans lost all sense of direction out here without some extreme mental discipline, which kept all but Mages and higher from coming out here, lest they get lost in the sea of grass and stay forever. The weather was also constantly windy, extremely cold in winter with massive snow, and scorching in the summer. Tornadoes and unexpected storms happened all the time, laden with Elemental Mana and totally capable of killing even mages with hailstones driven like cannonballs.

That wasn’t going to happen here, because Windcrasher, another Stormcrown Eagle, was perched over off to the side, overseeing everything and making sure no Beasts disturbed any of the work that had been done.

In addition, Plainstomper, the Buffalo Low Emperor, was in the area, looming at way over a hundred feet at the shoulder, basically a moving mountain. Between the representative of Thunderbird and the Emperor, nothing was going to bother this place, and there had quietly been people working away on the formation and getting the structures into place for when the Edict of the Emperors was completed.

All of the Emperors were invited to see how the Formation worked once it was completed, and likely they’d show up. It meant that in the future they might be able to make such a thing on their own, and they definitely had the power to get it working... which was entirely the idea.

The Ice Emperor would no longer hold the continents hostage with either the threat of an Ice Age or the Great Floods encouraging the Sea Tribes to attack!

The designs in all their three-dimensional glory were publicly posted and available for just about anyone who wanted to look at them to do so. Likewise, the location wasn’t secret, but getting here was not protected, only staying here once the workers arrived. So, that had kept the numbers down, which was fine.

But with the littoral attacks trailing away, now we had people who could do the work, without compromising any defenses. They’d come in by Portals, set up some temporary homes, and after consulting Emperor Plainstomper, put up some basic walls to encircle the area. They wouldn’t keep out even a charging herd of Bison, but that wasn’t why they were there. They were just to indicate the areas the Beasts shouldn’t wander into.

“Giordi!” I waved to the head engineer in charge of the work. He was a short fellow with French ancestry, a Michigan Mage with the Earth Element, which was his main focus and primary focus in his Wizardry, too. The carving here was taking a lot of detail, and was being done slower and to a more exacting level than was probably required, but a little cushion was a good thing.

“Lady Fae!” he called back with a wave and a smile. He was in awe of my ability to Shape Stone, despite already being one of the best on the planet at that himself. I still gave regular classes on the power and utility of the spell in Markspace. “Good to finally see you here, Fae!” he said, coming up to shake my hand with a strong grip.

“The project is in good hands.” I looked around with Awareness, studying everything... and naturally it matched what was in the Markspace and constantly updated. Giordi beamed with pride at the acknowledgement of his work. He had given orders to Archmages and even Sages during his tenure here, and took his job very seriously.

Also, it turned out Plainstomper Emperor had a weakness for watermelons. Giordi had a truck-load’s worth brought in every week or so, and got himself recognized by the big Imperial Bison.

Windcrasher wasn’t left out. Among other things, he got a ton of Imperial Dragon meat to eat recently, and the Stormcrowns who hung around us regularly got tons of Aquatic meat from the Littoral fights. Since they couldn’t swoop in to help us and hunt themselves, they appreciated the meals.

“Understand you have a problem with the feeder Formations?” I asked him, smile dropping into seriousness. Accumulating the Mana to do this was actually the most intense part of the whole process, and why the Formation was so big and hard to make.

His smile fell off, too, his brown eyes flinty. He’d seen a lot of littoral combat himself, driving up his Wizardry and helping his Earth magic develop even faster.

“Something is causing problems during the Mana accumulation.” He gestured at the walls around us, which were ringed with burning braziers of vivic fire no storm could put out. “We’re not getting the harmony we should, and I’m pretty sure it’s because there’s Dark Mana being injected into the matrix. Supposedly there’s no Dark Mages currently here contributing to the effort...”

“My, I can’t think of any association of criminally insane chowderheads who specialize in inventive uses of Dark Magic to cause pain, fear, misery, and chaos in the world,” I muttered, as I rode a hovering Earth Disk of his in that direction.

“If so, they’ve gotten past the senses of the Stormcrown and Plainstomper Emperor, and naturally I detected nothing.” He grimaced slightly at the weakness. “Damn, I wish I could do Divination magic!”

“Be content in your strengths, let others be content in theirs,” I patted his shoulder. “Elder Windcrasher, Plainstomper Emperor, I’m going to be identifying a possible infiltrator into this operation who has been concealing their Aura. I believe this may be very informative for you both.”

Just a whisper of the wind, and the attention of the half-Emperor Eagle and the Imperial Bison were focused subtly around me.

=======

If you Google up ‘geographic center of North America’, they are right there. There’s just no Humans around there, and so no states.