A few weeks later...

The attack came very suddenly. The Sage behind the attack Blinked in, and promptly vented a prepared spell he’d proudly named Searing Judgement of the Dawn. It combined Fire and Light Elements, and it poured down on the center of Thessalonaiki in western Greece like the Wrath of God it was supposed to embody.

The City’s Wards couldn’t rise fast enough to stop the spell, and it smashed into the center of Greece’s second largest city.

Buildings exploded as if subjected to the shockwave of a great bomb, incinerating everyone and everything within. Rubble was thrown into the air as countless fiery blasts rose over the most populated part of the city.

Regardless of the attack, the Ward finally rose underneath the source of the attack and pushed the mage away. He had accomplished what he meant to, however, and smiled grimly as he looked down at a half-mile square of complete devastation, smoke rising up into the sky from thousands of packed homes and buildings aflame.

He had completed his task. The Acropolis wanted to defy the Synod and Church, its greatest partner and helper through the millennia? How long would their defiance last when their population realized that their pitiful ‘Goddess’ couldn’t protect them?

He made to Blink away, and there was a cracking sensation, like running into a steel wall. He found himself smashing into solid space in disbelief, bouncing off half-stunned as he wasn’t able to slip through space to a distant point and get out of there.

“Hey.” He spun around, and stared at the Chinese man not fifty feet away, staring at him with mismatched glowing eyes, one filled with the black and white Mana of the Void, the other the endless kaleidoscope of Chaos.

Mok Fan raised his fist, and punched.

It was Lightning wound about with the other six Elements and Void, brought together instantly and hitting the Sage like a multi-layered jackhammer of magic, like getting pounded again, again, and again as Thunder slammed into him repeatedly.

His Wings came out automatically to protect his life as he was crushed out of the sky, smashing into the City’s Ward and bouncing along it towards the ground as his great glowing Wings spread out to shield and protect him, thousands of eyes tracking him and recognizing what he was when they came out.

Mok Fan glanced just once at the inferno blazing below him, the city’s mages already converging to try to stem the flames, something they’d find very difficult to do with it being Sage-level magic. He sent his fiery Contracted Elemental Queen to deal with the fires, but he had something personal to do himself. His face was as cold as death as he went after the Archangel, sneering to himself that the man was a complete idiot for picking a fight after his precious Avatar had been revealed for what she was, withdrawing from their fight in frustration when her meatsuit was so badly damaged by Mok Fan’s spells and resonating Sevenfold magic...

-------

“Which one?” I asked coldly.

-Salathiel,- Sama /reported icily. -Mok Fan has him. Warning him that the fucker has Air and Fire and is known for running away from fights.-

“I think Mok Fan probably figured out the fucker was a coward right off. Big John! You are cleared for stomping!” I ordered firmly.

-Acknowledged,- came the grim /sigh in response. There was no glory or righteous fighting here. It was just war, stroke and counterstroke, and the nominally innocent civilians who had chosen to back their own monsters were going to pay for it.

---

Big John slapped down a fifty-Euro note to pay his ten-Euro tab, his short but broad frame, which those who didn’t know him might even have thought was squat, vaulting over the edge of the café without losing the last sweet roll in his hand.

The harbor was quite picturesque below him, with many boats and yachts sailing upon it, in addition to the cargo ships that kept the economy of Italy running.

Naples was a pretty city, for all of its numbers, clean and hard-working, and a decent destination for tourists who wanted to avoid the crowds and hype of ancient Rome and the muck that was clinging to the Synod.

The terrorist strike on one of the cities of Greece had been anticipated and made ready for. There was no way to stop it, but Briggs had been absolutely right that they’d wait until Mok Fan was seen back in China before pulling anything.

They hadn’t expected the kid to be able to Teleport all the way across the world and make it to Greece in exactly one spell, then Blink up next to the cause and lock down the area with an Interdiction.

The cowardly Archangel launching the attack hadn’t been able to Blink away, and Big John knew the bastard wasn’t going to be able to outrun the Sevenfold Sage, Archangel Wings or not.

The attacks of cowards demanded object lessons, and as always it was the little people who were going to pay. The videos of the attacker being smacked and his Wings coming out to save him was already going out all across the internet, and the news that an Archangel had openly attacked a human settlement and killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, was all over the world.

The Synod and the Church had just successfully turned their sneak attack into making the entire rest of the world hostile to them.

Mok Fan’s mouth really pissed that bitch of an Avatar off, Big John thought, just the edge of a smile at the corners of his mouth before his dark eyes went cold. The kid could talk shit like nobody’s business. The arrogant Avatar had lost her cool and acted unwisely, trying to move forward the final conflict.

Well, fuck them, he thought, and poured the power of a Sage into his Summoning Element.

The foci were in place out in the harbor, and at key places around the city. He had them linked and plotted out, and his Fire and Earth Mana was full and ready to support them.

The Aligned Beast Stampede was at the level of a Sage, and the burning crystalline Gates that snapped up in an arc around Naples were singular and powerful.

The one out there in the harbor was fucking massive, as it should have been.

“Let’s go all Old Testament, according to John!” he whispered to himself, his power pouring into the ground and unnoticed by all those around, since the massive Summoning Portals commanded all attention.

With ear-shaking roars and footsteps that made the earth jump, the whole Clan of John came pouring out of the Portals, the cracked fires under their dark skins burning as bright as their molten eyes, dragonstone weapons in hand, and they charged forward.

Out in the harbor, the towering, burning figure of Good King John stepped forth, a near-Emperor Titan, raising a massive Glaive in front of him as the whole harbor boiled and was forced away from him, and he cut down.

A wall of lava exploded upwards in an arc in front of him, cutting through the harbor and across the city of Naples with unstoppable force. Ships blew apart, buildings and stone were burned and cloven through like butter for miles into the distance, and then Good King John joined the lesser Titans around him on a straight run and rampage.

---

I watched two of the anchorpoints for the Wards of Naples explode under the blows of the Fire Titans, and the shield over the city failed to fully materialize. Such a thing might trap the Summoned Creatures here, which would eventually result in their deaths, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Having Father John and Elder John pop up right next to those positions and pound them to rubble with one swipe of their polemaces did the job just fine.

The Fire Titans were running across the city, smashing through everything in their way and around them, geysers of fire exploding up under every footstep, staying in motion and just hacking around them at targets of opportunity and whatever caught their eyes. Every swing generated bladewinds carrying molten lava a minimum of a hundred yards long and ranging up to miles for Good King John, a Diamond Star Titan and half-Emperor.

There probably had never been such a purely destructive Beast Tide in history. Over three dozen Fire Titans, the least of them towering thirty feet high, and Good King John over two hundred feet tall, ran in straight lines through the city, doing nothing but creating havoc, spreading flames, and spreading chaos as the mages of the city reeled, wondering what to do and who to go after.

It didn’t actually take the Titans that long to reach the edges of the city. As soon as they did, the Summoning Portals winked up right in front of the City’s Wards that hadn’t been able to keep them out, and they charged right on through back to the Beast Realm.

Good King John kind of strode rather than ran, looking about in contempt at the mages tossing ineffectual spells at him. But his targets were more specific than flies swatting at him and diving wildly to avoid the sweep of his Axe, not marking where exactly those mighty sweeps and swipes were actually aimed at... until the City’s Ward utterly collapsed above them, over half of the focusing stations obliterated across the miles by those idle sweeps.

With a final bellow that sounded suspiciously like a mocking laugh, the Good King strode through the massive Portal that came up for him, burning crystal about the spatial vortex, and he was gone.

And Naples was well and grandly fucked.

“Get out of sight and get out of there, John,” I told him softly. “Tell the Clan they did an exemplary job, and thank them for their time.”

-Will do,- he /replied, relieved to be getting out of there and no longer playing one of the panicked citizens of the city of Naples, much of which was on fire and ripped apart in miles-long swaths.

If the wild Titans decided to come down from the mountains and add to the city’s woes, now was a good time. But that was on them. Just tossing a few small hills into the city might vent some of the frustrations of the ancient giants.

Out in the harbor, the crews on hundreds of boats and ships of all sizes that had dropped straight to the harbor floor when King John’s presence had forced back the waters could only scream as those waters came surging back in and capsized them all.

------

“So, going after Salathiel?” I asked Sama, watching as a set of six bloody golden Wings Burned down, and the diamond in the middle of the Pattern sucked up the magic spun into them as they slowly and inevitably crumbled to flakes of inert scrap, protesting with shivers and pulses of Axiomatic Light Magic the whole time.

“The fucktard really was good at running away,” Sama sneered. “Sacrificing his Wings to save his arse and delay Mok Fan was pretty inspired. The Synod is already saying he went rogue and they had nothing to do with his attack.”

I snorted. “And what did Sakura have to say about that?”

“I think Ruronalee crafted the reply. Something about the unfortunate timing of that Dark Curia strike against Naples and did they need any humanitarian aid from the Acropolis to help them with their injured?”

It was twelve hours later, and there weren’t any bloody injured in Thessaloniki anymore, while the fires there were all out, the powerful and tenacious flames snuffed out by Mok Fan and his Queen of Fire Spirits. New building foundations of stone were already in place throughout the ravaged area, and donations were pouring in from all over Greece to help replace what had been lost to the survivors of the attack.

“Artful,” I agreed. “Big John can always be suspected, but he, Lord Quake, and Little John have obviously been with the Undead Hunters the whole damn time, so that was clearly impossible and someone is just trying to frame him!” I singsonged out blatantly. No one who heard me believed me, but that one person already knew the truth.

Sama held up her hand, and I gave it a swat. The foci he’d used to bring in the Clan John had completely mucked up his magical signature, so there’d be no tracing the magic back to him.

And Clan John wasn’t going to be telling anyone anything, of course.

“Sucks having to do that against humans,” Sama told me, pulling out something utterly black in a bottle and two shot glasses. I squinted at it meaningfully, and she moved her fingers out of the way of the label.

A Bottleful of Regrets.

I let her pour me a shot with her, clinked them, and we both drank.

Yeah, it was pretty gods-damned awful.