Sama’s Cackle was kept low and restrained. “I could hear the egos of their Sages cracking from miles away as she reaped for the Land. It took a while, but the sense of dread and terror that began to rise in the Aquatics as she kept reaping them, closing in on them, reaching out for them with claws of light over many miles, hunting them, finding every single one of them, and just kept killing them!” Sama was almost squealing with delight. “I didn’t get all the Psychics, just most of them, and that terror they were spreading was infectious. They were pulling in fear from millions of their own and feeding it to all the others as they died! I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a permanent scar in their Akasha after that much concentrated killing.”

“Yeah, the way she did it was much, much worse than just a kaboom, dead!” Briggs nodded agreement, catching the bottle of whiskey his Hag tossed to him. “Right until the end when she Communed and sent everyone out to wipe the last of the ones she hadn’t gotten to. She was coming for them, the Irish were just her tools, the whole Island was rising up to eat them, whole lakes of vivic mist devouring them... Yeah, that was damn radical.”

“The boys are being inundated with requests to join up with them from surviving Hunters, and not a few surviving soldiers,” Sama mentioned, knowing he was aware of it, liquid gold flowing seamlessly from the edges of her claws as she deftly turned the skull over and around, crystallized bone hissing and sparkling as the residual magic within was roused.

“We can’t and won’t take soldiers who are under service,” Briggs said absolutely. “As for the rest, Assays and see who might be a good fit in the long term.”

“After we saved their asses the way we did?” Sama scoffed. “Every Irishman in this place owes us, and they know it.”

It was way too early in the morning to be drinking, but Briggs preferred to think of it as very late at night, instead. He took a swallow to chase some of the more vivid images of violent death to the back of his head, both of those he’d slaughtered and those who had died, the latter both in combat and the remnants left behind by the Aquatics.

Before them, the sun broke over miles and miles of fields of wheat, potatoes, beans, corn, and other vegetables. They were tall and green and bursting with life and vitality, a bumper crop to beat all bumper crops Ireland had ever seen, more than enough food to get the entire population through an entire year, if they could harvest it all.

That’s what the people were rising to do now, as there was a lot of harvesting and food storage to be done. There were small forests of fruit trees out there heavy with their bounty, and the amount of work to be done to collect as much as they could before it fell from the vine was immense.

There weren’t huge numbers of vehicles left to transport the stuff anymore, either. Anything outside the Castle of the Leap had been crushed and ruined with extreme thoroughness by the Aquatics, so it was back to old ways of magic and physical labor.

Still, after the utter savagery and nightmarish horror of the Aquatic invasion, it was a mind-numbing, necessary thing to get everyone’s thoughts off the price they had paid to survive.

The Irish had been stunned to find out that descendants of Irish families in America had come together to pay the fee for the Redshore Marines to come in and do their thing. It wasn’t a small amount of money, but none of that had included Lady Fae or the help of the Undead Hunters.

“The Church of Light gaffed them, you know,” he murmured as he looked out on that bounty, the work of Tox and so many Plant and Earth mages’ frantic yet disciplined work. The value of the seeds alone that had been planted was another impressive amount, but this harvest was worth a hundred times that investment all by itself.

“Half the population follows the Royal Church,” Sama sniffed. “Along with the English troops who survived the massacres. Queen Diana wasn’t going to cave to their demands, so they weren’t going to rescue any heretics.”

“Heard her kids made a good showing for themselves. She’s a strong woman. Brits are lucky to have her after Charles was killed.”

“The House of Windsor’s been pretty lucky with that,” Sama nodded. The English Royals were famous for their Ruler’s Bloodline, a combination of Water, Psychic, Blessing, and Air Magic that contributed heavily to their ability to rule their people and project their power out into the sea. Queen Diana had reached Sagedom and the Element of Light only a few years ago, and was called the Shining Queen for it. King Charles had never reached Sage before his recent death, but his mother Elizabeth had, unlocking Ice upon attaining the rank. As a result, she was revered as the Iceblooded Queen, a domineering and powerful influence who had dominated Britain and kept it on the world stage for over fifty years after the early death of her own husband.

Diana was following in the footsteps of her mother-in-law, and so were her two sons and two daughters.

“She probably wants Fae to marry into the family, and the horror of the Great Families be damned,” Briggs observed, and Sama spluttered with laughter as she put the finished Greater Baneskull to Aquatics down with the others.

“Royals do tend to be pretty old school about those things,” she chortled. “Can you imagine the results if she actually did it? The House of Windsor would vault right to the most powerful Great Family in the world...”

“Your estimation of Fae actually being open to such a thing?” Briggs huffed back, taking a swig for emphasis.

“Right now? Less than zero. You know she’s got the biggest of big goals in mind, and isn’t thinking of any personal desires until that’s done. But, seriously. Prince William’s already taken, and Fae won’t play second fiddle to anyone. She’s the head of the Church of Heaven, even if they haven’t given her the title. While it might be a romantic idea and great for Windsor, the fact she’s not going to be queen ever would be a deal killer. Prince Harry would have to leave the Windsors and marry her, not vice versa.”

“She’s a Sage and not even twenty-five,” agreed Briggs, nodding along with that. “Honestly, I can’t see any Family on the planet popping up an heir worthy of her, by their own standards. They’ve got as much chance to nab her as they do to lure in an Archangel.”

There had been several Archangels in recent decades rumored to be from Noble and Royal Families, a fact they’d confirmed without too much effort. Still, despite the fact the House of Windsor was the undisputed ruler of Great Britain, only when all of its supposedly loyal Noble allies were figured in did it come close to challenging the power of the Synod and its Archangels. Given the many, many ties of the Synod to Great Families around the world, accepting the visible force of the Synod as the limit of its strength amounted to insanity.

Still, its power at the low, broad foundational level was evaporating steadily, powered along by its refusal to get involved in the Littoral Conflicts for the flimsiest of excuses.

Fae approved of them clinging to doctrine instead of Faith and Fellowship. Faith was the true currency they were fighting for, and the Church of Light was bleeding out in it. Those adhering to the Church and its protection were more often than not as mercenary as the demands of the Church itself, their Faith a guttering and shallow thing that gained their Patrons nothing, only withholding it from rivals.

The Royal Church of England was part of the Protestant Reformation that had rebelled centuries ago against the increasingly heavy-handed authority-grabbing of the Church of Light and its Synod. The House of Windsor had effectively booted them out of England and mandated no religious authority in secular matters, a viewpoint that was shared by almost every government in the world soon enough. That it kept a lot of powerful mages, nobles, and wealthy individuals in positions of power they’d otherwise have lost to some theocrats certainly had nothing to do with that.

Rifts of doctrine and rites between the Churches had been slowly healing over the last few decades, but all of that progress had blown up over the last few years with Fae’s revelations of the perfidy of the Synod and the Black Curia. The recent revelations that the Church of Light had manipulated the very histories of the Kabbalist people as featured in the Bible had driven a massive stake into the heart of orthodoxy.

If the orthodoxy of the Church of Light was built on a lie, did they have anything in common at all?

It was a delightful question being raised by all the Protestant Churches, and the hard lines being taken by the Kabbalists on this issue was keeping it very active in theological circles.

That, and the fact that the Church of Light was in the end about absolute fealty to the Lords of Light, no dissension to be tolerated, meant that the Protestant Churches were either cutting off their relationships with the Church completely, or losing their congregations if they were not. In the end, there was only total submission to the Church their ancestors had worked so hard to be free of, or there was defiance.

Small wonder defiance was taking hold so strongly!

The revised Torah of the Kabbalists had been a fascinating read, with so many anecdotes supplied by the Holy Auspicious Butterfly Empress, disassembling and destroying many of the words and deeds attributed to the Prophets. By themselves they were small things, but taken in total, the messages and the changes they made were massive!

Moreover, if all the words attributed to the Prophets, back to the very First, had been rewritten, then were not the words of the Son of Light, the Final Prophet, also treated to the same fate? Were not the words that had established the very Church of Light built upon yet another grandiose lie? And if the Son of Light’s words were true... then had he not countenanced the rewriting of all those who came before him, reshaping history to suit himself?

Two thousand years of manipulated Synod history was crumbling and falling in the face of Truth. It was truly a remarkable thing to see such backlash rising across the world. Briggs considered that it would be a good time to be alive, except for five years of fighting off the monstrosities of the seas.

Also, he had new respect for the subtle and monstrous power of three Words of Creation. Those things were damn scary and subtle!

“I had no idea Words of Creation could reverberate like they do,” he admitted to Sama, watching her carve another Baneskull. He could help her easily, but Sama liked the satisfaction of carving up the skulls of those who deserved the fate, so he just appreciated her craftsmanship and speed. “I’m not sure anyone else can feel them riding my Source Aura like they do, but they are definitely helping in whatever I’m trying to do. Just the fact that the backlash from the Church of Light, regardless of how much money or how many people or who mouths the things, is not believed, is just monstrous. People are tipping over when it comes down to fight or be a slave, choosing to believe and do battle instead of run for cover and mouth obeisance to things which don’t give a shit about them.

“It’s subtle, it’s pervasive, it’s very widespread, and it is really damn effective.” Briggs shook his head and sighed.

“You should learn some complementary ones, Fuzzy,” Sama told him. “Can you imagine a Source like you who knew Enterprise, Stewardship, and Leadership?”

Briggs took another deep breath as he imagined the idea. “Wow?” he managed after a moment. “That’s a path for Kings, sure enough...”

“Or Emperors of the world?” Sama hinted.

“What about you?” he had to ask. “Valor just seems so much like you... and I’d say Truth for the weaponizing of it, but you have too much glee doing sneaky stuff...”

“Oh, definitely Mercy, Charity, and Compassion for me!” Sama replied instantly.

He turned to look at her in mid-swallow, she met his eyes with absolute serenity, and he spewed instantly all over the far edge of the balcony. Her Cackle tingled on his skin with absolute delight in her timing.

“Definitely not Truth,” he mumbled, wiping off his chin.

Her sharp-edged giggles seemed to make the skull in her grasp wobble under her fingers. “I have Bluff Ranks for a reason!” she said proudly.

“+8 damage when Sneak Attacking from your Sagedom?” he snarked right back.

“That IS the most important one!” she agreed promptly. “And it’s +10, I’ll have you know...”