Mudmouth couldn’t get away, and he couldn’t stop them. Any blows he hit them with were only glancing shocks at best, and Positive Edge kept them ahead of the Healing game on him. The damage was only stacking up and multiplying, the energy-flesh Mudmouth was made of seemed to be mending itself ever more slowly as purple-black lights and goo poured out of wounds blazing with vivus, every Bleed and Burn effect the Health Qi Countered also taking massive Health Qi to fix.

  “Seven Dragons ignite, the world is on fire!”

  A Blood Rose bloomed again, and they both went into Seven Rampaging Dragons, adding in the bonus damage, multiplying, critting, Slaying, feeding AoO’s to one another and triggering more with every final gasp of this damned thing that should never have been created…

  It was almost a popping sound as the Health Qi evaporated with under 8K of life left, and then it was just a body made of something that was only mimicking meat and bone.

  “Listen, and hear the Land’s desire!”

  Mudmouth screamed and flailed and tried to do something, he really did. Now the vivus was sticking, and he could feel it eating at his power, his soul, and the energies he was using to fend it off only fed it. Constitution damage tore through his meat, Strength damage hobbled him, Burn and Bleed damage raged over his hide and into his body unchecked now, stacking up, piling up, building into an inferno as crits after crits exploded in Fiery Bursts over and over until -

  “That you TREMBLE, and FEED THE LAND!”

  The Mick saw the blast go off, he did. That was because he and Princess Kristie overkilled Mudmouth by at least a thousand Health, limbs and body cloven apart from multiple scything blows. It was all held in place by will and resistance and force for one terrible moment as Mudmouth screamed, trying to keep himself intact by pure desperation and disbelief of what had been done to him.

  Then there was a silent explosion of whiteness as the last Fiery Burst triggered the explosion of vivus, and the world went all sorts of quiet and whiteness filled the Mick’s vision.

  He realized he was kind of airborne, close enough to the ground that his Cloudstepping Sandals didn’t catch him, and even though it seemed an incongruously long time, he hit the ground with a grunt, rolled automatically despite being in heavy Armor, and was back on his feet as smoothly as any acrobat.

  Around him was a thick, almost turgid white mist, filling the world and blocking all sight more than a foot from his face. He could only see the blaze of Bunita’s Kiss, and that was it, not even the hand that held it.

  Something moved around him.

  The Mick didn’t know what it was, but it was BIG. It felt like the world was spinning, like he was in the center of something gargantuan, immense.

  The thick vivic fog around him, he wasn’t sure how deep it was even with his Mask, suddenly seemed to fall straight down around him. He could see the lines and flows of it pouring down past him, as if it were impossibly heavy all of a sudden, and the ground and trees and everything around him were stained purest white as it did so.

  He wobbled and fell to his knees, surrounded by a feeling of more power than he had ever imagined would be displayed around him as vivus poured down out of the sky, and the Land ate it all.

  Only two breaths, but they seemed far longer and to take forever. Then the sun was shining down, the world was white, and the only colors were the blue of the sky and Princess Kristie in her leathers and Golden Armored skin, Quaver ringing with two clear and celebratory notes amid the six different hues of fire covering him, Lost Light motes dancing like white-hot stars now in a rush of pure magic and released energy.

  The Mick blinked, looking around himself in rather stunned incomprehension. “What,” the words managed to force themselves out of his lips in pure defiance of his instinctive awe, “was that?”

  “Pretty sure that was the spirit of the island kipping up for a quick snack,” Princess Kristie said in a neutral voice, the closest thing he’d ever heard to her being impressed. “Mudmouth was big enough to be noticed and grabbed as a snack after he went en vivus, I reckon.”

  The Mick lowered his Kiss and placed his head against the pommel. “Gods an’ demons, lass, I dunno how I kept going that long. That were bloody fucking intense.” He felt utterly drained, knew his stamina was blooping near empty, and he breathed long and deeply, drawing in extraordinarily refreshed air into his lungs, so it felt like a thunderstorm was starting itself inside his chest.

  The fires of his heart and the pumping of his blood gradually steadied, slowed from a guttering trip-fest down to something more manageable under the force of his ki. Without that ki, he would have been down and gasping for air in the first minute at the speed they’d been moving!

  “Yeah, it was!” she admitted cheerfully. He knew her endurance was unreal, but she wasn’t making any effort to get up, either. That full-on blade dance she’d been in, swirling with Seven Dragons ki, had to eat up her stamina even faster than his own, taxing even her incredible reserves.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Her Golden Road path of using stamina to fuel further depredations on the unfortunate victims of her attention was definitely getting a workout.

  She cocked an ear to the side. “Hear that?” she asked him gleefully.

  He turned his head slowly, but only heard the vague whistling of a breeze through the trees and the undergrowth of the jungle, nothing much more. It didn’t surprise him, even the bugs would be hiding after the shadow of that incredible presence…

  Oh, right. “Mudmouth be dead. Be guessing the Dark Bobo be suddenly dead. All the Summons be out o’ control, an’ all the dominated Tainted tuskers be out o’ command, too. Mowen should have taken control of just about everything not Tainted, aye?”

  “That is what it sounds like.” She got to her feet, visibly swaying for a moment before catching her balance.

  Her Disk flew up out of her Masspack, spun out from stacked wedges into its Floating Forge form, and she carefully walked over, grabbed his breastplate, and hoisted him onto it like a child getting a free ride.

  He didn’t complain. His legs felt like wet noodles, and he kept a firm grip on Bunita’s Kiss, because if he let go, his arms were just going to dangle at his side.

  Skating very leisurely, Princess Kristie trucked him back through the unnaturally white and quiet jungle around them, and the stunned silence of an abruptly ended civil war beyond.

  ------

  I saw Kris taking her own sweet time coming back to us, but that was pretty cool. After all, she was responsible for that huge serpentine mouth coming up out of the ground, a ghostly thing that had closed over the massive vivic explosion of what had to be Mudmouth going up… and then the jaws had probably turned sideways and done the same thing when Dark Bobo was finally Smashed to flaming, pulping ruin by a gigantic flaming spiked Club, and also lit off like nobody’s business.

  Tim was sitting on the ground now, looking around and not saying anything as he stared at the jungle stained all clear white, doubtless trying to digest that overpowering sense of grandeur sweeping past him when the island here woke up and had itself a nice snack.

  Didn’t even leave any Wisps for us to kill, which was pretty nice of it.

  Mowen was taking control of the Summons over there, or at least the non-Tainted ones. The screams and shouts from the distance had cut off instantly when Mudmouth and Dark Bobo went down, so there were no reinforcements arriving any more. The Tainted Summons were shot down by the archers or impaled by the spearmen quickly, just victims with how they were all reeling drunkenly after the forced ripping-away of their controllers, and the spirit of the island sweeping by fast and letting them know they weren’t liked, invited, or even really relevant.

  It was definitely a relief to them when the Bows twanged and the Spears thrust, and the dazed Tainted Tuskers went down in flames, without even a howl of protest.

  All the Tainted ones in the area of the vivic explosions were just gone, of course. They’d popped like soap bubbles when the ephemeral jaws had manifested and concentrated the vivus, adding more fuel to the meal, like little spicy add-ons for the Land’s benefit.

  Generous of them. And yet, they were still going to be free of the System forever. Who knew how many countless tuskers were enslaved to the System here, given they were natives of the place and had been breeding here for uncounted thousands of years.

  Their numbers might be in the tens of millions, even hundreds of millions. Depending on whether or not the System corralled undead from outside of Dereth, they might exceed the number of undead slaved to the magic here.

  Still, it was a finite number, and it could end. It would just take a whole lot of killing of Summons. I just sat down on Tim’s shoulder, leaning against the wall, taking it all in with him as he pondered things no Tremendous Monuga had likely ever pondered before.

  “Kinda impressive, huh?” I asked him.

  His bottom eye turned to look at me, the other two continued to rove over the whiteness all around. “You could see it? Feel it? Hear it?” he asked me slowly.

  “I didn’t hear it,” I admitted, curious now. “What was it saying?”

  “It said there is a worm eating at the Seal, and more, much more, is needed,” Tim said slowly. “What did it mean?”

  My blood went utterly cold, so much so that my skin turned blue. “Tim? Don’t mention that to anyone but me, Princess Kristie, Warlord Briggs, or the Mick. That you know that is very, very dangerous.”

  “Huh.” He considered that for a long moment. “The not-tuskers have something to do with the worm,” he said in a whisper all the more amusing for the fact it really was pretty soft.

  “You know who Aerbax is? You remember it?”

  “Heard of him. Seen floaty place in the black plain. Never met him, didn’t want to. Unclean, hummy-bad like other virindi, only worse.”

  I nodded agreement with him. “He was thought to be dead, and was really powerful, capable of even messing with time to some extent, it was said, and had no scruples to stop him from doing those things.

  “Aerbax is the one who made Mudmouth and the Dark Bobo.”

  The Tremendous Monuga grunted and nodded slowly. “So he might be the worm…”

  “And this Seal is blocking something so horrible the very Land warned you about it.”

  Tim grunted, and then awkwardly patted the stained-white ground with his huge three-fingered hand. “Land take care of us, if we take care of it?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Yes, and sometimes, sometimes the care we have to take is incredibly and horribly bloody.”

  Tim grunted again, deep and echoing, and thought about that for a long moment. At last, he nodded and said, “Tim glad he made friends with little Isparians, then. Tim think this going to be biggest, nastiest fight Tim ever fights.”

  I couldn’t argue with that judgment. “I agree with you. Only we aren’t strong enough to get there, and we don’t know what side is fighting with who, only that they have their own desires and those are probably going to get in the way of what we want to do.”

  Tim just grunted. “Fighting for territory. Land IS the territory. Stupid to fight over it, instead of with it, FOR it, like we need do. Tim seen lots of fights for territory, been in lots of fights for territory. Small fights, when Land tells you what you need to fight.”

  Tim was a whole lot smarter than he looked like in real life, but I’d already seen his Markspace presence was growing more complex, pumping Karma into his mental attributes as the Isparian System allowed.

  Yeah, Tim was going to be something special when he got where he needed to go.

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