“Alright, everyone. This is what we’ve been expecting and preparing for. There’s some tough Commander-level Undead there who are thinking they’ll break our Ward, massacre everyone, and extract revenge for mere humans daring to think they can’t take our souls.”

Briggs’ Voice had a grim, yet almost gleeful note to it as he reached the Wardwall, ran right up the side without anyone’s help, and flipped into position there, staring back at the shadow racing in spurts towards the wall, but which had been unable to catch anyone in either its magic or the undead rising beneath it as it blocked out the sun.

There was a reason we’d pulled the Wardwall in close. In less than thirty seconds, there weren’t any mages inside the Ward at all!

“Bring out those Scepters. Ready those Formations. Feed the Mages. Colonel Mick, Doc Red, Driver Sam, gloves are off, go to town. When the bastard at the heart of this shows up, you know Lady Fae is going to deal with it.

“They came from Hell. Ladies and Gentlemen... give them Heaven!”

There was a roar from the throats of the Undead Hunters, hotly anticipating this moment they’d been warned about. Support Formations for the Wards were already in place, sending a constant and intense stream of Mana into the reinforced and multi-layered Ward.

What nobody really noticed was the rest of the senior KIA and SAR teams arriving as backup to the two Sages, except they were deployed looking backwards. Because we didn’t trust the Church or someone else not to try something. Although I hadn’t sensed anyone powerful around, and I was pretty confident of my sensory skills, they could have been hiding outside my perception range and hurried over while this was in force.

Mummies, Zuvembies, Tomb Wights, Skeletons of various types and sizes, hulking masses of flesh and withered horrors, bony abominations and squirming piecemeal monstrosities were all competing for our attention.

Then the first blast of Disrupting Phoenix Fire hit them, and acres of them burned to death in seconds.

Lightning Spears crashed to the ground and set up a killing ground that sent these powerful undead exploding all about them haplessly, blazing flashes of whiteness in the darkness. The ground erupted in countless crystalline spears, and impaled undead writhed and kicked and Burned away atop them.

Chanting with a measured pace that was all the more impressive for how rich it was with hatred of these things, Seven Element attacks from the many Mages with their own Five-Star Elements and Scepters active descended on the undead closest to the Wardwall, and began to blast them apart.

There was a lot of undead to kill, however, and they surged towards the Wall that was denying the expanding shadow, some of them even hurling necromantic attacks of various sorts up towards me.

None of which managed to even touch me. I swept a hand at the cluster of Undead shooting gouts of acidic venom up at me, and a spare volley of Greater Shards descended upon them. A second later, three thousand powerful Undead blew apart casually, with not one survivor, and that included some hulks massing in at over a hundred tons each.

My fusillade against the fountain in the middle continued, like a Burning cap on an oil well, vivic flames eating away within that umbrella and adding to the pressure of the Veil on this effort here. The Undead were surging for the Wardwall, certain that with their numbers they could breach it and bring it down, even if their strength was lessened if they crossed it.

Except... the outside was also still in sunlight!

The troops just let them come over the Wardwall, save for the areas about the key Formations that kept it running, which had multiple Mages and back-up Archmages defending them with great energy and enthusiasm. However many Undead came there is how many died, while in other places the Undead breached... and promptly began to writhe and twist under the uninhibited sunlight here.

Indeed, the Light Mages here used Lens, one of the Adept Tier spells, and intensified the sunlight, bearing down on the Undead with incredibly hostile power, slowing and crumbling them before they could come to blows. The waiting Undead Hunters butchered them, just as they had killed any undead who had breached the Wardwall.

Of course, there were endless amounts of undead to kill, but the Burning Wall of vivus was already starting to rise, the undead were turning into flaming pyres as they lunged through them, and the Veil was getting harder, faster, and stronger.

A Zuvembie two hundred feet tall erupted out of the ink-covered ground, shattering the Mick’s Lightning Sword Formation... which was a bad move, as the whole thing promptly detonated in a bomb-burst of vivic-powered Lightning a half-mile across, obliterating every other Undead within its area and carving massive chunks out of the monstrosity.

Lightning Swords Formation was an Archmage Spell. Naturally the Mick’s Sage-Level version had a big surprise in it, and the Zuvembie was about to get that surprise as a whirling Heaven Seal formed in the black cloud above under Hopper’s power, Burning away the necroic power, while beneath it, out of visible sight, the Earth Seal flowed smoothly into being, drawn by the Mick at the same time.

Forked rose, and came down.

The Zuvembie was Undead, who were known for their resilience, and a Great Ruler, possessed of terrifying durability against magic... but it had never faced a Sage with a Thunderheart Seed, Tier 6 Stars in Lightning, and the power of a Heaven and Earth Formation hitting it with Thunder, Lightning, Air, and Earthpower all at the same time.

The Holy Power in every strike sounded like a gentle aria that rocked the creature’s soul, Disruption flayed at the stolen corpse-flesh it was formed of, and vivus chased the Banefire through its body in pursuit of power to Burn.

The Formation was already set up. Hopper and the Mick, standing there in the air with his Staff upraised in one hand, his Scepter in the other, just fed power into the Formation, and transcendently pure Lightning came up and down on it, met in the middle, and blasted the stricken Titan Zuvembie apart.

Driver Sam was manhandling a skeletal undead of similar size, bearing bone and obsidian macahuitl and intending to smash and flay him apart.

Great pillars of crystal kept lunging up out of the ground through its ribcage, between its bones, bringing with them tremendous cold and incredible gravitational pressure from the Void Magic that was also part of the spell, woven together with Chaos Magic that was further confounding the thing on where to go, all the while a greater Seal was being drawn in Silver Magic around it...

A Disrupt Undead at the Sage Level, bolstered by four other Elements, is pretty sweet to see. Half the Sickle Skeleton’s limbs blew apart instantly, vivus was blazing on it, and it was coated in crystal and ice as the weight of all the atmosphere above it drove it to the ground to be entombed, Burn, and die.

Red’s attack on the Great Jaguar Knight, its head that of an actual Ruler Jaguar, was much more direct. He stopped an outright charge with a head-on blast of Phoenix Fire that hit like a Holy volcano exploding, bolstered with Argent and Light Magic, stripping the fur and meat from its skull, blackening the bone, and slowing its charge in the face of that much positively-empowered flame enhanced by Disruption. Little fireballs were igniting on it and exploding as Disruption took effect on all the minor impacts, eroding it away as it tried to claw at him, and was pounded back, back, and back again with Sage-level magicks spun far too fast and furious, all of them accompanied by the screaming fury of the Fire Phoenix Emperor’s Blessing sounding out as Phoenix Flame raged forth to do battle.

The fallout from the fights of the three Sages was obliterating all the Undead around them, adding to the Veil, and Burning any additional Undead trying to rise up again in those areas.

I had full Echoing, Paired, Admixtured combos of Greater Shards out, Repeating and Residual and all the fun stuff, pounding into that fountain of ink and really messing with its foundation and integrity. The source of it was probably astonished it hadn’t achieved enough resonance to just erupt into the real world, but that was totally by intent. More and more undead were still coming in, but I noticed the flood was slowing as the source devoted more and more power to trying to enter itself, with the result that soon the Hunters’ spells were ranging out to find more Undead to kill, as there weren’t enough to press the Wardwall.

Ah, there it was. The ground rippling and rumbling as a massive Presence forced its way through again from the other side, expending millions of Mana to do so, probably rather irked at the price, but also eager to see just what was making this so difficult... and to destroy it!

It was probably a really good thing the Ward was up, or every human within twenty miles would have died when the Grand Mummy clawed its way out of the ground, and those within forty miles would have fled screaming in mad terror.

As it was, its Presence slammed into the Ward and was diluted down to ‘oh fuck’ instead of screaming doom, and then I, I had a solid target for all the vivus I’d leeched out of the surrounding terrain.

It was very big, over three hundred feet tall. It was seething with Earth, Curse, and life-draining, mind-reaming Undead Magic, and there I was, the obvious source of interference with my Sublime Chord already jangling its spirit, making its magic wobble and bones clatter with the whole Manafield of the world reverberating on its innards in hostile rejection of everything it was.

It started to cast some Imperial Curse spell something, which would have affected the whole damn area inside the Wards and really tested out their integrity.

Of course, that was the moment I hit it with Spellflare, and about a second later over sixteen thousand Vivic Spears from all that vivic energy, thoughtfully bolstered with Lowpoint Mana, converged on it.

Its own magic blowing up in its face was devastating enough, sending vivus and wild magic crawling all over its withered body, blowing off half its ornate headpiece, and really messing up its expectations.

Then the remnants of about ten million Undead rendered into weapons of Disruption drove into it, and it just had about enough time to be shocked by the fact it was getting hit with a true Imperial Spell before it was swallowed in Wrathfire of the deadliest sort.

I saw a hand go flying, part of its jaw, bits and pieces of improbably hard yet flammable skin and bone and meat ignite explosively in a thousand Burning fireballs of too many colors.

Its scream could have been utterly lethal, but Thunder was carrying the regret of my Lovelorn Seed, and strangled its pain and fury in weeping regret and solace.

It writhed and tried to wail as its soul was battered with regret over all the evil things it had done and that had been done to it, its entire existence seeming to be on the edge of a precipice as it looked up... and saw the other half of the spell coming down.

It was a sky-born waterfall of Holy Water, impossibly pure and cleansing, and it hit that undead with the full x630 damage of all seven of my Seeds in the Seven Heavens and Earth Formation, not much different than standing in front of the full wrath of a High Emperor.

What should have been a terrifying invulnerability and derived invincibility against mere human magic had instead become a terrifying vulnerability instead. This was magic specially made to kill it, even before Disruption’s power was factored in.

The deluge of water was massive, hundreds of thousands of tons. It washed over the Imperial Mummy and sloughed him away like a hill of sand before a flash flood. The sparkling waters, Burning and dancing with every color of light in the spectrum, hit the ground and spread out in all directions in a wall of undead-eating sparkling purity. Even as the Imperial Nyx Domain above and around in every direction collapsed, the Waters were sweeping across the Undead and consuming them utterly, ranging out until they crashed into the Wardwall before the awed eyes of every mage who could come out to see them.

The field was clear of any sign of the undead, save for uncounted thousands of very high-quality Soul Crystals. The sky was empty of the slightest shade of black, and the air felt crisp and clean... and alive, so alive.