He jerked and screamed as I stared at him, the Ward-picking I was doing with my other hand continuing unabated. The Runes on him began to smoke, then burst into flame as their foundational magic was eaten away. The Light began to pump through him, burning and revitalizing, Restoring what was lost. The Light lit him up from the inside, and his thrashings became a paralytic, locked tension of battling magic inside of him, stealing down from his head and out of sight over the rest of his body.

His skin burned, paled, healed, and was restored. A Caucasian, this one. No hair, but bloody eyes became a normal hazel as he stared blankly, the changes to his mind and body reverted and burning away under their own power. The Dark Magic flared into vivus, and I watched intently as it happened over two long, agonizing minutes.

He drew in one long, last relieved breath, and I slowly brought my hand down over his eyes as it left him.

His spirit had given up long ago, bound to the shell of his body by the magic. But at least he’d died human, and he wasn’t automatically going Down with a spirit contaminated by Dark Magic. His own deeds and not his shackled soul would determine his fate.

Behind me, the whirling Glyphs suddenly stilled, and the magic of the Ward peeled away. The signature of the Curse Magic was naturally part of the magicks wound into the man, and had been fairly easy to discern as otherwise unnecessary to what had been done to him.

I clenched my other fist, turned my head, and flung my fingers open.

The misty barrier of the Ward peeled back and away smoothly, pleased to accept my key.

I pointed, and Glenn and his scouts streamed inside quickly, rapidly dissolving into invisibility or blurs of mist, as they preferred. Once they were through, the Hunters and heavy weapon teams followed grimly.

-Briggs, we are heading into the Ward. If you want to sound the alarm, now’s the time. The outer area is not swept clean, and is full of Black Curia traps and spotters.- He naturally knew that, having been watching the entire process while staying silent.

-On it,- he /replied simply. Phone calls from Boston and Coralost would be going out promptly, diverted through multiple vectors, warning of multiple Dark Beast sightings, magical combat, traps, and the discovery of a massive concealment Ward near Folgers, Ohio.

Things were going to happen very quickly with the military forces here, and likely in the neighboring states. The Black Curia was not something anyone took lightly.

---

The area inside the Ward was magically shadowed, and everyone could feel the Dark Mana in the air, raising hackles on what was basically a Light/Elemental-heavy force, along with our Typeless people. It wasn’t exactly hostile, but it was not friendly, and it was cloyingly pervasive, wanting to get out and spread.

The huge knot of the shit half a mile ahead was like a black blot throbbing against my forebrain, too.

The trees had been encouraged to grow here, helping mask what was going on. The scouts up ahead were picking up large numbers of minor creatures of Shadow about, who happily died pretty quickly to vivic Weapons. They cleared a slow and careful path through the widely-spaced, dark-leaved trees with their great shadowed canopy above us and the unnaturally thick and twisted foliage below.

Earth and Plant Magic cleared the trails, barriers of vines and thorns no impediment if their whole root systems were moved out of the way, and intertangled branches withdrew from one another.

Of course, that normally meant sniping down some concealed Shadow creatures in the brush. More Detects for the win, Silenced snipers doing the job with the skill and ease of Boonie workers.

It was like being in deadly combat situations had helped everyone Level into tried-and-true combat team professionals, or something.

It also helped that everyone quietly knew I could Raise them if they died, as I’d done so dozens of times over the course of the past few months. With not even death able to stop them from getting more powerful and constant Healing backing them up, our people had gotten very good, very fast.

Every single one of the combat team members had their Stars at Tier Five, too, a wholly unprecedented thing for hundreds of people to have. The simple improvement was like giving everyone a perfect Spirit Seed for x4 damage and power, except that it stacked with Spirit Seeds!

The most competent were at Tier Six for their core Stars, agglomerating Warrior Soul Eggs into Commander Soul Gems patiently and doggedly. Eightfold damage made their Novice Spells nearly as deadly as other mages’ Adept Spells...

-We’ve got burial mounds ahead, and a crapload of folks set up around them,- Burt /hissed on his very tight Marklink.

Made sense. All the existing Dark Zones were built up around places of death. China’s was a massive cemetery, while Egypt’s was anchored on the Pyramids. A lost set of native burial mounds would be a perfect anchor point.

I had to wonder how many additional people the Black Curia had buried here over the years to get this Rift to grow. I made a mental note to start checking graveyards and mortuaries for signs of involvement in this, if Briggs hadn’t already done so. It would not surprise me at all if a lot of people thought to be cremated or buried had actually been trucked off to here and chucked into massive pits all around to increase the Dark Mana in the area.

The entire area was Shadow-saturated, so Commune with Nature couldn’t see anything in the area, infused with unnatural energy as it was.

Gentle illusions were complementing Chaos magic and Air/Light distortions to keep everything concealed as the Gatlings and mortars were being set up, while the ops teams spread to the sides and offed as many spotters as they could with lethal speed.

Mental clocks were counting down on their checking schedule.

The key here wasn’t the rank and file. It was the post-Archmages at the heart of the process, who commanded magic powerful enough to wipe many of us away instantly. As they had exceeded the total number of Startrail combinations, they had risen beyond base spells and couldn’t be Countered as easily.

They could be Dispelled, but their Caster Levels were all going to be 16+, so that was a crapshoot for almost everyone here except me, and I couldn’t lock down more than one or two that way. Wizardry Levels only exceeded Magery Levels by a few for most of our people, after all.

So basically, we were waiting for Sama to do her thing.

I didn’t know where she was, but I was absolutely sure she was going to do something rather explosively bloody, and they weren’t going to like it when she did.

If Mister ‘Orange Cardinal’ was in charge, it would probably start with him!

Sama would be completely aware of the time limit, so I trusted her to either be in position or so close it wouldn’t matter. She was a Null, so none of them would feel her presence or threat, any more than any other normal person would. Magical senses? Pfah. Skill checks or go home... and good luck beating her Stealth modifier and Hide in Plain Sight and Darkstalker.

We’d know it immediately, of course, because this Ritual they were working towards was going to go to complete wild shit. It was designed to pour magic slowly into the connection between worlds and lever it open, then lock it into position and make it self-sustaining off the energies and conflicting forces there.

Thirty seconds to go. I began Casting Delayed Shard attacks and preparing to move forward. Little tri-wedge slivers of Force Magic grew into long and lethal javelins all around me in a panoply of colors, none of them for Healing this time, as well as a Crown of Stars gathering around my head in winking, showy readiness I rarely used.

This also got me started on my Residual Metamagic and Repeated Magic counts...

, 9, 8...

The timer hit two, and the whole Manafield here, saturated with Dark Elements as it was, actually convulsed. I watched the Null Interdiction bloom out there in the middle of the Ceremony, and even before that nerve-freezing Hag’s Laugh reached us in her version of a kiai shout, two utterly distinct Notes were ringing out, the mortar shells were dropping into tubes, and the spells and gunfire were ranging out as we charged.

Red hit the detonator. The explosions as four key nodes of their Ward behind us blew apart to the carefully-set charges added to the chaos in the air and Manafield as the Ward collapsed on itself, its integrity fatally reduced to writhing streams of shattered magic.

Fire-Infused Semtex makes quite the bang, as it were. Alchemy for the win!

My Shards leapt out, a couple hundred of them at this point, all of them unerring, unmissing, and guided to their targets by Detect Evil at V, Behold the Heart of Darkness. Those dark hearts were exactly what I was feeding to everyone, and target acquisition proceeded forthwith as the shooters marked their targets to create minimal overlap. I was actually aiming at those out of sight and on the far side of the Formation with the Chains I was throwing out.

Kicker damage worked perfectly fine on Humans instead of Beasts, and anyone opening something like this deserved nothing but annihilation. Seeking Shards were totally capable of swooping down on those out of direct line of sight.

The feedback effect from the Ritual’s disruption created about six to ten seconds of mental confusion from the recoil and feedback of the failing Ceremony, especially as the counterbalancing outflow failed and raw gushing Dark Mana came flooding out... along with the things on the other side who’d been supplying it.

There were spells that sprang up to defend the stronger-Willed of the enemy, but two of the darkest spots at the heart of the Ritual were gone, and whoops, there went a third of the six, doubtless as they tried to fly away, ‘port away, or otherwise retreat, and magic wasn’t working like it should.

The mortar rounds came down on clusters, True Seeking’s nice timesighting bonus taking care of the accuracy and range judgement problem. Mages screamed as concussive forces and shrapnel sent them flying, proximity fuses detonating the shells ten feet above the ground for maximum lethality.

The lowest members of the Curia, the ones providing the majority of the Mana flow, died in the thousands as scything Chains curved around the circle of their positions, leapfrogging one another to maximize the killing spread, and Holy Baneflame Elemental Kickers did their job.

Vivic explosions dotted the area as mages with Dark Elements died, racing up through the air as the incoming Dark energy met unwhite.

There were a lot of Shadowy figures being sucked up through that rent passage, the air and sky going dark as the whole area became a massive temporary Domain of Shadows... a Domain being instantly eaten and consumed by vivic energy.

I wasn’t ignoring my Healing duties, but this was a thing that had to be stopped, and as many of the Black Curia taken out as possible.

Two op Squads linked hands, and Red and the Mick put their hands on my shoulders as I Teleported us to the far side of the Ritual.

We popped up literally right in between a lot of startled sentry positions, who I painted into the Marks-Up-Display going up for everyone, multiple interlapping confirmations of their own and enemy positions agglomerating into the multi-Fellowship magic and letting everyone know where everyone was, and who was shooting at what.

Sama’s awareness of the center was searingly complete. The screaming face of the next Deacon as she came for him, his Shadow Magic, and the Wings he’d brought out that weren’t zipping him away fast enough were also pretty damn vivid.

There were also Shadow creatures on all sides of her, rising out of pools of inky darkness and turning her way.

Her enthusiasm only grew. Soul-cutting Notes rose as her Sword called out eagerly, “Tremble, She Comes!” and the music began to play...