I winced and looked away. “Sama, that news will spread like wildfire. Nether and Nirvana will know they are on the clock. Enough Faith could actually empower a Realm Lord equivalent in Heaven all by itself as those souls accumulate towards a greater purpose.” Sama just arched an eyebrow, smiling grimly. “We can do it, but it should be AT that point, not before it.

“Ideally, the coming of some force from Heaven should blindside them with its arrival, even if they know the Church is here. After all, they’ve no dominion over Good souls, nor Limbo. I imagine they both prey on the Neutral souls trapped there, tapping them for elements of their spirits they can siphon off, but they don’t rule there.”

“Good enough,” Sama agreed after a moment. “How about restricting the dream to immediate descendants of Good mien?”

I tilted my head slightly. “That will cut down on the loose lips, and turn it from a flare-up to easily dismissed tales of petty zealotry. Troubling, but not alarming. It means we have to deliver some anticipatory stuff into the sermons about relief for the souls of the dead, and their Faith making things possible. Easy enough to do.”

The two Forsaken nodded. “We know you want to, so do the full set of Inherents for yourself, measure the Faith it takes. We all know we need to build up a lot of that stuff, so we don’t want to abuse it, so measure it and see what it takes for you, and then we can consider slow roll-outs later... but then go right into soul-rescuing mode. The goal is it being able to sustain itself. Spontaneous generation of Celestials from gathered virtue of the enlightened is still a thing, right?”

“Based on what I inherited, yes. Sometimes a powerful soul elevates on its own, sometimes several gather and form the lowest tiers. If I set the paradigm with Archons and Angels, that should start rippling out and affecting the default systems in place there, even without a Planar Lord overseeing it all.”

“Getting a Realm Lord into place in Heaven will help, but it will not solve the overall issue, especially since they’ll be outnumbered. The existing two powers will have no problem jointly eliminating competition, even if they don’t work together...” Sama calculated coldly.

“You only need one to rapidly succor all the souls in Limbo, and then guess what is left behind?” I smiled lightly.

Sama and Briggs looked at one another, then back at me. “Nether and Nirvana are already taking their own souls...”

“...so if Heaven takes theirs, that leaves the uncommitted Neutrals, who are fated to be chewtoys, and the Chaotics,” finished Sama, whistling with far more warble than her Fuzzy dared to.

“Limbo will spontaneously shift purpose as the Chaotic souls override its, well, lack of purpose. The neutral souls will either have to commit or be destroyed as the Plane becomes one of Chaos...” Briggs conjectured.

“And whatever soul is closest to the Will of Chaos should immediately be promoted to Realm Lord. Once a viable Destination Plane is made, there’s no way to unmake the process,” I agreed. “And guess what a balanced afterlife then does for the planar defenses of the home planet?” I managed to cough up a small smile.

They both smiled in concert. “Oh, that is goddamn wicked,” Sama agreed. “It won’t do anything about existing links or commitments, however, will it?”

“There’s going to be no way to move the Death Zones at all, meaning their makers will be locked into location. The Realm Lords trying to reach into the mortal plane will instantly and immediately make it possible for all their rivals to do the same in the same area... and all they have to do is crush the various sources of the Death Zones. Trying to expand and defend the Death Zones is going to be totally impossible.”

“Will that return the High Emperors to eminence on the planet, then?” Briggs asked pointedly.

“Perhaps. Someone might have been making some moves relevant to that...” I mused, looking around the workroom at nobody and nothing.

Sama elbowed Briggs with a crunch. They both flipped out twenties.

“The Obelisks and Pyramids around the Sahara have both exposed Infinite Sands High Emperor to the Dark Mana-purifying power of the vivic flames, and also restricted His awareness of the Elemental situation outside them without Him physically venturing past them. In fact, He cannot sense any Dark Mana coming into His realm at all, except from the direction of the Valley of the Kings where the Pyramids dominate.”

Sama chortled and made a grab at Briggs’ bill, who snorted and flicked it out of reach, just staring at me.

“The Vivic Braziers I left at the Ice Phoenix’s prison valley have also exposed the Ice Emperor’s vassals to vivic flames. Of the hundred or so that were scattered around the Valley, since Ice Phoenix Emperor has left, only six remain, and the Ice Wurm is basically sleeping with his head stuck in them. The others have dispersed into every single neighboring territory, and even beyond.”

Briggs looked smug as he glanced at Sama. She rolled her eyes as she grabbed his twenty, and handed over hers.

“What about the Sea Emperor?” Sama asked pointedly.

I frowned tellingly. “If Sea Emperor Himself has not sold out to the Netherworld, I’m fairly sure a number of the Emperors of His Court have done so.”

Briggs held out his hand, and Sama scowled and handed him back his twenty.

“The reproductive capabilities of the seas would generate large amounts of souls, and their callous barbarity makes them perfect for absorption into the Netherworld. The fact that so many of their species tend towards outright Evil, whatever their claims, has been proven multiple times over.”

“There’s no way you don’t have something planned for Sea Emperor, Fae,” Sama smiled, eight canines gleaming tellingly.

“I was planning to prepare a nice Obelisk as a present for the Sea Emperor. Establishing a very pure Domain with full-bore Dark Mana absorption and vivic ignition. Two-mile radius or so,” I informed her.

She tilted her head slightly, working the angles. “Okay, you make a comfy zone for Him and His Court... unless they are corrupted by the Dark, in which case they might... Burn? Or at least be very uncomfortable...”

“He may have been deceived by some gifts passed to the traitors by the Netherworld, but Sea Emperor cannot fail to notice their discomfort if they come into the Obelisk’s area of effect. There might be some wonderful revelations to come out from that.”

“If members of His Court are exposed as Tainted, there will be war in the depths like there hasn’t been in millennia,” Briggs observed sagely.

“Would kinda instantly take care of the Littoral raids for the remaining year or some!” Sama chortled with a lopsided smile.

“And Obelisks are pretty quick for you to make?” Briggs asked calmly, reaching up to place a big hand on Sama’s shoulder. “I know the constant fighting is a good thing in many ways for us, but if you can do that, I think it’s time the seas got a taste of their own medicine!”

Sama’s grimace was deadly. “I think we might get some vengeful fallout from the move. I’m fine with it!”

“I’ll make it tomorrow and drop it on top of His Court. I imagine it will make an interesting splash and fall...”

====

The next day...

The Portal didn’t stay open long, because it didn’t have to. The Obelisk fell through under its own weight, hitting the surface of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, directly over the Court of the Sea Emperor over two miles below.

“A GIFT FOR SEA EMPEROR,” reverberated through the waters as the engraved Sea Basalt column slowly rose partway back to the top of the sea, and then the Portal closed.

The eyes watching it had noticed the first of the vivic Runes on it sparkle quietly to life, however.

It only took a few minutes for a set of immense octopoid tentacles to rise up from beneath the surface and wrap around the Obelisk like it was a toy. Considerably larger than the hundred-foot carved stone, it effortlessly tugged the neutral-buoyancy Obelisk down and out of sight, heading for the sea floor so far below.

Perhaps it would make it into The Sea Emperor’s presence, perhaps not. But the fact was that as it was dragged down into the depths, there to be judged and some sort of response weighed, it began to Burn more and more with cool flames of misty unwhite, which trailed behind it in the water as it was brought down by the steady grip upon it.

What happened when those misty flames or their residues touched members of the Court who had been concealing the fact they were empowered with Dark Mana was observed very, very far away, however.

It was a fact that there were more active Water Mages now on the Land than there ever had been. Not only was it a useful Element for managing water flow through irrigation and water supply networks, but as a defensive Element against littoral attackers, it was extremely valuable... and notably, quite fun on the private side with accelerated movement in and out of the water, and the ability to Breathe Water and share the ability with others.

When the violent pulses of Water Magic tore through the Atlantic less than a day later, the mages had already been warned that something might happen which could swing the littoral battles plaguing mankind entirely. The Great Flood had inexorably raised the sea level and taken away much coastal territory, and the Aquatic invaders typically tried to raise it another twenty to forty feet when they attacked.

Only Wards and Water Magic could hold off that deadly surge, but the smashing impacts of the incoming tidal assaults had no rhyme nor reason behind them this time. No invaders came with the waves, meaning that all the mages present were able to cooperate to hold off the smashing impact of the tides. Without the distraction of attacking Aquatics, it generally wasn’t an issue to hold the crushing force of the waves back, particularly since they were true waves and not an artificial increase in the sea level.

The most sensitive Water Mages could easily discern the Emperor-level magic behind the waves, and if it made some of them quite pale to consider the power being thrown around out there, there was also a very, very great curiosity as to what the Hell was happening out in the ocean that was generating that level of cataclysmic wave action.

More to the point, within twenty-four hours the littoral raids on Human coastal areas all around the world had almost completely died off. The Aquatics, even if they were in mid-attack, had abruptly pulled back and left, including those roving about in coastal areas they had not been fought off from yet. Despite all their holdings and successes, whether they were in the middle of a bloody battle or not, the Aquatics abandoned everything and headed back into the seas and oceans they had come from, as if obeying a great signal that had traveled around the globe.

It didn’t mean the seas were calm or clear. Oh, that was very far from it. As a matter of fact, the wave action on seas all over the world was turbulent and chaotic, as if storms were raging under the surface. Those listening with undersea microphones and the like reported distant battles, while powerful mages, especially those with airborne Contracted Beasts, who could surveil and sense magic use while remaining mostly out of danger, reported that there were a great many magical combats going on under the seas all around, with Emperors throwing around incredibly powerful spells, some while fleeing, but unable to find a place to shelter themselves.