Briggs rolled his gaze over to her stack of harvested Krakenoid skulls. “I can see it came into use.”

“Shadowdancing has nothing on Rantha-dancing under a Trembling Ruby Blade!” Sama grinned promptly, them teeth always good to get his blood pumping.

“I’d mutter something about them seeing red in all the wrong ways, but if they saw it coming, it wouldn’t work quite so well,” Briggs grinned back at her.

An alert came humming in through Markspace, and Briggs frowned instantly, the expression mirrored on Sama’s face.

“Well, they finally got there,” Briggs mused. “Can’t save a few hundred thousand faithful who have just had their faith in the Church crushed, but they have time to mess with us?”

“Well, of course they do. We’re important. Their faithful are not,” Sama hissed.

He held out his bottle, and Sama set down her new Baneskull, fished out a glass, and held it for him to pour her a healthy shot.

“Time for the Synod to lose another Archangel,” he toasted her.

“Cheers!” she agreed.

-------

His Archangel name was Joel, inherited from the twenty-seven predecessors who had also borne his Wings after advancing to their station. He had ties to the Royal Family of Portugal, although he was nowhere near the line of succession, probably why service to the Church had been such an attractive alternative. Seeing his cousins feted and showered with gifts, influence, and power in their inevitable advances towards the throne had been galling enough; becoming their underling had simply not been palatable.

Tall, dark, handsome, and charming in a way only the noble-born could be, Joel was a skilled and powerful hammer, one brought by the Synod upon those who had truly earned the displeasure of the Church. His job this time was to strike at the heart of the power of the owners of the Coralost Community, the mysterious, magic-less, and, the Synod was finding out, the terrifically effective Golden Hag and her brute of a bodyguard and lover.

He could see the walls of their Coralost Compound from here, the rising towers that formed the soul-clutching emptiness of the White Mana Zone glittering softly, as well as the Earthhouse and its parking lot filled with supplicants there to gain the finest version of the spells they could, coming from all over the country and the world for something only of true importance to Adepts and Novices.

They were not a threat to him. The teachers in the Coralost College and Academy adjacent to the Compound and Earthhouse might be a stumbling block, but the most significant of those was a mere Archmage, a retired Wolverine Hunter helping train the next generation of puling low-born fools who thought a handful of spells were their ticket to greater power.

Without exclusive resources and massive investment, they were doomed to obscurity, just like any other mage, Typeless Casters or not.

He was sitting in the loft of the barn of a quietly devout follower of the Light, who had been pleased and honored to host an Archangel’s entourage, although he had that Michigan-bred backbone that made him less than obsequious, and oddly enough, was more tolerable because of it. He and his family kept out of the way of the men from the Church, cooked for them, and let them do as they pleased while staying out of sight.

His faith was true and sincere. Tobie Schindler was looking forwards to seeing Coralost being torn down after so many of the local Churches had up and closed, blaming them for destroying the devout community that had once thrived here. His own adherence to doctrine had cost him many friends and relationships, and he was happy to know that Coralost was going to get what was coming to them at the hands of the Church it had blasphemed.

Archangel Joel suspected the stout farmer was going to lose pretty much everything for this act of faith, but if he survived the Church would naturally compensate him appropriately as a hero of the faith, a minor thing for the publicity it would generate.

The White Mana Zone was the most effective defense of the Compound, sweeping out to reduce all magic in the area to background blandness and colorless emptiness. The Church and many others had investigated the effect closely, as its effect cut across all Elements and powers, even the Domains of Sages and Heaven-grade Seeds. Even the mightiest spells were reduced in power to such a degree they could not sustain themselves, although the most powerful Sages had proven capable of bringing forth minor spells in the Zone, mere Novice-level spells suddenly the only weapons of the most powerful mages alive!

Getting around it had required some experimentation, but they knew of at least a partial weakness. While even Casting from outside into the Zone merely tore the magic apart, to the point that even trying to touch it with Magical Awareness felt like brushing a great sucking void, the Zone itself did not stop things that were not innately magical!

Thus, for instance, great stones could be hurled at the Zone and the Towers that kept it up, or, more importantly, Summoned or Contracted Beasts could be sent in to destroy them. The Beasts might be deprived of their magic, but their physical abilities were completely unaffected by the place.

So, the proper way to assault the place was with lots of powerful Beasts, the more physically powerful the better. His team was made up of Summoners, all ready and willing to unleash their pets and servants upon the unsuspecting fools over there, send them rampaging through the compound and raze it flat, slaughtering all within it.

The fact they made firearms that were contributing to humanity’s defense was irrelevant. The blasphemers were going to be hit where it would hurt them the most, their burgeoning organization attacked at its roots, and the world shown that they could not protect their own people, let alone others, so why were others believing in them? What did saving Ireland mean when their own people they left behind were slaughtered?

Joel was perfectly willing to wipe out the entire area in service to the Church, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people a mere statistic before the doctrine laid down by the Lords of Light. These people were imperiling the deliverance and saving of the world from the Netherworld, so he had no compunctions about getting rid of all of their worthless souls. They would reap the consequences of their actions...

The only glitch in this otherwise very workable plan was that they couldn’t Summon in anything, even from a Contracted Space, while within five miles of the Compound itself. There was a massive Interdiction Zone in effect, the equivalent of a City’s Ward in power, and it denied all forms of dimensional movement and play, save those specifically attuned to it. Powerful mages of the Compound had been seen using Void Magic to flit about here and there, and bringing Beasts in and out of Contract Spaces, but no outsider had managed to do the same feat.

It was likely a side effect of the same conditioning that allowed those who lived and worked there to acclimate to the White Mana Zone and display and wield more powerful magicks than outsiders.

It meant that they couldn’t get within five miles of the place, or they wouldn’t be able to release their Beasts. Five miles wasn’t a great distance, and could be covered in only a couple of minutes by powerful Beasts, but it meant that they’d be seen coming, and Coralost would have time to prepare.

Joel wasn’t scared of what the Compound might have in reserve. He’d been watching and sensing those coming in and out for nearly two weeks himself, building on the observations of skilled watchers over several years, and Auras and power levels of those within the place currently were not higher than a half-Archmage or two.

Many of the more powerful mages had been drawn off to fight in defense of other people elsewhere on distant shores, fool’s errands that were now going to be exploited to the maximum. Those who remained behind would certainly...

The Archangel turned around and froze, as something very large and blue filled the dirty window and cast a shadow over the loose boards at the other end of the loft.

------

Dirk Charles watched Babe raise his hoof and bring it down.

The Artificer-Mage flicked the Scepter in his hand, bringing up the Wall of Force across the loft doors, which the leader of the Synod forces was jumping towards at great speed. If he had gone for the wall, he likely would have made it.

Instead, the Archangel slammed into the transparent field of Force, flattening himself against it in stunned astonishment, as a massive hoof, surrounded by a titanic amount of Void Magic, came down on the roof of Tobias Schindler’s barn and flattened the whole thing to the ground in one almighty stomp, like a normal man flattening a soup can with a sledge, all the others around sharing the same fate.

Boards and shingles exploded into the air as the Inquisitorial team burst through the flattened roof, hastily expended magic forcing off the weight and the power of the magic to keep them alive... except for the two currently caught directly under Babe’s hoof, and being compressed by Earth Magic from below, Void Magic from above, and all of Babe’s weight on top of that.

They had their Armor and Shields out, but there simply wasn’t anything out there made to take that kind of titanic triple pressure together. Dirk heard them pop-pop-pop-pop, and then crimson sprayed out from under the Blue Ox’s hoof.

The angry Totem Beast hadn’t paused in his attack at all. Plainly expecting the rest of the team to survive, his head had already dipped and his long horn hooked around with unerring precision. A red-bearded fellow in burning Armor had just enough time to scream before the preternaturally-sharp horn came in from the side and punched right through his defenses and his chest, impaling him and lifting him into the air kicking and screaming.

Masses of Void and Earth Magic pounded down to trap the survivors in place and make it nigh-impossible for them to move, coming from the Wolverine Hunters and Artificers like Dirk himself standing on Babe’s back.

Still, the Synod team members were all Archmages. They screamed and expended Mana and lurched forward with wild abandon. Only one more of them was speared unerringly as Babe rolled his head and his other horn scythed across, finding another victim to impale screaming and kicking.

Four of the ten, dead or dying already.

The rest of the Inquisitors broke and fled in all directions, screaming and churning for speed and distance with all their strength, even the Archangel who led them. That one was conspicuous by his four wings of Light, which had wrapped him in glowing protection that was staving off the Void Magic crushing down at him with an image of a radiant city floating about him, but it still couldn’t get him into the air.

Courtesy of a Stillflight Field, naturally enough.

The fleeing Inquisitors weren’t let off, of course. Five golden-furred forms taller than humans leapt from sixty feet in the air after them, great golden Sticks in their hands, while Babe rounded on the Archangel with improbable agility and speed for his size, and went after the rapidly-retreating man.

Howls of glee and savagery filled the air as the five Monkey Kings chased after the fleeing Archmages. Two were caught almost instantly, the crashing smash of the Sticks against powerful Armor filling the air like thunder. The two men were knocked sprawling, and the Artificers who’d jumped off Babe onto Disks skimming towards the ground pointed their Scepters and brought down the Lightning.

Screaming Thunderbolts that sounded very much like an eagle’s cry pummeled the two men who were trying to warp space, bend it, and otherwise flee, even trying a Lightjump and finding that wasn’t working, courtesy of the Interdiction field that was up and which they would have to get out of to pull that kind of stuff, in addition to getting the complex spell off.

Only the Archangel was performing at anything near capacity, managing to stay just ahead of Babe as he exited the combat zone. The other three Archmages who’d not been caught yet also escaped the Interdiction, and desperately brought out their own Contracted Beasts.

For the other three of them, that was just in time to take impossibly weighty Sticks to the face and go flying as great Cats, Wolves, Bears, Snakes, and even a Drake materialized out of thin air to do battle!