More filtering, more layers of traps and puzzles and mazes, weak creatures of the Underworld attacking, testing the power of the hapless living people, their willingness to stick together along with their Wills and mental resolve.

Pretty much every Novice Mage died in the horrifying mazes of tunnels, malevolent twisted woods, or at the hands of the inhabitants thereof. Some people stuck together and acted to protect one another, many did not, and the most selfish of them seemed to attract the most attention from the denizens of the realm.

Ohhh, would you look at that? The Dark Daughter of the Acropolis, the third Candidate for the position of Goddess, and the one that had been speaking out to the enslaved Black Dragon during his fight with Mok Fan, had been caught in the spell. She had also slipped away while all this was happening, going to a shadowed spring elsewhere in the Underworld and withdrawing some of its waters and essence before returning covertly and linking back up with Mok Fan.

Making potential lemonade out of lemons? That pool definitely had magical power, even if I didn’t know quite what it did.

The Archangel Gabriel was also down there, her status no protection against the magic or the overwhelming dominance of the Dark Lord’s domain. However, the Dark Lord didn’t seem to be paying much attention to her, despite her status as a tool of the Netherworld’s enemies.

He seemed to be paying attention to... Mok Fan?

---

The filtering process ended with all the mortal survivors gathering up on one side of what looked like a massive chessboard. I could only raise an eyebrow at seeing it, and the Realm Lord on the other side... and then the other person playing the game.

It was Mu Fuxian!

I had learned that Mu Fuxian had been killed by an assassin from the Dark Curia, supposedly sent by his estranged sister. His friends had gone to great lengths to Resurrect him with the magic of the Acropolis, even bribing the relevant Nether Lord to let his soul go free somehow.

It seemed that Nether Lord wanted him back, because one of the stakes for losing the game was his return to the Nether World as a Magister in the service of the Realm Lord!

On the other side of the board were monsters of the Nether World, various mutated Dark Mages who’d fled there... and even the Virulent Heavens Sage, who was the King of the other side. The Pawns on this side were clusters of a thousand lesser mages, almost all Adepts, whose only power relied on using Formations to Cast together. They were opposed by groups of Three-headed Cerebrus Netherbeasts, creatures standing at the apex of Commander power and fully able to slaughter hundreds of weaker mages apiece.

It was a chess game, where the pieces fought and died to determine who ended up with the square. By the banter that went on, and Mu Fuxian sitting in shadowy place above the board chatting with Mok Fan, it was made apparent that if Fuxian hadn’t played, the game would have still happened. The Dark Lord would have played both sides, and mixed up the teams so that friends and enemies were on both sides, and not killing your friend just meant you both died, as only one color was going to survive!

The macabre chess game began soon enough. The Queen on this side was Archangel Gabriel, and the King was actually the Black Dragon who had torn out and crushed that forced Contract to the Virulent Rivers Sage. The two Kings glared hatefully at one another across the chessboard.

The game began, and I could only watch.

The terms of the game were that attackers got a buff in power to reflect they were attacking, and whoever won the fight got a stacking buff in power for the rest of the game. It catered to the idea of making choice heroes stronger, using them repeatedly and winning with them to make them unstoppable, which changed the dynamic of the game a great deal.

The Dark Daughter was matching Mok Fan’s White Bishop rank as the Black Bishop, with a renegade Archmage thief as one Rook, and the Dark Daughter’s Contracted Shadow Knight as the other. I didn’t hold out high hopes for either to be useful, as it was plain this was going to be a fight between the top four of each side.

It didn’t take all that long from their perspective, but from mine it actually took several days, especially given how the Realm Lord would create custom battlefields for the fights He was interested in, obviously favoring one side or the other.

And then I realized something.

“Your Majesties, is the Realm Lord favoring Mok Fan?” I asked those watching with me today.

Flowing Silver High Emperor loved watching new and interesting kinds of magic at work, and especially liked getting away with spying upon a Realm Lord without their knowing about it. Thunderbird Emperor was also keenly interested in the subject, and so the two were kind of looming up above me as I Scried, watching everything with rapt fascination.

“HE HAS NOT BEEN PLAYING WISELY, EVEN ACCORDING TO HIS OWN MODIFIED RULES,” Flowing Silver High Emperor responded carefully, having received the rules for playing base chess and dozens of variants from me the instant this all began. It had rapidly caught on among the Silver Foxes, who could move the pieces around with a thought, and they rapidly became experts at devising the many-layered strategies involved in the game.

Indeed, they rapidly moved to three-dimensional chess to make things more interesting and challenge their visualization abilities. Go was also attractive for that reason, although not as interesting to them since the pieces were all alike.

“IT IS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE SOMETHING SO POWERFUL COULD BE SO FOOLISH IN ITS MOVES,” Thunderbird agreed. “HE IS EITHER NOT TRYING, OR HAS OTHER MOTIVATIONS IN MIND.”

“THE ENDING IS FOREGONE, THE ONLY QUESTION IS IF THE PERSONAL PROWESS OF THE LESSER PLAYERS IS ENOUGH FOR THEM TO SURVIVE,” Flowing Silver mused thoughtfully, watching as the inevitable duel between the Kings of both sides began. The soul-wounded Black Dragon Emperor and the Virulent Heaven Sage went at it, the Sage activating the Curse on the Dragon that had forced the Contract on it in the first place.

Still, the Dragon held on long enough to deal grievous harm and spiritual injuries to the Sage who had enslaved it, setting him up for a quick death at the hands of Mok Fan, and from there the remaining fights were basically slaughters as the remaining Big Three on the White side won all their remaining fights.

Five of the eight batches of Pawns had been slaughtered, tens of thousands more human Mages fed into the gristle of the Netherworld with complete mercilessness.

However, their side won, and so they were free to go. They had, however, learned that the Realm Lord had a direct interest in having Mu Fuxian working for Him... and we had learned that He was keenly interested in Mok Fan, to the point of helping him and hiding that help behind lack of ability at chess.

I didn’t have much interest in seeing how Mok Fan got out of there and sent home, Archangel Gabriel and the Dark Daughter accompanying him and leaving the Pawns to be sent out on their own.

Instead, I did something I rarely ever did, and went looking at the future.

Hissing strands of probability warped out from this point and back into the Mortal Realm. The fact it was taking place in the Netherworld meant the changed probabilities hadn’t reflected in the future before this time, but now Mok Fan, the Dark Daughter, and the Archangel Gabriel were all going to return, and... that changed everything.

There were massive shifts in some directions, pieces moving here and there with speed and purpose that hadn’t been there before. I winced as I saw them, and the bubbling conflict between the Netherworld and the Church of Light was being framed.

Mok Fan was being groomed as the opposing head of the Dark Faction, and He didn’t even know it! It seemed his ability to master multiple Elements had caught the attention of the other Netherlords, and he was being manipulated opposite the Church of Light, while maneuverings around him were setting him up for an elevation in power he didn’t understand at all, but which would soon eclipse and surpass that of the strongest of the Archangels, Uriel.

It was a Fate he could not escape, bound as he was to the Dark. He was basically doomed to take his place as a Netherlord, a master of multiple Elements, meant to break the power of the Church of Light, triggering its downfall and starting the collapse and conflict of the Lords of Light and the Netherlords as consequences.

I looked at the Crimson Thread of the entity that was gathering souls for its ascension, an ascension it was never going to achieve because of the Synod and Archangels. Instead, the Crimson Gates it was erecting from souls of exemplary Virtue and Vice were going to be given to Mok Fan, a great Ritual which basically destined him for Netherlord status.

I watched the threads of Fate play out on multiple levels, appreciating the long game at work here. The chaotic whims of Humanity were creating interesting twists and turns used in the past and future, things the Lords of Light with their monolithic, complex layers of machinations were understandably poor at adapting to, while ambitious and clever Humans leapt into such possibilities eagerly and deftly, time and again.

In the end, the Netherlords made it possible to seize power with no moral restrictions, not caring what you did or how you did it to gain what they offered, as long as the price was paid. The Lords of Light instead insisted on your obedience, obeisance, and following their strict path and orders... and instead of granting you power to do as you saw fit, they would share some of theirs with you.

Meaning it could be withdrawn if you turned or they disapproved of you, and you certainly could never rise to challenge them. Indeed, leaning on their power meant you were shackling yourself and binding your own potential in the long-term.

Easy power, easy path to get it, but you’d never rise to the heights. Bloody power from any path you cared to take, and it could ultimately lead all the way to the top, if you were red-handed and ruthless enough.

If this last development was allowed to happen, within five years the End Times would be upon us. I was going to have to twist this around now, and in doing so throw all the involved forces off of their game.

-------

Thunderbird and Flowing Silver Emperors watched Healer Fae start arranging a complex new spell neither had seen before together, plainly just making it up on the spot.

It had Divination, Void, Chaos, and Temporal Magic elements to it, and like always the Sublime Chord made all the magic in the area echo to her Will as she worked on it.

-She is going to intervene and slice through the meddling magic of the Netherlord,- Flowing Silver Emperor commented Psychically to the great Eagle next to Him. Although they were very different in personality and temperament, Flowing Silver had plenty of experience with Great Avians, and the flexibility of mind to not care about different demeanors.

Conversely, Thunderbird was very respectful of the natural hierarchy, and so didn’t begrudge the Nine-Tailed Fox High Emperor His playful and whimsical personality.

-The idea that a member of the Monkey Tribe can counter the magic of a Realm Lord is alternately fascinating and terrifying, Your Majesty,- Thunderbird observed, not for the first time. -How does one fit such power into such a tiny body?-

-Now, now, clearly it is her mind which is of the most interest,- Flowing Silver laughed back at the Imperial Avian. -It is like a sun and a crystal, shining so brightly, yet invisible and focused so that unless she allows one, none can see just how fast, focused, and great in size it is. Like her Shapings, what she lacks in size she just makes up in miniaturized scale, perfection, and intensity.- Both of them glanced over at the great Pyramid which was the center of The Broom Closet, over a hundred tiers high and only going to get bigger. It was the perfect and telling example of what she was and how she went about things.

Rather than relying on size and mass, she built things small and perfectly, doing with sublime and profound quality what most Beasts did with size and might. Flowing Silver High Emperor had seen Emperors staring at the Sealing Pyramid on the Beast Plane for days, weeks, and even months, enchanted by the marvelous interlocking patterns of the stonework she had wrought there... and that Pyramid was perhaps a fifth as complex as the work being done on this one, and on a much, much greater scale!