Princess Kristie Rantha nodded. “Marionettes, virindi, minions, simulacra, and Aerbax itself might still be there,” she agreed. “How has this been for your Karma?” she asked directly.


    “I can take three more Wide Levels as I need.”


    Kris inhaled softly, watching as banderlings and tuskers began to group up and split off in Fellowships, taking care to have devoted support Casters among them who could lay Fire Protections on the tuskers especially, and Heal all of them as needed.


    Word was already going out to kill all creatures of the virindi without using vivus, which basically meant all but the tuskers. The enslaved Summoned tuskers should still be vivified, which was needed to liberate them from the System, as the others were all aspects of the Quiddity given form, limited as they might be.


    The killing was already on across the southern Dires and starting across the north, with teams being assembled for all the Dungeons we knew of.


    “Briggs and I are at Twenty. A nice big Glory Award, and we can take the Big Step,” she informed me.


    “Noiz!” I said, giving her a hug back of congratulations. “I imagine you’re not huge to take that step now that you’re on the precipice…”


    She laughed softly, looking away. “I was so eager to get there and beat my mom to the step, I was not prepared for the spiritual wall in front of me. I look at the height of it and the shit that is going to be waiting on the other side, and suddenly I lost so much drive to get past it.” She glanced over at Briggs, in discussions with King Bobo and Harraag, who were enthusiastically shouldering so much of the search and destroy mission for all the virindi on the landscape. “I think, I think we want to have our family before we take that step. We’ll build all the way up to the edge of the wall, and then make those stairs as wide and deep as we can, but until we have a family of our own, we aren’t stepping past it.”


    I inhaled deeply. Briggs was a Source, and Sources would naturally draw attention from forces that got in the way of their destiny. If they kept adventuring, they were only going to stir up greater and greater forces as they did so, and something as mundane as passing on the bloodline just wasn’t ever going to happen.


    “I can Gate and Worldwalk. I can bring your folks over here, help them Level. They’re only like Fourteens, you know, and not nearly as Wide or Deep as they could be. Even being Imperial doesn’t feed you real Karma, especially for those damn racial Classes of yours.”


    “Ispar just doesn’t have the same level of radical shit there that this place does. That’s probably a good thing for them, but given the time being Ranthas gives us, they likely aren’t in a hurry, either. Working some of the funner Dungeons would be a good vacation for them, I imagine,” Kris nodded.


    “Making a Worldjumping Gate is also a possibility. There aren’t too many who want to go home as yet, but some will still want to, and there’s always visiting the relatives. Putting a receiving Jumpgate in each homeland isn’t too far outside the bounds of possibility, at some point,” I noted for her.


    “True IX’s.” Kris’ lip curled. “Nuhmudira would love to kill you and dissect you to figure out how you did such a thing. All her scrabbling after secrets and she still can’t Worldwalk, or she would have fled this place a long time ago.”


    We believed she was in a base in the Black Hills she’d cleared out, one among the many formerly hidden ones that had popped out of nowhere, and who were likely looking at the cleansing of the Obsidian Plains with very mixed feelings. Oswald had pursued her and Xunidara relentlessly until they’d lost him, but his instincts were good… and the number of Freebooters and Raven Hand Cultists who could support her were now mostly dead and not coming back.


    He’d long known how to kill people and circumvent Deathstone-style protection to do so, and her hapless helpers had found out he wasn’t reluctant to use it on them, either. A little vivus to clean up the bodies and make Matrix reviving next to impossible, and no, they weren’t coming back in any form.


    The Empyrean secrets of traveling to other worlds were basically known by Asheron and some of the Falatacot Elders, and naturally considered great and dangerous secrets not to be shared readily, even outright hoarded. Even Harlune had only gone to Ispar with Asheron’s help in the past, and could not raise the Portals himself to do so, especially with the chaotic mess of the aether between Ispar and Aubarean now.


    Matrix magic worked on different paradigms. Interplanetary Teleports had unlimited range within a dimension. Worldwalk spells were designed for transport between magical worlds, and could transport all those who could walk through the Portals they opened. Gates could punch through space and dimensions, and were actually a form of Conjuration magic, able to bring in things up to the power of the avatar of a god on behalf of the Conjurer.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    The big thing they all had in common was that you had to know where you were, and where you going, being able to conceptualize it on some level. With Aubarean undergoing some sort of dimensional shift, its relationship to other worlds and planes had shifted, and the old knowledge of how to reach those other worlds was ‘out-of-date’, as it were.


    Very effective, very powerful magic when it worked, capable of reaching rapidly across the stars to new worlds… and also utterly useless when the magic didn’t auto-correct for changes.


    You had to know where you were going to get there. That knowledge was something the Empyrean ancestors had bargained off of Old Gods and creatures of Mythos, who had no problem tracking such worlds and locations with their Divine Awareness. In the past, there had even been Divination spells that could identify new targets for Worldwalks. The Empyreans supposedly had records of tens of thousands of alternate worlds their civilizations had walked in the past, spreading their people and cultures across transfinity, often as followers of this or that Old God wanting to expand its own reach and followers, or to fight against the influence of an old rival who’d had a world to itself for far too long...


    Dereth itself was but one of the worlds they’d ‘discovered’, as the Empyreans weren’t native to here, either. All of the Empyreans here were just descendants of long-ago colonists who’d come here and raised empires of their own, in time…


    And I, I was closing in on the level of power needed to do what they had done, which meant I could challenge their accomplishments, follow in their footsteps, or exceed what they had done.


    But that was something for the future. As for right now, this was THE place on the planet to be. Things were happening HERE, with the interests of multiple Entities involved, and whatever was buried under here, plus whatever and whoever was manipulating the System here.


    It was very, very likely that I’d not have been able to reach this level of power so quickly anywhere and everywhere else on the planet.


    “Do you think you can handle Aerbax without me?” I asked Kris.


    She frowned as she considered the matter. “The real one was close to twice the size of the False Aerbax we killed, as you recall.” I nodded agreement. One of the reasons we knew it was fake is that it was only about eight feet high, not including tentacles. The one on Caul Island had been at least twelve feet in height, and correspondingly broader, with what seemed like seven tentacles, not four. “I don’t think we could bind it up like we did the Fake, and restricting its mobility would be equally difficult. I’m sure it could bounce and jump around even in a Stillflight Field, given it had no difficulties going up the side of sheer cliffs and the like, and it’s not a programmed Summoned thing.”


    “I can deploy Hexar Shields against it, and save for Void Magic, we should be able to completely cut down on its damage-inflicting spellcasting, so its main threat will indeed be in melee combat,” I reminded her.


    “Hollow Lightning attacks that can bend around shields. We’ll have to use Defender Spikes to bolster the Uber Shields if we choose to use them, then. If you Dispel the short Curses it can ladle out, we should be good, although…” she drummed her nails. “Will Elemental Protection against Lightning soak up some of its hits?”


    “It should. Not much different from False Life, if you want to consider that.”


    “A Mass version of that might be needed to stop an instant-kill attack, then,” she nodded. “Can you stop its immunity defense? That was extremely annoying.”


    “No. It’s an internal quality power, like the gaze of a basilik, or an Elemental’s affinity with its own Element. I could imitate it, actually, with Ur-Priest power, but I can’t stop it readily.” I actually tilted my head at her. “Did you try to Null Strike it away? That would be much more effective than a Dispel…”


    Her mouth opened and closed, and then she kicked the hapless ground energetically for daring to witness her absent-mindedness. “Didn’t even think about it, we just worked around it. Sunuva…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Chances are that thing was connected to the real one?”


    “Almost absolute. Virindi are hiveminds, after all. It was probably monitoring the Obsidian Plains for the true one from up there.”


    “Huh. So, it’s not going to have any idea that we might be able to punch through its melee immunity.” Her smile went from disappointed at her own missing of that fact to gloriously scheming almost instantly.


    “We also don’t know if the immunity has an actual time limit, or is just something it can set. I guess we are going to find out,” I agreed with her assessment. “I definitely wouldn’t try wrapping it up at all…”


    “Well, then, let’s plan our attacks…”


    -----------


    A week later…


    The attack force wasn’t much different from that which had gone against the olthoi queen. The main difference was the requirement for Void Magic Protection, which basically meant needing Rose of Celdon Rings, the only known items to bear the Wards for them.


    Teams of full Fellowships, generally fronted by two Vanguards of either the lugians or the Gearknights, marched out to begin the process of wiping and Sealing the landscape of Summons. There were plenty of creatures here with connections to the Virindi Hivemind, and true to our word, we wouldn’t vivify them… but neither would such creatures respawn.


    It did mean that we had to kill them, then wait for the respawn, then vivify the respawn and do the Sealing, as appropriate.


    I didn’t have much to do, acting in oversight as the teams leapfrogged one another, coming together in large spawn areas, pulling apart, one team always in reserve in case the others nearby needed help. Everyone here was paramount-class, proven in combat and brave to a default, but the goal was for nobody to die here. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork.


    Briggs and Kris concentrated on running everything smoothly, rotating teams in and out, making sure everyone wasn’t too winded as we began the long process of cleaning up the Singularity Caul.


    There was no real attempt made to investigate the Caulcano in the center, even with the straight shot of leviathan-shattered landscape leading up to it. All the Spawn Points had moved to above the dunes the hills had become, if anything making it more difficult as the open areas were more prone to pulling in other close spawns.


    Nothing to do about it but kill them all, however.