It was with a sort of vicious finality that we breached the rim of the Obsidian Center through one of the cracks in the Inner Rim, opting to walk to the top instead of wall-climbing over it. This was about making a path, after all, and although they’d be foolish not to have the options, not everyone coming after us was going to be capable of flight or rapid vertical climbs.


    So, we left a bunch of Burning Spawn Points behind us, the white remnants of vivic scarring very bright against the black of the Obsidian Plains and its stain of shadowed Taint, three hostile forces wondering what to do about them and wondering if they should even bother.


    Well, two of them didn’t mind it. Eating away the Taint was only good for them, and fewer Summons wasn’t really an issue out here, hurting all of them equally. And it did make a path they could move their own forces along without interference…


    The shades, however, knew that this was a purifying effect, and certainly didn’t want it around, which was actually a good reason for the virindi and undead to keep it extant. As long as they didn’t walk in there and lay down, no harm, no foul to them!


    Ahead of us was the Obsidian Center, which was completely dominated by the virindi, save for some occasional rynthid corruption popping up along the perimeter where the chaotic emo-forms were manifesting and driving lesser virindi mad with intense monoline emotions like fear, hate, rage, and sorrow.


    Couldn’t happen to a friendlier bunch of axiomatics, sure enough.


    The fact there was a mushroom forest there was incredibly impressive. The ground was still blasted black, there were still columns of black hex-crystals jutting out of the ground, but somehow all sorts of colorful giant mushrooms had survived and were thriving here, without being warped or twisted by virindi or Shadow energies.


    The Center was about five miles in diameter, sloping down fairly smoothly towards the center from the blast crater rimmed by the hills we were standing on. The very center was marked by the Singularity Bore, probably the central holding of the virindi here in the past, manned by drudges in great numbers who had helped the virindi with mining, maintaining energy fields in a Dungeon there, and the like. A plume of purple-blue virindi energies rose from the center of the place, once marking a Portal into the Bore, now likely marking the entrance to a large Dungeon.


    Directly OVER the Singularity Bore, about two hundred feet up now, floated Aerbax’s Citadel, a cross within a diamond-shaped floating edifice of crystal. It was the largest such flying structure in all of Dereth, completely dominating anything raised by the Empyreans, including the floating towers used by the shades whose remnants we’d seen in a couple of places.


    It was a convenient aiming reticule aimed at the Bore below, tapping the plume of energies coming up out of there for its own purposes, and the virindi didn’t seem to be able to approach it or do anything about it.


    “Well, Ryin?” Briggs asked shortly, everyone studying the scene in front of us.


    “I count at least forty-three real virindi at the Consul level or higher scattered across the landscape in front of us. I can see at least five thousand scattered Summons they can control to stop us from advancing, and unless we are capable of killing a thousand a minute, that means we can’t advance just on this side, let alone at least double that more are probably unseen.”


    “That be totally unfair,” the Mick grunted, but he had no desire on his face to try out that particular brand of slaughter. “Would need multiple sets o’ that Hexar Shield cover an’ nigh the whole Royal Army t’ get through in that event.”


    I eyed the sky, which was starting to grumble and flash with embers. “Fire storm coming. How about we just wait out the weather for a half hour?” I said kindly. The stone about us, vivified by the tips of unsheathed Weapons, was stained white and was easy enough to Shape.


    “It won’t take her half an hour to get there,” Briggs smiled knowingly. “I gather you don’t want to deal with any wild magic surges in the interim.”


    “I tend to be conservative about such things,” I agreed, as a wall rose out of the ground and arched over us to provide cover. Everyone scooted underneath it as there was a great loud woooosh overhead, like someone had struck a really, really big match. The first fiery embers were driving down from the sky, hitting the ground and bouncing and flaring once before dying away… and visibly reducing the white on the ground with the excess energy, even if it didn’t bear any Taint.


    “None o’ us want t’ appear in a wall or floor, lass,” the Mick said pleasantly. “She won’t have a problem sneaking past all them virindi, aye?”


    “They are sensitive to magic, not alchemical camouflage and light-bending,” I sniffed, able to feel Kris advancing at the pace of a slow walk, basically on all fours spread out flat, not touching the ground and skimming along just above the soil. All her magical Gear was sitting on my Disk next to me, while I began to erect interwoven Seal Focuses on the ground in front of everyone. I filled up Briggs’ for him and Endure, and everyone else slowly filled up their own, using the opportunity to top up their mana pools off the harsh, raw mana in the air and ground at the same time. “I’m in no mood to alert them to the difficult and alternate means of detecting a Null slinking by.”


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    “Och, ye cruel and facetious fellow spellcaster, discriminating against yer fellows? ‘Tis hypocritical, I say, I does,” the Mick chided me with a perfectly droll face.


    “Axiomatics. If you’re not with them… and I’m not.” Black and white logic was seldom appreciated when turned back upon those practicing it. “I’m guessing about fifteen minutes.”


    Fire rained down from the sky, but the storm was being forced out by the continuous welling of pressure from the Singularity Bore at the core of the Center. It would be gone and expending itself on the landscape before we needed to shift over.


    ------


    The plink against our Magebond was immediate, even as a Teleport Focus flared to life right over there. I was sure the virindi sensed something, but while they had time to react, they didn’t have time to respond effectively. I took command of the waiting Teleport energy and promptly sent us all shifting sideways through space and in a long line off the beacon shining in my awareness over there.


    The swirl of the world rearranging itself straightened itself off instantly. I took no more notice of the fact that we were in a sloping corridor lined with virindi patterns and schema before turning around, Dispelling the magic along a set of lines behind us, and then promptly filling the space leading up to the surface about sixty feet away with a wall of stone, yanking the material out of the rock as I disrupted the engrams worked into the stone and structure here to channel the energy of the Bore to some other use.


    The first virindi’s head had just hove into view at the far end as the stone flowed in and sealed off the ramp. I filled in more and more of the entire length leading up, until all sixty feet of it was plugged shut and nothing was getting in… although the trembling of spells outside indicated that they were trying.


    Kris was re-equipping herself off my Disk speedily, slapping armor into place and holding it there with her Vajra as she slung on her Amulet and other Gear. Briggs and the Mick were already moving the Skeeters and Roaches out, the lugian Vanguards leading the way with their much-abused Shields, while the Skeeters were using my Hexar Shields to absorb all the incoming War Magic and turn this into a melee fight, our greatest strength.


    I could hear spells going off below as I surveyed the area and looked up.


    “Okay if we leave you?” Kris asked shortly, pulling on her gauntlets last.


    “Give ‘em Hell,” I nodded, looking up at the crystal formation on the other side of a good forty feet of rock, massive draws of energy moving through the rock around us. “I’m going to annoy the Hell out of these things.”


    A five-step Pyramid would take me less than an hour, its effect would cover the whole of the Obsidian Plains easily… and it would totally rechannel and re-align the energies of the Singularity Bore above in all ways.


    The virindi were about to lose their stronghold, and the Obsidian Plains were going to finally start the process of being cleansed!


    While the others wrecked the place below and totally disrupted all the work the virindi had done on everything, I was going to wreck everything above!


    Kris dashed off after the others, leaving me alone with a lot of magical energy flowing through some axiomatic circuits.


    I smiled as Arcane Sight read it all, planned out what I needed to do… and then I reached out, and began to twist and Shape that stone to what I wanted done.


    Oh, the virindi weren’t going to like this at all...


    ------


    I could feel the progress of the others just by watching the remnants of the virindi ‘magic circuits’ embedded in the walls around us, flickering and guttering as Vivic Weapons and adamantine did their combined work and started mucking things up. There were some strong virindi here, but nothing they couldn’t handle, and the lesser servant Summons were even less of a threat.


    If their general level and toughness was two to three times greater than it had been historically, well, so were all the Summons up top. We’d been expecting that as we went into their strongpoint. No, the group was not splitting up, because there were real virindi down there who could take charge of stuff, and so the fighters had to remain close together, covering and relieving one another as the fighting below escalated very rapidly.


    I had to first clear out space enough to raise my Pyramid, so a room over a hundred feet squared and the same distance high. Technically a lot of stone to move, but actually I could Widened Rock to Mud a tremendous amount of that area and simply send the muck draining in a mudslide down a connecting tunnel leading out, one which did not happen to have a bunch of rambunctious mortals slaughtering everything in it. Whatever was below was washed away, then imprisoned in the stone when I Dispelled the transmutation magic.


    Being the thoughtful type I was, I also Sealed off that tunnel out, and I had a big empty room for putting up my Pyramid. Twenty-foot blocks of stone used to channeling immense amounts of redirected magic energy began to glitter with quickly-infused Runes as the stones heaved themselves out of the ground and began to float there, and build, and build…


    ---


    The virindi could sense we were doing something, given the immense amount of disruption no doubt flaring in the energy plume of the Bore above, but they had a lot of stone to blow their way through, mana-reinforced stone whose ley line connection was a hard feed they couldn’t block or seal. Their control of the ley line nexus that this place was had already been shattered before they thought of trying to shut it all down or feed it back, and, I imagined, some of the senior virindi below needed to do that had already been vivified by application of adamantine and vivus to the energy nexus.


    My own Obsidian Pyramid rose rapidly. It would be short and sweet, but it was mainlining an immense energy flow, and when it lit off, the plume of the Bore above was going to really, really change…