The Dome in front of us exploded.

I didn’t know how long it took, because it didn’t matter. We were sitting in Formation in a surging of White Water, accented by hundreds of coiled and twisting streams of more intense vivus streaming off and past the Aquatic armada around me. Everyone was in a patient fugue state, sitting on the edge of a razor, Awareness out and holding.

Divinatory timesight crinkled. Alarms went out. Ancient minds crystallized to full and preternatural awareness. Probably a billion points of Water Mana boiled in the water, and the Dome in front of us blew apart as the massed waterpower of the enemies within came blasting out to attack us.

The three main attacks were two scything razors of Shadow-force and a blast of pure and utter Death Magic, any of which could have instantly killed a Low Emperor, gravely wounded an unaware True Emperor, and inflicted a severe wound on any High Emperor.

They were following the all-out attacks from a rebelling Sea Dragon, Shark, and Squid True Emperor, rebels from The Sea Dragon’s Court making their last stand here. The combination stood a good chance of killing The Sea Emperor, and at the very least dealing Him a ghastly wound.

A Twinned Arcane Fusion with two Spellflares, a Fastcast version, and a Twice Fastcast Arcane Fusion with two Greater Shards detonated those magical attacks with a prismatic explosion of WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM as I blew through over twenty-eight thousand Mana in an instant and tore the structure of those spells apart.

Lightning exploded down from above, carrying with it Fire and Ice Mana, the Sublime Chord dancing with all sorts of Notes for an instant as uncounted Lances of Ice condensed on solid Water, the many Ice Emperors here grabbing the conjoined Mana and pouring it into His spell just as He opened His mouth and Roared.

It was a Psychic Thunder attack of terrifying proportions, blowing ten million Mana in an instant as it slammed into the minds and souls of the enemies clustered in front of us, and then superdense Ice impossibly crackling with Fire and Lightning smashed into them with all the force of a High Emperor’s wrath.

A hundred million Mana unleashed in just one combat spell.

Nothing under a Ruler was going to survive The Sea Emperor’s Roar, and no Ruler was going to survive getting hit by one of those hundred-foot Ice Lances of impossibly compressed frozen Water. They slammed into their targets, punching through hide and skin and shells and chitin and carapaces, and then they ignited, instantly swelling to dozens of times their size within the bodies of their enemies.

My Detects, now encompassing the entire battlefield with the destruction of the Dome, watched basically every Ruler in the area of effect, and over half the Low Emperors, abruptly die. Vivus exploded like detonating bombs everywhere, and the writhing, boiling mass of Dark Water ahead of us became studded with cloudy starbursts, like uncounted munitions going off.

Oh, all that compressed water was hard-vivisized, too. The Netherworldly stuff, normally extremely resistant to basic Elemental Mana, no matter how powerful, had tensed up in reflex at the Roar of The Sea Emperor, and was then impaled by those vivic Ice Lances multiple times... and weren’t no shrugging off the effects.

Numbers-wise, the vast majority of everything under the Dome had already been annihilated. Certainly everything Commander and lower in power had just utterly perished when the Roar pounded past them and obliterated their minds and souls with that much power. Compressed Vivic Ice Lances hunting anything that lived and was frozen in place for just that crucial second afterwards did the rest.

My Greater Shards were focused on the Undead High Emperor there, its body of bone and rotting flesh boiling about it in the vivisized Water. As the more powerful physical combatant, it would be the one to engage The Sea Emperor, while its two Shade Emperor comrades would flank It and attack with their soul-slicing Weapons, rapidly ending the fight.

The four sets of massive clawed tentacles drawn back on its right blew cleanly away as the double salvo of Greater Shards bit in very deep and hard, doing their thing like exploding bullets. Even as they did, hundreds of less-precisely directed Ice Lances detonated and expanded to their true sizes, unleashing Phoenix Fire and Thunderbird Lightning right into their innards, all of it accented with vivus and so delivering a level of pain this creature had likely not experienced in eons.

The Rune-carved oblong black crystal skull of the Low Emperor Shade from the third Sea Conduit gleamed in The Sea Emperor’s beard. His fangs and claws were lit up with Dreadflame to the Netherworlders, chilling black anathema, swirling and dancing all along His massive body with the Vivic Eternal Flames blazing there. The High Emperor wrapped the bastard up and went rolling with it in a grinding, clawing, biting flurry of Undead-shredding fury.

The two High Emperor Shades recovered from their shock, aiming to move after The Sea Emperor, when I raised my hands again, and two Portals erupted into view on either side of me.

The first had Flowing Silver High Emperor, laying there lazily, but there was nothing in His pale blue eyes that was lazy as He met the gaze of the scythe-bearing Shade and their Wills slammed together.

The second was to The Ice Emperor.

Vivisized Ice froze and extended out in a wall of hungry crystalline whiteness as the huge winged, crystalline-white Dragon that was the strongest of Earth’s High Emperors strode through His Portal to engage the second, sickle-bearing shade, completely ignoring the fact it was underwater.

He didn’t have a Dreadskull or Vivic flames on His claws or teeth or anything, but the entirety of the ocean here was full of vivus, and He was the Ultimate master of Ice and a penultimate master of Water on this planet. Everything He was going to throw at the Shade was going to be capable of harming and killing it.

Physically, that left the sickle-bearing Shade to me and Deepwater Pearls Emperor, my ride.

Blessings of Animal Growth, Nature’s Avatar, Bane Natural Weapon, and Haste poured down upon Deepwater Pearls, and suddenly the True Emperor was the size of a High Emperor, His natural weapons were blazing with magic, and He was the focus and divine instrument of the world’s wrath, falling upon the startled Shade Emperor as Flowing Silver continued to smash into the Will of the Shade with incredibly swift and savage attacks.

Which left me there to just unload lots of Greater Shards to ever more deadly effect against this half-corporeal bastard, while Flowing Silver made sure it couldn’t marshal the magic to do anything about it, and Deepwater Pearls occupied its weapons.

I wasn’t showcasing all my Casting Power here, as my specialization with Shards was enough to carry... and I was absolutely sure a Netherlord was watching three of His Emperors getting owned thoroughly, while behind me and around us the True and Low Emperors of The Sea Emperor dealt with the wounded remnants of the lesser Forces with great savagery.

In the back, our Rulers continued to push the maelstrom of vivic energy through the deep battlefield, the absence of the Dome now making it possible to use a tighter and surer hand that was eroding the Summoned Creatures with every second they were fighting, and scalding the Tainted Beasts constantly.

As far as the eye could see in the depths with Watersight, dead Aquatics and Netherworlders were Burning en vivus. The vivus was igniting the necroic energies stolen thickly into the soil, turning the bottom of the sea into a blazing carpet of white mist and unflames.

My Shard attacks slammed into the head of the Shade repeatedly as it writhed and tried to throw off Deepwater Pearls Emperor. The Sea Dragon was having none of it, having already bitten off the hands holding its sickles, enduring an attempt by the Shade to turn into a mass of spikes by exhaling blazing Waterfire into its cloaked face while I blasted off its legs, and then Deepwater Pearls clamped his jaws onto its throat and began to wrench savagely.

Twelve volleys of Greater Shards slammed into its face, each one filled with Disruption, each individual Shard the equivalent of a cannon-round to the face, and they blew a hole right through its malformed jaw and out the back of its head as Deepwater Pearls bit and heaved.

The tearing and gouting of blackness that erupted into Taoflames was quite rewarding, as was the psychic wail as the Shade High Emperor realized that it wasn’t going to get away.

Deepwater Pearls went writhing away to help His Emperor, I paused for just a second, and Flowing Silver unleashed a millions-Mana Psychic Attack on the Shade facing The Ice Emperor, nearly shattering its mind as it kept slicing away at The Ice Emperor’s relentless attacks.

The Interdiction sprang out from my fist. Both of my Portals snapped closed instantly... and so did the Conduit to the Netherworld, reinforced by all the vivus I was now concentrating into the spell, using the dead Shade Emperor as the equivalent of a blood sacrifice.

Something slammed into the Veil from below... hard. Space seemed to pulse, but the reinforced Veil didn’t budge under the blow in the slightest.

The Ice Emperor had impaled His target a dozen times in the couple seconds Flowing Silver had given Him, and now tight Rifled Magic began coming down from above, concentrated and intense magic aided by the Sublime Chord and aimed through my eyes for the Avians circling up above.

Light, Fire, Lightning, and Healing energy wrapped up in vivus and Banefire bombarded the quasi-material Shade as it was fixed in place and couldn’t dodge, punching even more Burning holes through it, gouts of vivus rupturing in its wounds.

The Ice Emperor beat His great white wings once, crossing a half-mile of space nigh-instantly, grabbed the Shade’s shaking skull, and wrenched once, tearing it free of its neck and casually impaling it on several more great spikes of ice, while hundreds more piercing lances tore apart its body.

The bombardments from above the Sea continued unceasingly as I painted attacks for the Avians up above, and Team Thunderbird laid down the Rifling Magic like Sage Spells on Autofire mode. The surviving combats around the last fight started clearing up with remarkable speed when their blasts of energy punched through ten thousand feet of water with unerring accuracy to leave holes completely through their targets.

The Undead High Emperor and its de-tentacled corpse shell wasn’t the last to die, as The Sea Emperor finished It off with a point-blank blast of compressed Waterfire down its throat that blew vivus throughout its entire body after He tore off Its head. The gargantuan flesh and bone shell exploded and went tumbling in all directions, the spirit of the High Emperor ablaze with the vivus that lit off everywhere, Dreadfire crackling merrily on those thousands of tons of meat and bone going up all around.

Whalesong finally joined in the chorus as Leviathan and His Whales brought in the last mound of stone. This one was actually Firecradle Jade from the bottom of an undersea volcano, deemed a suitable material for the last Pyramid to be set up.

“Keep that maelstrom tight above us and extending all the way down here, Burn this area clear and keep the Veil reinforced,” I Said to every single creature there as the massive chunk of incredibly valuable rock was set down next to the Obelisk the Ship of the Oceans Nautiloid Emperor had also deposited next to this Conduit. “This Obelisk is going to cap this last Pyramid now. Your Majesty Sea Emperor, I will make you another if You desire.” There were tens of thousands of Braziers around His Court, so He didn’t really need it, but He’d probably want one... and made out of something insanely valuable, so I was going to give Him the opportunity do tell me to do so.

“Your Imperial Majesty Ice Emperor, I cannot send you home from here. If you care to move thirty miles in that direction, a Portal can be raised to send you back to your Demesne.”

Or, it was understood, He could get home under his own power, and stay as long as He wished.

The great winged Dragon of frozen crystal simply sat down next to the Obelisk at the bottom of the ocean to wait. “I WILL SEE THIS FINISHED,” He declared, and that was that.

The Sea Emperor took up the best viewing position overhead, and His Vassals also took up positions all around. A multi-tonal Note hit the sky, and the clouds peeled back so I could Bring Down the Moon and Stars.

Up in the sky above, the Imperial Avians also waited and watched as the seas roared and parted all the way down to the darkness at the floor of the ocean, Burning unwhite mist, and the whole seas looked like a frothing cloud reaching down to the sea floor... and sparkling Tears of the finest magic were falling down to bathe the Rulers and Emperors below.

The Imperial Avians were not too shy to enjoy gliding through the rain of Tears, either.

Noble helped keep the Sublime Chord going as I reached out to grab the first Block and Shape it out of a stone that was more legend than known on the surface world, and began to make the final Sealing Pyramid from the bottom up.