We were parked two miles off the eastern coast, just a couple Wagons, sitting in one place just above what the waves could touch as they passed by underneath us.

  Endure was beating, slow and steady, like a giant heartbeat as Briggs stood there on the surface of the water like an unmoving statue, the waves breaking past him, none getting within five feet of him.

  Quaver was out, and now we all could hear the faint dinginginginginging tinginginginginging, the droning ululation seemingly a product of the stiff breeze flowing past Kris as she waited there, and the waves flowed past her as if the space she was standing in actually wasn’t really there.

  Someone with any real respect for the sea would likely have been utterly horrified to look beneath us at what was holding position there while the rays of the sun grew long and streamed out past us, shadows rising, extending, and taking over as the blue faded to the deep indigo and blacks of the night.

  A moonless night, only the stars dancing on the waves around us.

  I eyed the three Violet-tiers basically right underneath us, likely massive sleech akin to that which had tried to prevent us from reaching the Vesayans long ago. They knew I was Detecting them, but there was no casual attempt to rebuff me, which they certainly could do. I could tell they had an alien form of cool amusement at my attention and likely the whole situation, fatalistic about the slaughter to come and their own lives coming to an end, horrors of the depths consigned to potential death by their master and having no choice in the matter.

  The spectrum of creatures, none below high Yellow, extended off the range of my Detects both horizontally and vertically, a hemisphere filled with many, many remorans, nautiloids of various sorts, and even some nasty moarsmen.

  “It’s time,” I announced, and stepped off the top of the Wagon.

  Airy Water popped up around me, and the water was a new sky.

  There was a remoran forty feet wide directly beneath the Wagon, and I fell right past its jaws as I descended into the water.

  Above, the heartbeat picked up speed as Briggs took a step, and the ululating drone quickened and flowed and began to move.

  On either side of me, two nautiloids larger than the Wagons hovered in the waters, while behind them another nautiloid even larger waited with cold, eternal patience. Empty dark eyes full of inhuman thoughts fixated on me, my Wings spread and filled with stars there under the water as I began to move forward.

  And I began to Hum.

  In all directions about me, countless finned, scaled, and shelled forms in the waters began to move, pretty much all of them larger than me by a considerable margin. The lesser creatures in front of us parted out of the way, seeming to shimmer as even the faintest echo of their master’s Name flowed over them.

  Uncaring of the lidless eyes fixed on and following me closely, I continued forward through the dark waters, and the army of The Deep moved with us.

  -------

  The seafloor was coming up rapidly below us, which meant the entire force had to both cram together and spread out because the narrower space couldn’t fit everyone. I descended deep enough to make sure I was right on the edge of the Shoreward as Briggs and Kris drew up on it.

  The Heartbeat was grew quite loud, indeed, enough to be heard on the shore, and Quaver’s Deepsong suddenly whooped loudly as the entire undersea army quivered in anticipation.

  I drove Crown down into the muck at the edge of the Shoreward, and Shaped Stone.

  The great arch exploded off the mire and sands, extending thirty feet above the water and sixty feet across the surface of it in an instant, thickened as Runes fell into being on it, and waters churned against gravity and flowed up against the surface of it.

  Hammer and Sword smashed into the Shoreward, cutting and shattering, and the Shoreward broke under obdurate Null and unstoppable Sun.

  I brought up the Sublime Chord, and the waters peeled back from me, as I wasn’t all that deep, even as the Name of The Deep blew through the waters. I extended the Arch into and through the Shoreward, anchored it to the stone, and prevented it from closing.

  Briggs and Kris skated ahead, the manasphere echoing with the Name of The Deep, and the sea rose behind them with So Much Shit.

  The two did veer aside to let them pass as the army of The Deep erupted from the waters and soared through the spray-filled air, a-wing like sharks and the air nearly solid with their bodies as they streamed past us.

  None touched me, although they came close as I flew through them to the side of the Shorebreach Arch and hurried after the Wagon.

  We were basically right where we’d started the attack earlier today, and the alarm horns and conches were already wailing in a panic as the Summons along the shores screamed and charged to the attack against the flood of The Deep’s servants coming ashore.

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  They’d wisely broken and shattered the Circle I’d made earlier, Tainting the sands within it to make it impossible to use.

  The second Circle next to it buried a foot down, not so much.

  The first Nautiloid Great Elder rose up out of the sea and was drifting in awesome silence through the Arch when arcane fires blossomed and shot into the air, and the colossal form of Tim the Tremendous Monuga, his Armor all painted black and only the cold vivic Flames around Smasher really visible, stepped out of the Teleportation Circle with Mowen, the great dark tusker’s own Armor blackened and only his Tusker Knuckles really visible, right behind him.

  The Isparians, Lugians, and Aun troops following them were quick to gather behind the Wagons, very careful not to react to the incredible numbers of deadly Aquatics streaking past in non-stop haste, even as the landscape in front of us began to ignite with dozens, then scores of spells going off, both the shining Auras of Elemental Vulnerabilities and the explosive blasts of War Magic.

  The Nautiloid Elder turned slightly to regard the Tremendous Monuga whose head was higher than its own, its long tentacles curling in what might have been a bit of consideration and agitation.

  Tim’s triple eyes looked right back at it with confident, almost dismissive scorn. He glanced with one of them at me, and I just shook my head once. Grunting, he turned away as I floated up to his shoulder.

  “Our job is to take those temples down,” Briggs stated coolly. “We leave the landscape spawns to The Deep, and we Seal and Burn everything in vivus.” Hundreds of Weapons dripping vivus raised behind him. “By squads, disperse and follow them, and feed everything to The Land.”

  The steady heartbeat strode away from us, taking one of the Wagons with him.

  “I want a sleech sitting atop any Spawn Point that has not been Sealed until it is treated,” I Sang into the Chord. I had no doubts whatsoever that they could sense those places, but they didn’t have any vivus.

  A liquid gurgling that made the stomach churn backed up my words instantly as the Nautiloid Elder broadcast the order. Squads of land-dwellers with vivic Weapons broke apart, following the streams of The Deep’s warriors and looking for the motionless sleeches waiting for them, as well as every corpse and body being torn apart in fanatical, no-holds-barred combat.

  “Tim, to the Temples. Take it slow and easy, and clear the road if you have to,” I told him, and Dartrays Chained out into a night that meant nothing to the Devilsight of my Mask, while Eternal Lights on helms, shields, and around the Wagon beamed out in all directions and illuminated a dark and shadowy Hell come to the surface world.

  There were already thousands of combatants engaged, more than we’d seen in our initial rampage, and we were barely off the beach.

  We’d wanted them to know we were coming, so that we might kill all of them, and they’d obliged.

  The Deep’s forces continued streaming in through the Arch behind us, and the mutual slaughter wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

  -----

  I lit up our path with Chained Dartrays igniting lines and clusters of our enemies, up to seventy-five of them Burning in the night in magical flames along our course.

  Tim alternately stepped on things, kicked things, and waded through things. He was impossible to stop, his feet armored, greaves and plates guarding his legs and making him basically invulnerable to the physical attacks of the T’Thuun adherents. Smasher systematically swept back and forth, like harvesting wheat, and screaming moarsmen and hissing sclavi went broken and flying as shattered fleshy ice.

  There was an eruption a quarter-mile to the left, where a bunch of Tentacles of T’Thuun blazed with an unclean brown-yellow light, uniting into a full Arm of T’Thuun which slammed down with an impact that flattened a score of Deep creatures instantly.

  A scything blade of force ten feet across ripped space and the disruption in reality accompanying the thing as the Nautiloid Great Elder immediately moved to confront the hundred-foot tentacle. Another Great Elder was moving in from the side, its tentacles picking up T’Thuun servants and casually twisting them apart, nibbling on some and tossing others away casually as it plowed through them.

  I let them do what they had to do as we pressed forward through the press, leaving a land Burning vivic white behind us.

  Corpses and carcasses coated the ground, and we gave vivus to all of them. Behind the line pushing forward, the ground was rapidly being stained white, expanding most quickly along the shoreline where the spawns were spread out the most. The remorans were winging to the hunt, their nautiloid masters reaching out ahead of them with Vulns and Imperils to soften up the defenders and accelerate the killing.

  The sound of the carnage was horrific, as there was a lot of flesh being rent, jaws ripping and chewing, claws tearing, and creatures screaming death-cries as they met their vicious ends. The stench was pretty eye-watering, too, although the vivus helped with that.

  Tim just looked like a big shadow swinging the Coldphased Smasher, and if he could give out a bellow deeper and louder than anything else out on the field, well, that just made him even more fearsome and unexpected. Really, who expects a Tremendous Monuga to just come out of nowhere, even if you’ve seen it happen once already?

  Mowen, on the other hand was being rather quiet, a shadow in the night that just tore holes, smashed and threw hapless natives around, and basically didn’t announce himself as he raged through the press with mass and tremendous strength buttressing him, the very image of an unknown terror in the night.

  “Potential Arm ahead!” I Said from next to Tim’s head, seeing the clearing all the native creatures were instinctively avoiding.

  Tim growled as the next line of Dartrays pointed right to it for his attention, but not for him to fight… unless he wanted to.

  He looked at me, I made a gesture that it was up to him, and he just grinned ferociously.

  He looked at Smasher, and the Coldphased metal dimmed to steel, then all the spikes on it turned into blades as it Morphed into slashing damage, each former spike as big as an axe-head.

  Mowen grunted his approval, lifting up his Paws and turning them into long arcing claws on his fist.

  The eruption of the Arm out of the ground as the two of them bulled their way through the defenders was still shocking, especially as the disparate Tendrils united to form something nearly as big as the Arm we’d killed on Freebooter Island back then. I had to wonder what it was costing the Temples there in mana, how much weight was pressing on the ley lines allowing it to manifest this way, and then it was just for me to drop an Imperil/Slash Vuln on the thing and watch these two go to town on it.

  Well, except for the fact that Kris beat them to it. Which, thinking about it, I should have expected.

  ============================

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