“You think The Deep cannot feel your masters siphoning the souls of Its faithful servants from the seas to fuel your little Summons here? Do you think It will put up with such an affront?” Princess Kristie sneered extravagantly.

  “Take your paltry, withered forces from this place of failure, Elder. N’cthail shall take no more souls from The Deep, and The Deep will not tolerate the Blight of T’Thuun here. Grael is damned elsewhere, and while The Deep makes no claim above the waves, It guards its borders most jealously. By payment and free mortal will, mortals are to clear this island of Taint, Blight, Corruption, and the Dark. If your master wishes to oppose It, then so be it. The Deep’s will is long known on these matters, and mortals will continue to come,” I promptly backed her up.

  That The Deep could actually open mortals to The Luminance was a completely different factor, but they didn’t need to know that, either. It might actually spur them to call for reinforcements or something, so why inform them?

  “The Lost Light looked upon undead abominations before Dericost was a curse in the muck you rose from! We will free the Radiance once more, and you will not stop us!” continued Princess Kristie with a hiss. “Flee to your benighted worlds out in the Aether, Elder! One day, the Lost Light will find them, too!”

  Kris is definitely enjoying herself, I thought, noting how so many of the fighters were trying not to smirk at such over-the-topness barbarian princess hyperbole.

  Xil Riai tried to look more at me, giving me a fractional nod, trying to ignore the Sword pointed her way and the Deepsong arched like a poised wave, ready to wash down over her and sweep her body and soul away to a pitiless master. “I will take this to my sisters,” she actually bowed slightly to me, spurning Kris, and hurriedly spun on her heel to trot off. She made an aborted gesture to throw away the white flag, then thought better of it and clutched it tighter in her withered hand as the Deepchord followed her until she was a nice safe distance away and I let it fade away.

  “’Benighted worlds’?” the Mick repeated for everyone as everyone watched the undead Dark Falatacot Matriarch running off.

  “Awww, she left before I could go on a proper pompous barbaric rant!” Kris sniffed loudly and unapologetically, and everyone broke out chuckling at that.

  “Will that actually do anything?” Captain Sonya asked curiously.

  “Well, given the speed of their decision-making, who knows if it will be in time. We’ll know if the watchers get pulled. Also, remember that Lady Aerefalle is gone and Dericost politics are in the most active state they’ve been in millennia because of it,” I reminded them all. “I emphasized the fact that this isn’t actually holy ground. It’s a monument to the failure of N’cthail and its servants to contain Grael. Once they realize that, abandoning this place for some sites of actual importance seems like the proper thing to do… even if they have to seem to run from dust motes to do so.”

  “She was about to become that dust, and I’ll be happy to send the rest of them there, too,” Kris growled, her eyes turning on the nearest spawn, remorans who were huddling close to the ground under the suppression of the Deepsong coming off of Quaver, and the echoes of the Deepchord tearing at their bloodline.

  ------

  Coral formations were Burning with vivus, the ground thick with slow-moving streams of the mist after being set alight by cutting Weapons or idle plinks from arrows. There were a couple places the Wagon had a tight fit getting through, prompting Kris to just hack the things through and push them over with complete lack of care for how tough they were supposed to be.

  Everyone walked up on the Mick, who was standing there on the hill overlooking the main temple building.

  “Color me purple, ‘r there’s about a third the things standing about there that there should be,” he said, looking over the undead and sclavi sitting at scattered locations around the edifice. “Kinda matches up t’ seeing nae o’ the peepers admiring me manly physique an’ grace from the shadows, aye?”

  “Good,” Kris sniffed. “Let’s clean out the place, break it from the ley line, take it apart, and get to our real goal.”

  -----

  The ancient shrine to the Radiance was less than a quarter-mile away from the Empyrean temple. It was a very old cave system, extremely long and convoluted, and replete with a lot of sclavi Summons happy to get in our way and make nuisances of themselves.

  There were no truly pitched battles in numbers, all of us ready and waiting for some kind of mass rush or ambush… but one never materialized, although that didn’t reassure me at all.

  The Radiance was a major weapon used against the undead and the Dark Falatacot, so I didn’t expect them to give it up easily at all.

  But at last, we mapped out the confusing layout of the place, descending to the ancient depths of the maze of passages, where glowing lava radiated through ancient magma flows with an oddly pure light, and the usual assortment of magma and gas golums with a few tough Elementals made the place an unfriendly realm for undead and sclavi alike.

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  We cut down the outermost guardians with icy Coldphasing Weapons, looking around warily as the final passageway was before us.

  Kris sniffed once, then more deeply, holding up Quaver to stop us. “I smell undead. Within the past day.”

  Nobody bothered to ask her how she still had such a keen sense of smell in a place filled with way too many brimstone and caustic odors.

  “Lord Mick, you said the Radiance is the product of a heavy mana ley line in the same chamber, right?” I asked for verification.

  “So it were explained t’ me, lass. Nae expert meself on such things,” he admitted. “Fuckin’ with the ley lines, they be?”

  “It’s what I’d do. Starting a lava breach would bury the chamber entirely, but they didn’t want to be caught in it, for some reason. Heavy mana might mess up their Recalls and Rebirth processes.”

  “Can you break it?” Kris asked me neutrally.

  “If I can discern it, I can break it,” I stated confidently. Even with Ritual Magic, they didn’t have the Caster Level to stop me. “I imagine I’m dealing with a multi-level magical trap, where if I break or set off the wrong spell, a lava breach starts and we get a fresh volcano here, probably with planar distortions so we can’t ‘port out.”

  “Hrm. Lass, I gots full faith in yer abilities t’ crack any trap they have, but if they can activate it from a distance, or worse, have something here to trigger it…” the Mick trailed off.

  “Properly underhanded of you, Lord Mick,” Kris just smiled, tilting back her head. “Ryin, evac tunnel, straight up. Everyone in a line and on Disks, Lord Mick you’re Cloudstepping for altitude if anything goes wrong. I’m going along to tank any other guardians.”

  I tapped Crown against the wall there, and immediately Shaped a three-foot cylinder up the side of the wall, shooting up hundreds of feet to the surface of the island above. Mick obligingly walked over to the vent and stood there, vapors already building around his heels as he looked up.

  There was a distinct pop far above, and an instant shift in the ventilation as the hot air found a new way to get out of this place and took it, probably to the detriment of the air circulation in the rest of the Dungeon.

  Unafraid of the consequences, Kris led the way in with Quaver in full ice mode, ready to cool down anything that got in our way.

  ---

  “They definitely spent some time here,” Kris sniffed flagrantly.

  I was running scales in the Sublime Chord, and magic was dancing and glittering up and down as the various manaflows glittered and faded in and out. Not even the subtlest trigger mechanisms were going to activate off the manafield fluctuating like this, but there was a whole lot you could read from it.

  If it had been anything but magic, Kris could likely have read it accurately. Instead, she was looking around suspiciously. “Recent carvings in the stone, too.” She looked down at the floor, amused and not stepping ahead at all. “Secondary triggers or warm-ups or diversions?”

  “Yes to all three,” I murmured, a layered look at the magic building in my Visual File for her to peruse. “They’re tapping the heavy mana flow. You should be able to feel the pressure on your Null from that crevice there.” I pointed at a faintly glowing crack in the floor, the light there both clearer than a lava crack and fluctuating like a wind mirage despite the lack of air motion.

  The altar was on the other side of the room next to that crack, and the glowing orb of the swirling Radiance Infusion waited patiently on the top of it.

  There were a lot of very sensitive threads of mana anchored to that thing.

  “Why, I think I should just stroll over there and snatch that little geegaw up and have done with it, you think?” Kris asked rhetorically, then squinted at me. “You have an annoyed look on your face.”

  “This trap is touching on Empyrean magic. Some of the magic is fading in and out of higher and lower dimensions. It’s not designed to be disarmed once set up, it’s designed to trigger inevitably.”

  “So trigger mechanisms in other places to set it off, or a timer even if you get all the triggers,” Kris nodded. “So, the most you can do is delay it?”

  “Oh, fuck no.” I crooked my finger, and she obligingly retreated from the chamber. “When the going gets tough, the tough use cheese.”

  She kept her Null in tight as the Summoning Pentacles flared up below me, and I pulled at the manafield with some nice tight Primal Energy… and the Lost Light and Elemental Command as I went Fireform.

  The ground just inside the room went molten, and a huge form rose up, up, and up from it. It wasn’t a Fire Elemental Lord, but it was a being at least as mighty as the Helion Lord in the Esper Crater in its own way: an Elemental Monolith of Flame that looked like a massive shelled tortoise, burning right through the magma into sun-hot purity as it pulled free of the lava far below. Its shell was more solid than a mantle of diamond, its eyes were coals burning the essence of existence.

  “Summoner,” it rumbled in Pyric, not unfriendly. “What need have you of a Lord of the Fires?”

  “Elder, this one is Devra al-Ryinth, called Ryin, Magos of the Void Phoenix!” I bowed deeply to the mighty Elemental, not beyond my ability to Summon, but beyond my ability to Command. Diplomacy time! Using Primal mana meant it was much friendlier than a pure arcane Summoning, however. “Undead mages of N’cthail have bound a manifestation of the Radiance in a trap there.” The flexible flames of its neck extended as it peered in the direction I indicated. “The trap seeks to disrupt the mana flow and erupt the lava, burying the Radiance and hiding it from the Lost Light.” It looked back at Kris and I, and the motes of Radiant energy whirling around Stave and Sword. “I do not think I can stop what they have set into motion.”

  “The Radiance and the Lost Light have been allies since the First Fires shed light upon Creation,” the mighty tortoise rumbled in distaste. “I will manage the eruption, Magos.” His head shifted. “You bear a Token of The Deep?” the Monolith asked warily.

  “T’Thuun has Blighted the island above us, and the Shadow in the Void has Tainted rock and soil, among others. The Deep does not wish the pollution to further besmirch the surrounding waters, and has enjoined mortals to cleanse the Corruption from this place, running off the servants of N’cthail who thought to claim it, mighty Lord!”

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