Word was not slow to spread among the relevant Emperors of my new status, although there was not a single damn word said about it in Human society. None of our people bothered to inform them, and unless I showed it off in front of them, I was just another Sage slowly plodding my way up the mountain of power my elders had climbed before me and could look down upon me from above.

It WAS announced that I was helping out the Aquatics and The Sea Emperor Himself, at His request, to pursue and destroy the Tainted Aquatic Tribes that had turned against Him.

Oh, the shitstorm on the 'net that turned up, with Synod toady politicians denouncing my working with those who’d cost Humanity so many lives, and that we should let them slaughter one another in the depths properly.

Sama’s quiet rebuttal video of So, Why didn’t The Sea Emperor ask the Synod? blew into that debate and turned it on its head.

Sama pointed out, with lots and lots and LOTS of footage, just how much fighting I had done against the Aquatics, and that I’d participated in killing both Rulers AND a Sea Dragon Emperor that was stupid enough to test me. The Aqautics knew how devastatingly effective against their kind I was, which meant they were going to respect my strength, my power, and my commitment to the fight.

What had the Synod shown during The Great Flood? How to hide in their city and bray about paying homage to them so they would protect you... and launching sneak attacks on me, just like the damn Black Curia did!

What other Human Sage could the Aquatics possibly call on? There was no Human Sage that had anything even close to approaching my hours of fighting and the number of locations I had fought in. Sama even politely went and dug up the numbers, finding that the only people who exceeded my time in combat... were the Archmages and officers of the Redshore Marines, none of whom were Sages.

In fact, you could add up the top twenty other Sages who’d fought, and they wouldn’t exceed my time or number of battlefields.

I had proven many times that I could break The Ice Emperor’s massive spell for a period of time at any location. There was no other mage in the world who would dare to say the same thing, although many had tried. They could try to overlay it and counter its effects in an area, but they couldn’t pop it and force it to regenerate.

From the view of the Aquatics, the Synod and most of Humanity’s Sages were afraid to confront dangerous enemies and do the work they needed to do to keep their Tribe safe. Of course they had contacted me!

Sama also revealed that the Aquatics had contracted with Coralost for outright millions of Vivic Braziers, and quantities of them had been requested by Rulers and Emperors around the planet as the Beasts realized what they did.

Healer Fae had made the vivic fire famous. Was there someone else out there promoting the Dark Mana-eating fire that was trying to head off the expansion of Dark Mana into the world?

Lastly, Sama revealed that I had been active at both the Egyptian and Mexican Death Zones... AND that I had killed the Pharaoh that had tried to move its territory down to Gabon. I had undead-killing creds up the kazoo... and I was the sponsor of the Undead Hunters who’d been aiding in the fights at all the Death Zones for literally years now.

“Listen, people,” Sama said, as the camera zoomed in on her cold, too-blue eyes. “She’s helping close Death Zones at the bottom of the sea. I want you to picture something.

“You know all that fighting we did for five long damn years? You know how many hundreds of millions of Aquatics died in that fighting?

“Now, I want you all to imagine all of us getting to fight all of them again... except this time, they are Undead.” She let that hang there for a hard, heavy moment.

“If those bastard Aquatics lose this fight, that is exactly what is going to happen. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, of Aquatics coming out of the oceans all around the world to harvest our souls.

“So, all you stupid fuckers cursing her for helping them bastards out better change your goddamn tunes and pray the fuck that she and they succeed, or we’re all gonna die.”

------

The international complaints faded into meek submission, the demands that I appear and explain myself evaporated, and attendance at the Churches of Heaven picked up. After all, it was already proven that the Church of Light wasn’t going to do jack shit, and the rumors coming all the time from the Church of Heaven were that something benevolent was listening...

I was currently riding on the head of Deepwater Pearls Emperor, over half the Emperors of the Sea gathered with me and The Sea Emperor as we closed on the Border Point, the Death Zone sitting right in the area at the edge of the Ice Emperor’s domain around Antarctica.

I knew The Ice Emperor was watching this force of Emperors very closely, and also that a significant number of Ice Emperors and Rulers was also moving on an intercept course, just in case this force meant to come to land.

The Sea Emperor was right next to me, scanning out ahead, and the look in His eye was still vexed as He found Himself unable to pierce the concealment and warding about the Border Point.

They knew we were coming, as so many obscenely powerful creatures moving was simply not something that could be concealed from one another. The Emperors with Tokens on Noble were watching this with great interest, too.

Around me, the sea was alive with vivic Fires and Lights, glowing on fangs, claws, fins, crests, spines, and tentacles, an undersea armada of Beasts made and equipped to kill Undead and Shades, as well their traitorous former allies and rivals. I had spent a great deal of time equipping hundreds of thousands of Aquatics with the things, and the Beasts of the Sea were enjoying the cool purity of the Mana about them, expectantly anticipating their usefulness in the coming fight.

“Hold here,” I Sang out with Voice, and this massive undersea fleet glided quickly to a halt, staring at the unbroken, largely featureless sea floor in front of us.

Nothing. None of them could detect anything.

A Starry Heavens ignited around me in prismatic Silver Magic, a complex weave of magic that gathered and lanced out into the open waters ahead of us, trailing strands of living Light in its wake. It was a Reaving Dispel, which would go right after the foundations of the magic and whatever was keeping it going, and wow, were they about to have a headache.

It slammed into something, a Note like a deep, grim iron bell sounding and making the seas about us rock. Despite my words, despite me leading them to the location, the Aquatics still all flinched in absolute shock as the whole world seemed to ripple in front of them.

“PREPARE!” snarled The Sea Emperor, and started to move forward, festooned with Vivic Flames, even as a thousand-thousand Silver tendrils lashed out in every direction, reaching beyond our sight, framing a great dome in front of us that even seeing it there, knowing it was there, the Aquatics still could not sense.

Then the magic shattered, like a billion porcelain vases exploding at once, and reality fell apart like breaking ice in front of us all.

The sea floor was a morass of blackened soil and stone, almost living rivers of viscous darkness moving along the murky sands. The waters were soiled and black with Dark Mana of all types, and in the distance, several yawning pools of emptiness sucked at the Awareness, then the minds and souls of those who looked upon them.

Swimming around the new hills and canyons repelled in disgust from the sea floor were countless Aquatics of all types, arrayed for battle and staring at the Imperial Armada come to fight them, yet still absolutely astonished when their concealing Ward was brought down.

The Sea Emperor ROARED as the Sublime Chord rang a battlesong of epic proportions. The whole Atlantic Ocean seemed to rise up and head for the Tainted. The seas and space all around them was locked down by the wings of the armada, making sure that nothing was going to leave here alive today.

I just stayed on Deepwater Pearls Emperor’s head as Mana started to move on scales I’d never seen, even when looking on from the distance at some of the oceanic war conflicts, and I watched The Sea Emperor hurtling right into the thick of it.

I lit up my Shards and started to let them go. Behind us, Ship of the Ocean Nautiloid Emperor followed slowly, the Obelisk I’d gifted The Sea Emperor clasped in His tentacled grip.

The Jade Ring I’d put around the Obelisk could potentially condense drops of Dragon Water in each of its eight dimples. That was utterly incredible from the view of all the Emperors there, a lethal gift to anything lesser that wanted to sample such purity, distilled down from the Dark Mana brought in by the Obelisk from the surrounding area. The more Dark Mana, the more Dragon Water it could make!

That definitely wasn’t going to be a problem here. The waters lit up, blazing with vivus going wild on finding so much Dark Mana. Streams of the stuff were congealing and winding towards the draw of the Obelisk, which was already burning from base to peak in hearty vivic flame as it did its work.

Yeah, it was going to make a lot of Dragon Water out of this place.

The level of noise, the smashing impact of millions and billions of tons of water being thrown around, the churning chaos of the fighting, was all pretty overwhelming to standard senses, and even Awareness was getting chopped up and twisted in the savagery of the fighting. Despite all that, the Sublime Chord rang through the Manafield and stayed audible to everything, raising morale, fighting spirit, and magical ability to my allies, and inflicting great pain and condemnation to our enemies.

Thankfully, I had Detect Aquatics at XV up, right next to my Detect Non-Good at XV, and I could tell where everything was without any problem.

I largely restricted myself to shooting Rulers and Commanders, who I could wipe rapidly and deftly, often helping out other Rulers who were engaging their corrupted peers. Shadow, Poison, Curse, and Undead Magic were all in play, and the billowing rush and arrival of tens of millions of Undead Aquatics spilling out of those conduits was anything but unexpected.

Said critters were walking into an area totally alive with vivus, and the waters began to eat into them like acid. That only got worse when my Holy Water Domain went up, the area around Deepwater Pearls and I calmed right on down despite the devastating conflict around us, and the Rod of Disruption in my other hand glowed with all sorts of fun as I drove rivers of Holy Water through the Undead, washing them away in glowing Waters they had no means to resist down here.

Undead ran into the Singing and glowing Waters, and literally dissolved away into falling Soul Crystals. A constant flow of Crystals were being dumped into my Pocket, politely ignored by Deepwater Pearls Emperor as millions of Undead Aquatics came, and millions of them died en masse.

I was aware that The Sea Emperor was simultaneously fighting off a Shark, Squid, and Finman True Emperor at the same time, and appeared to be enjoying Himself. His scales were standing on edge, each of them like razored shields, grappling and coiling and moving and slicing. Lines of vivus were Burning all over all of His enemies, while His jaws closed remorselessly on the Squid; His foreclaws were pressing in mercilessly on the Shark He was coiled about that was trying to bite Him and breaking its teeth on His scales while bleeding out the mouth; and He had wrapped up the Bluefish Fin-Man Emperor and was grinding it inexorably to death as it writhed and tried to escape. The area about them was basically an underwater tornado at this point, and the Psychic fallout alone was pulping the brains of anything below an Emperor that got within two miles of that fight.

The Sea Emperor hadn’t brought along anything weak, as those were the first Beasts slaughtered of the enemy, be it by massive crushing attacks of water, clouds of billowing poison, thunderous shrieks shaking them apart, or mind-crushing mental attacks that shattered their minds and souls. The weakest members, yet the fastest reproducers and thus the future of all the traitor Tribes here, died by the millions, no mercy shown at all to them as they were slaughtered relentlessly.