“They’re going to try to drop the temples without me and drown us in here with it, maaaaaybe try to kill us if we make it out. Additional sacrifices of filthy warm-bloods and all to The Deep, proper service and all aside and everything.”

  No telepathy here, nautiloids of various types around and the Great Elders outside. Talking while Crown and Quaver and Briggs and Endure maintained the various Heartsong Effects was a matter of Subvocalization, don’t leave home without it.

  “Tim might be able to take one of them if uninjured. Three of them, not a chance,” Kris agreed, streaks of motion turning a sclavi into frozen chunks with remarkable speed. “The landscape spawns are 99% and more done. We can actually do the rest if the Deephorde withdraws. Any ideas on how to tell the Great Elders to fuck off?”

  “Yes. But it means going back up top before they finish up and confronting them. Which is why you two are here, to make sure everything keeps right on going despite them losing the Sublime Chord for the Casting.”

  “Warlords do the job,” she grinned. “Do I want to know what you’re going to do?”

  “Sure. I’m going to help them play a game.” I held up a glittering red Ruby, a golum loot gem endowed with magic paid for with its own value. “Vivic Pyroclasm stored in here. Crush it to clean the place when the slaughter is done. I can actually snip the ley line locks from further up once all the priests are dead.”

  “I’ll see to it they die soon enough,” Kris agreed, catching the crimson jewel as I tossed it to her. “Go negotiate. I’ve got to hear this.”

  --------

  “You’re doing your job well. Rather exceedingly well. And you’re making a very big mistake.”

  The torrent of Water Mana flowing into the ground slowed and paused as I drifted down out of the sky, right before the three Grand Elders. All three lidless and soulless sets of black eyes fixed on me, and tentacles twitched and began to move.

  A single Note rang through the Chord, one syllable of a Name they knew all too well. But it was bent somehow, and it made them shudder, their tendrils reflexively snapping back, out of range of the echoes in their minds.

  “Don’t. Don’t think I’m an idiot. I have no interest in further service of your master. He is YOUR Master, not mine. My masters are far greater and mightier than The Deep, which is why He has made no claim on me or my soul. He knows that if He were to dare, it would cost Him far, far more than He cares to pay. If He finds my service exemplary, that is a matter He can ruminate upon. He did not leave that consideration to you, Elders, and that is TRUTH.”

  The flow of mana was completely disrupted as every nautiloid around had their concentration broken and squealed in horrified dismay at the same moment. All the whelming power waiting to follow the previous flow swirled away and was lost.

  There was more than enough for me to lead them in burying the temple down there already, so it wasn’t a matter of concern.

  “YOU OWE ME,” I stated coldly, my Wings outspread, rising off the ground as their minds reeled under the assault of something they didn’t want to hear or confront, but to deny it was to make it a thousand times worse.

  You could accept it, and then respond to it, but you couldn’t deny it. Truth was wicked useful that way, and these creatures thought their viewpoints defined everything, when, in truth, they were meaningless specks, and now they had to face their true status before The Deep… and before my own masters.

  In truth, they were far, far smaller than I was, because their master did not care about them at all...

  “If I die here, the Breachgate shatters and falls instantly, and you and all of your servants and minions become trapped on this island, as surely and completely as those of your kind trapped on Vissidal and the Dark Island in the north.” A lot of soulless eyes turned east towards the Breachgate, belatedly remembering that the Shoreward operated in BOTH directions… and it was stronger the more powerful an outsider was.

  “Trapped by the System which rules these islands with a merciless fist. You will become enslaved as aliens and intruders, bound to the Spawn Points which will be wiped and attuned to you as your flood of raw mana reactivates them. Frozen at this moment in time, never to grow, never to know more, your only destiny to be killed over and over and over again by those who would challenge you, only to be reborn again as another test for another set of mortal heroes to overcome.”

  Masters become the ultimate slaves in a gladiatorial contest, never to escape unless someone else released them. They had seen the fate of those caught by the System, they knew the results… and The Deep loathed them!

  “Forever, until something arrives with vivus and Burns your souls out of the System again, to dissipate forever. Slaves made of kings, court jesters made of the Sages of the Deep, your knowledge, your power, your authority mere jokes and spectacles in a game of uncaring powers with less chance to decide your destiny than you did with the victory we handed you today.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “YOU OWE ME. Because of me and the Breachgate, you get to swim away. You get to perform your task for your master. You get to see your ancient rivals thrown down. You get to oversee a bloody sacrifice to your Master that has likely never happened in your lifetimes.

  “Then you get to swim away and exult in your service for the eons it takes before your master finally bids you come to Him. As opposed to being a trapped pawn of the System here and a stepping-stone for mortals looking to write their own legends.”

  They were staring at me, knowing, unlike most beings, that if I could speak that Word, I couldn’t lie to them at all.

  I truly didn’t care about serving their master and supplanting them. The incredible performance of their underlings was immaterial, as I wasn’t taking them away, and I wasn’t going to be using them. Their victory was the victory of The Deep, and that was that. I wasn’t going to be The Deep’s new voice or spokesperson, because I was already that for something else, and these twats didn’t want to mess with that something else.

  “Now, what is going to happen is that I’m going to light up some vivic flames on the tops of those temples. The reason I’m going to do that is so that you don’t have the idea of taking these conquered temples of the enemy and turning around and rededicating them to The Deep, which I’m sure you had no thought of doing.”

  None of them believed me, and the agitation in their tentacles indicated I was spot on, too.

  “YOU OWE ME. Those temples are fucking filled with T’Thuun’s Blight. They would eventually have corrupted you all, and it’s already been proven that islands sunk into ocean with magic can be raised right up again with magic. I would like you to picture all of what The Deep would do to you if you are responsible for T’Thuun corrupting a whole swath of his servants AND ripping this temple dedicated to Him back and away once more.”

  The eyes surrounding me actually went dim, and mottled shades washed across tendrils and shells in response.

  No, no, The Deep would not be happy at all.

  “When I get back from setting up those vivic fires, I’m going to come back here, and we’re going to set these things up to be dropped into The Deep. We’re going to wedge open a channel, drop this temple down a thousand feet with the remnants of its Blight, and then vivic flames are going to purify that water, slowly reduce those stones to powder, and T’Thuun is going to feel its power being eaten away for a thousand years before it finally loses this hold on the mortal plane, all the while The Deep is looking on and gloating in satisfaction.

  “And YOU OWE ME, because you’re going to be able to watch it all, too.”

  I met the eyes of each of them in turn, and I felt the submission take hold. They might be older, mightier, and emotionless twats capable of killing off thousands with a tentacle flip of command, but they fucking owed me, and that was Truth.

  Not paying off that debt or trying to shirk it was going to have some very, very dangerous consequences that The Deep didn’t want to pay, let alone them!

  Obediently, their commands rippled out, and the conduit of the mana from the seas was restarted.

  I spread my Wings and headed for the top of the temples, there to put up some very big and strong Eternal Cold Vivic Flames for the amusement of The Deep, just so It could watch Its rival’s efforts slowly, painfully, and inexorably, be Burned away over years, decades, centuries, and not be able to do anything about them.

  Then I was going to come back, we’d wait for the Deephorde to finish its slaughter and evacuate, and then we were going to bury this place forever.

  ---------

  With a crack and a gurgle, the stone underneath that ridge of rock I’d erected liquefied around it, and it began to sink and widen at the same time, starting way back at the Breachgate. Water pressure did its patient and wondrous thing, and the weight of the sea began to pour into this new place, rapidly picking up speed as the new channel broadened and especially deepened, sinking with great speed, like someone was carving a mighty canyon right through the base of Moarsman Island toward the temples.

  The stone underneath the place was liquefying, the ley lines were changing their nature under the saturation of water mana, and up above, the temples rumbled and groaned as they began to sink.

  Sink, and the incoming waters flooded over them with supernatural speed, darker than such waters should be, climbing up the stones faster than the stones were dropping, claiming their new prize, their new territory, and driving it down faster, harder, as the claws of The Deep were made manifest to claim Its prize.

  Where the extra stone mass went was not our problem or issue, but I felt the temple sink, and sink, and sink some more, the whole complex falling intact into the depths. The vivic Flames somehow shone through the indigo waters that held them, as if acknowledging that purifying the Blight present there was important enough that even The Deep wasn’t going to extinguish them.

  We were left looking at a great pool of water, deep blue and far, far deeper than any such thing had a right to be, already two thousand feet down and only getting deeper, including the canyon giving access to it and everything.

  The sun was about to arrive. With silent solemnity, the tens of thousands of nautiloids, remorans of all sizes and colors, and even the scattered moarsmen all dove over the edge of the pool and into the dark waters, rapidly vanishing from sight. I could feel the schools and swarms forming, heading back out towards the ocean through the canyon below, now a hundred-foot-wide chasm cutting in from the south-south-east and into the center of the island, like a dagger plunged into the heart of this land, taken by The Deep and leaving His Mark here forever.

  “They all going?” Kris asked, staring down at the place.

  “Some are heading deeper, probably to serve as a kind of honor guard or something.” I looked back towards the Shoreward. “They lowered the Breachgate down to the bottom of the canyon, so they’ll be able to go in and out in pilgrimage to what is basically a holy place. The Deep is definitely there and watching the place. One of the Grand Elders might even take up station there.”

  “Well, that’s not all kinds of ominous if we want to settle here,” Briggs rumbled.

  “Consequences,” I agreed. We’d definitely have to set up reminders that this was a place of The Deep.

  “And you know you’re going to have to make at least a few bridges over that damn channel they cut in the land, right?” Kris grinned.

  I groaned loudly, she slapped me on the shoulder with a laugh, and we turned around to Salute Aru and face the new day coming.

  ============================

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