“How long until we find out the results of the auction?” Wayfair asked me quietly.

I had to roll my eyes. “We’re in a time-acceleration Zone, and it’s going to take at least three real days to set the auction up. So, not until we are out of here.” I gripped my fists despite myself. “So unfair!” I hissed.

“I know, right?” she giggled, and we hee-hee-hee’d all the way to the bank whose gold coins were dancing in our heads. After all, after working with us the grand sum of less than ten days, Wayfair knew how grossly under-Geared she was, and was in serious need of some supplementary accoutrements... preferably at exorbitantly high QL’s and fashionably done, of course.

Wardrobe was not one of them. She had a different outfit for every single dead Mu illusion she posed in front of, and they all answered to different adjectives. Serene, sexy, dazzling, delightful, enigmatic, regal, kinky, alluring, charming, pure, daring, innocent, formal, mesmerizing, stylish... she pulled every look you could imagine off perfectly and without a hitch. I had great fun just matching her hair styles!

Her voice could sell air conditioning atop a glacier. I almost felt bad for the bidders who were going to eat it all up, and then have almost no time to capitalize on their acquisitions. Almost. There were going to be a lot of unsavory characters bidding on Mu Goo...

There were going to be five different auctions, starting in Ogredown, and going to each of the capital cities, ending in Zynozure itself. We’d separate the Mu goo into five age categories, which would indicate its QL, quantities of 1000/500/100/50/20 gallons at the outlier March capitals, and double that in Zynozure itself.

Based on what we understood, the day after the last auction, everything was going to go to shit, so getting as much money out of the cities as possible was kind of urgent.

All of the Mu Goo was good to 40 QL. The older stuff ranged all the way up to 55, truly ancient shit. The money would be rolling in.

Hee hee hee!...

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Yes! On to Imperial Zone #1!!!...

“Well, isn’t that an interesting place.”

It was horrible what they could do given the literally hundred thousand years or whatever they had to work on this project.

The last Zone was basically a city that filled out the whole place, interspersed with park-farms and some basic ranching areas. Elves as a whole subsisted to a degree on magic, so they didn’t have the same dietary needs as humans and stuff, but what was basically confronting us was bloody rings of walls every thirty miles, and whole cities of drow spaced in between.

The central thirty square miles about the key Obelisk were a freaking fortress... or pleasure palace, take your pick. The population of shroom-bombed drow numbered in the tens of millions.

There was no way I could take my company in there. Just on numbers alone, they’d be overwhelmed, and base Drow were Casters, just like elves. When ten thousand Casters toss a spell at you, you are going down, even if they are all Two’s.

Which wasn’t an issue, as when we breached the Zone, some fine Brothers were waiting for us there.

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There were probably a lot of things out there that would have paid a hellacious price if they could pop a nuke on this place. The whole array of Void Brothers for the continent, all in one spot. All the assassins would have fanboy-sighed and fallen over in joy.

Wayfair certainly found all of them interesting... and carefully acknowledged how dangerous they all were. High charisma and charm or no, she’d be dead in seconds if there was combat, and she knew it.

I looked them all over, noting that they looked more travel-worn and battle-hardened than before, and definitely needed a new change of clothes.

To their utter shock, I did indeed pull out new clothes for them all. Like I wouldn’t be thinking about them after they spent three years doing some power-leveling?

Despite themselves and their urgent, priority, must-do mission mentality, they found a creek mostly free of rotting shrooms, took a bath, and put on their new threads with some relief. They looked pretty spiffy, as even if they were done in shades that would disappear in shadow, they still reflected the colors of their Helices here and there.

Black predominated, of course. They were still shadow hunters, not tanks. Although there’d be a lot of both going on shortly.

The fact was, we could leave the Zone and the natives... probably could not? Weren’t sure on that. There was a road, so there was some kind of trade, but it was probably controlled by the Hags. Open up the border, hack down a bunch of ‘shrooms to feed the millions, send it back up. The ‘shrooms were a lot shorter here close to the border...

But there was indeed no way we could bring the main force all the way in. They’d be crushed under weight of numbers.

That wasn’t true for the Brothers, Briggs, and I. My Ironblood Forsaken were needed to provide cover for the rest of the company from magic, so they needed to stay behind, too.

We couldn’t disguise the fact that we were coming, because we had this huge spike in the sky broadcasting the fact, and we’d be driving it towards the Obelisk like God’s Own Nail of Reality come a-calling and a-saying that it didn’t much like what was going on.

The Obelisks we’d toppled and left behind were set on vivic fire... fires that didn’t stop, as the pattern of the plazas they’d been set on gathered the energy of the Land, and vented it directly to be burned away by misty unwhite flames.

As a result, that chop-line of the Wake in the sky was pretty prominent, much bigger than it probably should have been. I guess we were doing too good a job.

The details had already mostly been hashed out ahead of time. Briggs and I were needed to push the Wake-Spike of Ultimate Doom forwards in the sky, and Brother Wayfist agreed to stay back with the main crew in case of an Obliteration-Level Event happening that they weren’t prepped for.

Their job was to cause havoc. Given the demonic inclinations of the locals, it would probably fit right into their preferred kind of activities. They were briefed on what to watch for, Baneskulls prepped, and then our two groups split up physically.

Tremble went with me, despite knowing how much the lads might need her. The Brothers might need some surge healing too, after all... we didn’t know what we were going to be facing. And with no Casters along with us, save Wayfair, who couldn’t manifest until the Obelisk was down, any source of emergency combat healing would be important. Potions only went so far...

----------

Our progress was remarkably quick, all things being equal.

Now, we couldn’t do slick stuff like Walk on Air via our Cloud-stepping Sandal Tats, because we had to keep the Interdictions up to drag Ye Wake Infinitum behind us. But, that still meant we were running fast... like, faster than any thoroughbred, ever, charging along at what should have been breakneck speed, and instead was just steady progress towards our objective.

Yeah, we did kill anything that got in our way, which was pretty frequent. Not much had time to react at our appearance, but the alarm flares were soon going off behind us. We jumped over carts and crowds and small buildings, we ran along rows of others... and we carved bloody murder-sprees through dark elves if it was the fastest way to move. Of course, Sparky and Wayfair were up, and despite having part of her ancestry from them, she had no compunctions whatsoever in working on an Archery level, greatly enjoying the Tails spitting death in any direction.

The Brothers were lobbing Shard-strikes this way and that, carving down anyone who bleeped their Caster-detectors too high. All in all, we looked like a blur of people ringed by multi-hued swirls of energy that were being spit in all directions, racing by and leaving a lot of dead drow in our wake.

It was merciless and cruel, and it had to be done.

The first two walls we got past by going through the gates, which they didn’t seal up in time to stop us, and certainly weren’t expecting us to charge through them at the pace we did, slaughtering everything around us to really mess up the situation.

The succeeding gates were all closed in response to the alarms popping up all over behind us, especially back along our route of travel. That was fine. There was no way they could mobilize to a location as fast as we could, so we just picked a spot and went up the wall.

Step One: Lead Brother jumps up, plants a spike in the wall with a crunch of protesting stone. Falls down.

Step Two: An eyeblink after the spike is planted, Brother Two lands on it, jumps off again, plants Spike Two some twenty feet higher, falls back down.

Step Three: His hands are barely off the spike before the third Brother is kicking off it, clearing the edge of the wall above, and if anyone is there, they are about to get a fatal surprise.

Bouncebouncebounce, and we’re up, like over-energized mountain goats or something. Getting off is easy, just gliding down on Featherweighted feet, picking up speed and distance in a wavy line as we surf down the air, hitting ground cleared of anything living by multiple flying Baneshards, and we were off again.

We had hours of running ahead of us. The Obelisk was in the far center of the Zone, close to the slow-time Barrier, instead of properly centered. I could only guess that the slow time Zone was getting massive amounts of built-up power being shuffled through it, and stability was one of them Very Important Things.

Man, were we going to mess that up!

It still meant we had something close to eight hundred miles of ground to cover to get there, and they were going to know we were coming and approximately where we were the whole time. How’s that for violating every law of a good fight?

Happily, everyone had Revitalizing Strike on their Weapons, and after slicing through one of the plentiful numbers of targets around us, all fatigue and exhaustion was thoroughly gone.

Feeding Ye Unraveling Incoming above us with continuous offerings of drow en vivus, we raced towards our target.

Wayfair decided to get into the role of hostess, treating this all like some great party.

She would direct Brothers this way and that, relieving certain drow of their lives and belongings, which were passed down to Haul behind us. She copied every dress and hairstyle that was new to her, giving us all scathing insight into her flawless aesthetic sense as she did, and commented blithely on the artistry or fluidity of their kills, noting the Brother Mountainhammer had nearly outrun the head of that drow he crunched, and Brother Windarrow missed that eye by an entire two inches, how dreadful, while Brother Mindring had to work on his upstroke, not nearly enough blood had fountained up...

Of course, given she had Bardic levels, all this playful criticism worked. Very soon, the Brothers were playfully competing on how artistic their kills were, how ornate the chain-Cleaves were, who could put together the most nonsensical tumbling lightfoot display, and collaborating on combined patterns and swirls of interacting Helices that had Wayfair clapping her mental hands in delight.

I wondered how many necromancers and conjurors over the years would be spitting up blood at the very idea of Void Brothers putting on a show for a drow-born succubus. I very carefully kept any sight of this from people who wanted to get anything done, because, wow, when a bunch of Deep Tens as agile and graceful as Void Brothers start stretching out their lightfoot and flexing their 40+ Dex scores while moving at forty-plus miles per hour, Helices out and Banestars slicing in all directions, it’s like a moving, ever-changing fireworks show.

I just sat back and Warlorded, letting Wayfair do her thing, while I organized, kept the Marks-Up Displays working, and monitored all the exciting stuff Errant, Estemar, and the girls were putting up with.