I was there as Old Mountain Emperor triggered the single quake that sheared through the stone around the city and chopped those braces apart. I heard the massive crunch that shook the whole city, the Ward of bright Light instantly springing up to protect the city... but there was no way to protect it from its own weight.

With a crackle and crunch and roar, the city began to fall, countless tons of stone grinding and cracking as the city slid down, down, irregularities in the process vibrating through the city and shattering the solid mass into competing, grinding chunks of stone. The fall only grew faster and faster as buildings swayed and fell, people screamed, the Ward above sputtered and faltered as the walls of the city were shattered... and the waters of the harbor came pouring in from above, the screaming people looking up as the city descended below sea level and the first curtain fall of the Mediterranean came surging in.

Then further quakes and cracks tore out the bottom of the harbor, pushing uncounted tons of mud and rock along with the water, and the sea truly surged forth.

The coasts of Spain had suffered only the lightest of littoral conflicts during The Great Flood, and the Catalonians had mostly fought on other shores, dying for other peoples and cities of Spain, another fact they resented. As the earth literally was torn out from under them and the sea came to claim them, they also looked up to see something just as horrifying... a stream of Aquatics, led by Sea Dragons, pouring down with the massive flood into the pit that had suddenly been made of their city.

Airborne schools of Fish and Sharks went after the members of the population who could fly as the City’s Ward shorted out and gave up. The collective scream as the sea came into bury the city was lost in the thunder of the earth and waters hungrily closing in upon them, and Barcelona was wiped from the face of the planet completely.

I looked up as more quakes thundered and cracked in the distance.

Lleida, Girona, and Tarragona were suffering the exact same fates, sliding down into the earth. Tarragona was a port city and would be buried by the sea, but Lleida and Girona were privileged to see all that mass of stone evacuated from beneath their cities rise up around the pit they were sliding down, and slowly and grandly close down atop them, grinding down after them and burying their cities under the remorseless weight of a mountain of stone.

Beasts were coming down out of the Mountains at silent commands, sweeping across the landscape. There were certainly plenty of humans who had only bowed to the Synod in fear of death, but it did not matter now. Death came for them as a Beast Wave the likes of which Spain had never experienced in all of its history swept across Catalonia, and this land of Humanity was cleared of the foolish Monkeys that dared rebel against their Emperor.

There was no way for the Synod to save them. Too many angry Sages were watching, and if the Archangels were dispatched, they would be caught, swarmed, and killed. Even the Avatar itself could not leave without creating a conflict, as many were those who would strike at the Lance of the Lords of Light who were responsible for killing so many.

Mok Fan was also waiting quite eagerly for another rematch. Unlike Evai in her shell of Michael’s corpse, he was only getting stronger while he waited. He had been meant to be the Champion of Darkness in this fight, and the fact he was the Champion of Humanity didn’t change the fact that they were still going to fight!

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Over the next week, more and more cities of Spain and Portugal dropped into the earth and were swallowed. Rather than race to save the people and warn them of what was going to happen, the remnants of the Spanish Army and what forces had fought back against the Rapture encircled them, one by one, and did not let any of them out when they tried to flee the doom that was coming to them.

Valencia, Murcia, Seville, Alicante, Salamanca, Almeria, Lisbon, and Porto soon joined the other cities in vanishing from the face of the earth, those on the sea also swept clean by Aquatics who ensured that none of the natives would survive.

The Beast Wave that swept across both countries could not be stopped, and any who did try to stop them were killed without mercy. Any city that raised a Ward against them was razed and all inhabitants slain, without any exception.

If they had a Seven Elements Obelisk raised against the Light, however, they were spared, as they were if they bowed down to the Beasts and endured their passage without raising a hand to stop them.

It was noteworthy that not a single Raptured individual could restrain themselves from fighting, and so the countrysides were also soon swept clean of those who had embraced their destiny, and now died for their choice.

It was everything Humanity feared most, Beast Waves surging across the land, mighty Noble Beasts in a force that no Human army could truly defy leading them in a wave of extinction that could wipe clean an entire nation, sending hundreds and thousands of years of accomplishments into the dustbin of history as if they never were.

But to the Humans who knelt down and accepted the Judgement of their Emperor, nothing happened at all.

Old Mountain had a severe dislike of humanity, but He was perfectly aware of me and who and what I had become. He wasn’t going to overreach His responsibilities and just wipe everyone. A quiet word to those fighting back against the Rapture, and that bent knee meant everything.

First came The Rapture, and rising up against it was The Purge, a measured and devastatingly precise and accurate move by the Emperors.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The Synod and the Dark Curia knew of the power of the Emperors, but they had never really pictured the sheer power of the forces an Emperor could command, even without being involved themselves. As the Rapture tore apart any attempt at a unified defense, the Beasts could move without opposition, and in some cases that was absolutely essential to the survival of humanity.

The followers of the Dark Curia had no problem taking knees, of course, but their problems were only beginning.

Humans with Dark Elements were rounded up and informed in no uncertain terms by Commander or Ruler-level Beasts that they would cleanse their Stars of the Dark Mana, or they would be killed. Many didn’t take that well, and were summarily dispatched. Others thought they could fake it for time, and found that trying to fool Ruler Beasts was an exercise in futility.

If they couldn’t cleanse their Stars, the Dark Rapture was going to take them when it manifested, and they were going to become enemies. If they didn’t want to become slaves to the Netherworld, they had the choices of cleansing their Stars or dying!

Coralost helped by putting up a lot of White Mana Zones, and the Adepts and very rare Novices with Dark Elements were transported to them. Many were astonished to find former ex-Dark mages at those locations, able to coach them through the process... and Light mages being shuttled in to do the exact same thing on the other side of the equation!

Beasts prowled the greatest cities in the world. That was particularly true in America, where it was made plain by Edict of Thunderbird that failure to comply was choosing to die, and not a single City Ward was brought up to forestall the passage of the Beasts, although the nation had its own share of Bible-thumpers who were swept up in The Rapture and had to be exterminated.

Flights of powerful Avians who could see and Hear all, packs of Wolves that numbered in the thousands, and countless other Beasts roved the lands that Humans had thought were their own, hunting down the Raptured and sniffing out all those with Dark Elements. They found many a new fight of their own to prosecute in so doing, as hiding places and schemes meant to be unleashed at later times were triggered desperately once discovered.

The world found itself gripped in more chaos and fighting as the Emperors exerted their power, and yet the Sages still did not interfere, still facing down the Synod in Rome, waiting for the arrogant followers of the Lords of Light and their legions of fanatics to receive their comeuppance.

Soon enough, the only cities left in the world of the Raptured were those in Italy itself. The countryside throughout Italy was overrun soon enough by Beasts coming in from all over Europe, and what people hadn’t already fled The Rapture hurried to flee as any Raptured outside the city were devoured quickly and mercilessly. Soon only the cities stood alone on the shores of the rivers and the sea, staring at the Beasts roving in the distance and playfully destroying all the works of mankind.

The nations of the world watched and let it happen, and the Synod didn’t even bother to ask for help at this point. The Sages ringing Rome eyed the Beasts destroying the outskirts of the city, driving the people back, back behind the walls rising high to protect them and the Ward being Powered by more than mortal energies there, and did nothing to stop them whatsoever, even intervening to protect some Beasts from random sniping from the Angels and Archangels within the city.

As a result, none of the Sages were bothered by the Beasts, either. They were just one more set of Beasts united in purpose, here.

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Egypt, the Great Pyramid...

The Pyramid of Khufu, mightiest of the dead Pharaohs. The Pyramid of Khafre, the Pyramid of Menkaure; both his subordinates and his successors, the final Guardians of the Valley of the Kings. They and their Queens’ tombs were now the last Pyramids left intact in Egypt.

Undead were flooding out of the doors of the Pyramids non-stop, saturating the fields around the Pyramids with bodies, all of them waiting to fight, a nigh-infinite flood of The Dead waiting to gain vengeance on the living who had performed such a miracle and blasphemy. The golden sands of the Valley of Kings were now Burned white to dust, and even worse... green was starting to grow in the deeper places, far from the Domain of the Great Pyramid, life finally returning and feasting on the bounty of the dead after thousands of years.

It was probably the greatest magical accomplishment of the age. The other Pyramids had been destroyed to a one, melted and fused into great Seals upon the very Conduits to the netherworld that had empowered them, Burning slowly with vivus that made the space of the Mortal Realm about them ever stronger, ever harder to stay connected to, and absolutely impassable to any Undead who wanted to escape.

Briggs had seen over a score of Pharaohs from the other Pyramids marching out to gain vengeance on the living. Unfortunately for them, he was far too canny a commander to attempt to take on millions of the Undead, and if they wanted to saturate the landscape, he was perfectly happy to pound them dead from a distance, and so were the Undead Hunters.

They had signed on knowing this was going to be a slog. They had killed tens or hundreds of millions of Undead over these past months, but they had also slowly grown in power and competence, and they had succeeded, accomplishing something that all of their ancestors had not!

Glory, crashing down on them with each ruptured Pyramid laid low, each source of undeath Sealed away, driving them towards greater heights, and greater belief in the man who led them!

Every non-Dark Sage in Africa was with them now, standing opposite the half-Sage and Sage Pharaohs gathered under Khufu’s Banner, daring them to step out and show themselves in duels of power and end their unlives forever. Some of the most talented mages from around the world had come to Egypt to be a part of the destruction of the oldest Death Zone known to humanity, bringing with them money and logistics to support the effort.

All of the Dark Sages who didn’t want to die were purging their Dark Elements in a Crystalheart Compound now, perhaps full of regret, but not wanting what was happening with The Rapture to happen to them when the Netherlords came.

It had been almost a month now, and there had been no significant progress to speak of on making it to the final Pyramids. The Sphinx was still visible in the distance there, and Khufu sometimes flew around in his bone chariot, mocking them and then cursing them when some of the Sages took potshots at him across the miles. Undead were crammed over the sands surrounding the Pyramids, sands once golden, then stained white by vivus, and now trampled black with the necroic energies burning constantly through the mummies and skeletons that made up the majority of the Pharaonic forces.

There were some murmurings at the fact there seemed to be no progress, but that had also been true at the beginning, and look where they were now? The troops continued to rain death upon the Undead, evading any traps or feints or ambushes, treating the undead like wheat to be harvested... and that was exactly what they were.