“All of Egypt is going crazy with celebration,” I informed Briggs and Sama as I passed over a dozen glittering crystalline Skulls to her. Sama swept them into her Portable Hole without comment.

There was still going to be need of them.

The officers of the Undead Hunters were going to be assembling after the Pyramids were finally brought down. Millions of tons of stones were being mass transmuted into Mud, rivers of the stuff flowing away across the desert, left to dry out and harden after being scattered across the white sands and set en vivus, making sure nothing of the magicks which had pervaded the structures remained intact to be called back.

The KIA boys had plenty of experience at Shaping Blocks in their downtime now, and were heading up the construction of the minor Sealing Pyramids that would anchor all the Seals in this area. Ideally each such Seal should have its own minor Pyramid atop it, and was something we would address, day by day, now that we had the time and leisure to do so.

“Four thousand years of waiting to be free of their ancestors. Can’t imagine why,” Sama quipped, watching the collapse of the Pyramids, the Burning of the graveyards, and the leveling of the temples with a practiced eye. It didn’t matter how much cultural heritage the things meant at this point: all of them were tributes to a great and lasting evil, and now it was time to be rid of them forever!

A whole lot of civilians had crowded in to be part of the ultimate destruction, even if the only thing they could do was use a hammer to crush fragments of stone into powder. The crypts and catacombs deeper in the Valley were also going to be crushed, destroyed, filled in, swept away by the desert, and buried, to be forgotten forever.

Cut free of its past, Egypt might finally be able to suddenly embrace a new future... a future that a lot of ambitious individuals were already attempting to mold for their own.

Over twenty thousand Egyptian Undead Hunters might have something to say about those plans, however.

“You’ve got Machu Picchu all set up?” Briggs asked in a low voice, pale violet eyes never leaving the work. The smallest Pyramid, Menakura’s, collapsed utterly, and the Archway erected across its great doors slowly fell over under complete control, forming the basis of the new Seal which would bar them from the Mortal Realm.

“Oh, yes. The site is quite ancient, and the undead not very aggressive or attentive. It still sucks in souls from the area, and is perfectly ready to go when you give the word.”

“Exactly twenty-four hours after the last of these abominations is Sealed, then.”

I bowed to him flamboyantly. “As you wish, great Warlord!”

Briggs just chuckled at me. I technically couldn’t be Sworn under him anymore, as I’d out-Leveled him, but I didn’t care, and if I didn’t, he didn’t. “That will force the Egyptians into conflict with the Chinese undead, as they’ll have the only viable connection to the Mortal Realm then. Given the nasty dust-ups they’ve all been having down Below, I think that will keep everyone there busy while you set up the Ancient Capital, right?”

“The Chinese are certainly waiting for us to go there and take care of their problem for them,” Sama smirked. “They also have PLENTY of volunteers to help us do the job.”

“Somehow, that does not surprise me in the slightest,” Briggs muttered. “But, given they’ve had to put up with the undead almost as long as Egypt has, them behaving like that is to be expected.”

“Do they think we’re going to pound out another twenty thousand Maces for them?” Sama spat.

“We will if we’re taking any volunteers,” Briggs chided her, and Sama just rolled her eyes in exasperation. Coralost simply did not have good relations with the Chinese government or powerful Families. The sole exception were the people of the Cold Rice Group, which was technically now a Great Family three times over or something, with a lot of young and hungry mages coming up and trying to change the world they lived in.

Oh, and the most powerful Elemental Mage in the world, still pissing off the elders of his country, who were torn being immensely proud of Mok Fan and wanting to throttle him, of course.

“Are you going to charge them so much they are not going to have any goodwill left for you when it is all and done?”

They both laughed at my question. “Gods, that is SO tempting. But the fact is that if we start shutting it down, it is likely the Chinese Undead will turn right around and come racing to defend their connection, and the Egyptian Undead will pile out right after them... and that’s if their masters don’t just get tired of the scuffle they are engaged in and tell them to secure the only remaining established way out...” Sama said wryly.

“Which will happen sooner rather than later, once Macchu Pichu goes up. It’s going to get pretty wild and woolly over there soon enough...” Briggs agreed solemnly.

“The nature of the Ancient Capital is that the undead can come up out of the very ground, as well as every tomb in the place. That is basically impossible to defend against. They can have millions manifesting every minute, pouring out of everywhere, and they can go anywhere as long as the sun doesn’t come out and send them back Down.”This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Briggs nodded at my words. “So, taking them out is going to be a case of fucking with their cloud cover, burying them with it, and then Sealing the whole damn place before they can do anything about it, right?”

“I can get a basic twenty-stepper up in under five hours, and keep a Heavens Weeping up for the full time without any problem. But there won’t be any rock I can use in that area, so the best idea is to make it inside the Broom Closet ahead of time and just drop it in when we’ve cleaned the area off.”

Briggs and Sama looked at one another cheerfully. “Oh, won’t that just piss them the heck off,” Briggs murmured. “We can engage in righteous bashing while they are dissolving in Holy Rain, beat the fuck out of their Imperials, and when the Realm Lords finally decide to step in, they are going to find out it is way too late.”

“And then the shit is officially going to hit the fan. Once the Lords of Light realize that the Netherworld can’t get up here easily, they are going to invade and make an end of things...” Sama added in.

“And then find out their little Conduits of Light don’t work any better than Conduits of Darkness,” I confirmed for them, “and Burning the latter en vivus only makes the Veil stronger against both of them.”

“But not strong enough to deal with both of them,” Briggs sighed.

“Correct,” I confirmed. “Technically, not even enough to deal with the Netherworld, but they are going to have to sacrifice parts of the planes for the power to push into the Mortal Realm, and they probably won’t take it well.”

“And the Lords of Light?”

“Will probably try to go after the Broom Closet.”

Sama clucked her tongue. “Wondered why you stopped the expansion of the place. You’re reinforcing the planar borders...”

“You have absolute confirmation they know about it?” Briggs asked me.

“When I laid the Curse on His precious staff, Ihovah had a photoformic astrolabe with the local planar connections in His study. The Broom Closet was clearly displayed on it. Yes, they definitely know it is there, although when they learned about it is ambiguous. It doesn’t change the fact that we can escape them in the Aether if needed, so they probably wanted to keep it as a trump card, a strike they can use to unsettle me, or, if they can break in, an alternate entry into Mortal Space using our own accomplishments.”

“So, we’ve got to build it up stronger, instead of sizable,” Sama grunted, looking at the collapsing Pyramids in front of us with slitted eyes. “And here we have scores of damn things with convenient feeds and lots of energy just waiting to be sacrificed in pious justice for all their misdeeds over the centuries.”

“I’ll need to erect a twenty-stepper over each and every Seal before I disrupt the bastards,” I said softly. “I understand Mok Fan has connections to the Chinese Underworld. Someone should probably contact them and let them know the Egyptians will be coming for their Mortal Realm connection and start some entertainment.”

“Someone should probably inform the Chinese of that, too,” Briggs grumbled. “They should at least evacuate the civilians.”

“After Machu Picchu blows up, so they have no choice in the matter,” Sama snorted, but didn’t say no. “Will putting up the Pyramids give you away to them?”

“No, I still don’t radiate the level of magic they felt down there. They might suspect I am a champion or servant of the one who popped their little schemes, however.”

“Using their agelessness and patience against them is the proper way to do things,” Briggs stated, and Sama and I nodded agreement. “They just won’t suspect we’re going to make things so bloody irritating for them, and they still don’t know they are on a timer.”

“Sowing confusion and a lack of urgency until the time is nigh. It only remains if they’ve sufficient timesight to realize something ominous is going to happen, and they really do need to start taking action.”

“At which point you have to further confuse them as to what exactly the threat is, by moving their attention to yourself as a renegade Realm Lord harassing the shit out of them.” Briggs shook his big head sympathetically. “And we hope that confuses them long enough to get the Faith stores high enough to bring in Aru, and finally put this dog and pony show to rest.”

That was the plan. We all watched King One-Eye and his diamond claws tear into Khufu’s Great Pyramid like he was digging out a burrow, ripping it all to enthusiastic shreds as Undead Hunters cheered him on. Big John had Summoned in a Beast Tide of the younger members of the Titan Clan of John, who were busy trashing the other two in step with the Earth and Water mages working on them.

The three Pyramids weren’t going to last too much longer, and then I’d have to get to work.

Distractions, distractions, doing our part, playing the game to buy more time, keep them focused on all the wrong things happening, while the basic, core power of Faith accumulated to punch through the isolation they’d wrapped around their prize world of souls that, at this point, was going to yield them a whole lot of not much for thousands of years of work, at best.

But neither force wanted to knuckle under to the other, because that would mean giving up not a pithy nothing, but a gleaming prize. No competition meant this world was a jewel. Competing made it a mud pit, and there was no easy way out at this point.

I didn’t know where the break-even point was, but spite was probably going to make it pretty low, indeed. Hopefully, that would just buy us more time, as each side made sure that if they couldn’t have it, their enemies would inherit nothing of value, if anything at all...

I stood there and watched as these last Pyramids fell. When they were leveled and crushed to dust, I’d start on their replacements. The Undead Hunters would do a combination of stand guard on me and on the other sites of the Pyramids, prepare the sites for rapid Sealing, and lay a whole damn bunch of Vivic Braziers around to keep all of the negative energy in the Valley of Kings at an absolute minimum.

We would put on a good show, tramping from place to place and putting up Pyramids, while letting the Pharaoh/Emperor conflict among the Undead rise up and stew, two good shows for everyone watching. Little humans thinking they could stop what was coming, when all the Netherlords had to do was decide to act first and send out proud minions squabbling for the favor of the Lords by showing who was suitable to guard the last conduits.

Given the catastrophic failure of the Egyptians so far, that question was already answered, but they’d work things out with mass massacre, no doubt.

Then Maccu Pichu would go off, Heaven would piss on the Ancient City, and suddenly the Netherlords weren’t going to be able to get into the Mortal Realm without burning off some of their own.

Yeah, I was definitely waiting for that.