Naturally we knew that just trying to replicate that feat wasn’t going to work... or at least, not work so smoothly.

But the fact was, it was a static fortification manned by undead, and we had the higher Tech Level, and at least equal psi Levels to His minions. We also had the wherewithal to tote anti-matter bombs around, which had more than enough oomph to take out His Portals permanently... and Gloom being sentient, it started sending ninety percent of the explosion venting out that Portal to the mortal plane, anyways, which had all sorts of repercussions.

So we snuck those bombs in through capillary caves extending underneath the Portals; we Breached the Mirror Shields, dropped them, and booked; we Harmonized to the shield frequency and Rifted them into place; and probably much to His astonishment, we hit them from the far side, infiltrating his Deathworlds and setting off big booms in places He thought we couldn’t get to yet, stopping all that silliness on our end.

The undead fought back with dual phasing shields to stop Breaches, more advanced Shield Harmonics, tighter security around the Portals and perimeters, incorporeals patrolling the ether and looking for infiltrators from below, burying mines around the perimeters, and actively looking for new capillary caves sprouting up out of nowhere (once they realized that was what was happening).

In the meantime, millions of undead and megatons of cargo and munitions was pouring into Gloom every day, and getting shuttled off to the core worlds and the Imperial Palace. The Gloom Portal to the Imperial Palace was already a fortified monstrosity here, undead working around the clock to expand and reinforce it at the limit of what they could handle.

The drow, being the opportunists they were, opened up Portals to some of the Warp Worlds that were in danger of extinction (hey, didn’t they used to be Elvar worlds? What an amazing coincidence!), and soon zillions of Warped were pouring into Gloom, discovering the undead Imperials of the Corpse Emperor were here, and hilarity promptly ensued. Soon whole zones of Gloom were covered in flames and sieges were taking place, while endless demons were brought in to counteract the numbers of the undead.

The drow cheerfully raided the supply convoys for all the valuable goods there, further mucking up things, while the Warped were happy to do likewise.

The shador living in the plains and wild areas of Gloom naturally vacated any areas in between, not wanting to become sacrifices for demon Summonings or undead puppets. As entire planetary populations fled into Gloom and began to shoot one another, soon millions of square miles of the Plane were embroiled in conflict.

The Shadowknives knew what they had to do, and the hyn drifted across the battlefields, setting umbral fires to the dead, and feeding all and sundry to Gloom. Uncontrolled demons were especially quick to be hunted down and fed to Gloom, and the hyn progressed quickly in skill and power as they lurked about the battlefields, never interfering in fights, only making deathly sure that those who wandered away from the main forces never returned.

When the undead and Warped went to find them, of course, they found nothing, the hyn gone into the shadows and embrace of Gloom...

------

Back Outside in reality, the six Demon Princes ground their way onwards. Worlds burned behind them, great ships tumbled in burning death throes in the void, armies of demons and damned fought undead, and spectacles of war and violence dotted the heart of the human realm as increasingly tighter and more powerful defenses slowed them down... defenses they could not let stand, as the worlds behind were churning out more ships and necroborgs constantly. To leave them be was to have new fleets being built on their flanks, and their reinforcements were already basically non-existent.

Our assaults on the Warp Worlds picked up pace as their populations and leadership vacated into Gloom, aiming to escape the promise of annihilation in Reality by once again fleeing beyond its reach. That such flight immediately sent them into conflict with the Emperor was only more fun, and we actually slowed up the pace of the assault so more of them could abandon their worlds and throw themselves up against Him.

-----

-They’ve cracked open Alpha Centauri. The Emperor is letting them into Sol.-

Anatolia’s /voice rippled through Markspace. Billions of Marked heard it, and sighed together.

The Emperor was making a move to end the conflict. The Warped, once they got their revenge upon him, could potentially flee into uncharted space and start anew with their fleets and people. His power, however, was based on the Imperial Palace and Sol. While He could also potentially flee... that would be a sign that He had lost, that His plan did not work, and His arrogance and pride would take a killing blow.

We needed more than His pride to be killed. We needed Him dead.

The Warped had figured out how to neutralize the speed of the inertialess drive with Sorcery-boosted tractors and pressor beams, either locking down the Deathships or tossing them around like pinballs. It forced them to remain in standard drives, and Warp Sorcery-boosted guns contested with necropsi energies, lighting up the void with all sorts of odd colors.

The minions of jRaztl were not stupid, nor were the forgemasters of Klaw. Sorcery and technology continued to optimize against the undead out of pure brutal necessity, and the Emperor’s edge in killing power and technological edge in battle began to fall relatively quickly as what worked against them spread and was quickly imitated.

The dead have great troubles innovating. The single greatest power against either entity would have been using vivus to devour the base energies of the other, but neither of them dared wield such things, lest they be consumed themselves.

And so they warred, and watched as the Corunsun grip upon the galaxy firmed.

------

The Imperial Sector was a place of war and death now, with no living worlds remaining except at the fringes. Those were now protected by Gardeners or Sun Guns, and so not worth attacking by any of the Warring Forces.

The Imperial Sector had been populated by more people than the other four Sectors - Noble, Shogun, Pharaoh, and Khagan - combined. All told, of the human population of the galaxy, more than three-quarters had been annihilated in this conflict, and almost fifty percent of the worlds they’d claimed were nothing but graves in space.

I joined Briggs for the annihilation of the last of the Great Swarmfleets of the Xenosyms. With their passing went the main threat of biovore attacks. Mom’s Finder was kitted out for biovores, with the newest and deadliest turrets that the capital ships might use for biofighter defenses, and I joined a lot of the kids and some of the best pilots in the galaxy for hours and hours of shooting spores, starsharks, skymantas, and similar things in massive numbers as three Dark Fleets and hundreds of Gardeners came upon the xenosym and rendered a final opinion of what we thought of them and their life imperatives.

------

The Zygom and the Kundi had opted to lay low; the Gardeners, even the unaffiliated ones, were not bothering inhabited systems right now; the Tekrons were gone from this galaxy, and slowly and stealthily being eliminated from the Magellanic Clouds and Canid Major; and the Gatherers were under the control of the Great DM.

The Goblins were engaged in excitable exploration and conflict in Canid Major, finding an empty galaxy with lots of worlds there. If the worlds didn’t have biospheres, they didn’t much care, as they set about tunneling and mining and shooting at any xenosyms who showed up to protest their actions.

It had taken over three generations, but their Tinkerboys had figured out how to set Dark Matter on fire and burn a scar-path along the Veil, enabling them to avoid having to use Hell-diving as Goblin ships setting space-time on fire cut fiery arcs through the void. They didn’t have the sensor tech to follow the Anti-Life at range, but any time one showed up, they were more than happy to set it on fire and turn it into a moving star before it collapsed and turned into a floating ball of nuclear fire, Dark Matter transforming to harvestable energy they were quick to start using to make bigger and better engines of war.

We were watching, of course, and if there were a few accidents when they got too ambitious, well, that was all to be expected. If they stumbled across the Gardeners Seeding new worlds and got excitable, getting wiped by the starflowers was also to be expected. The Gardeners were plenty ready to eat them.

------

The Ruk and the Elvar had largely kept away from the greater, sprawling conflict, opting instead to keep hunting the Anti-Life, or chase down any Warped fleeing what had once been the Elvar homeworlds. Gravity sensors were now in place throughout the galaxy, charting the remaining few hundred Anti-Life still sticking around here, and the two species were cooperatively engaged in hunting them down.

They were averaging about a kill a month, and the Anti-Life definitely knew they were being hunted by now. It didn’t really change much of anything, as the great Xenosym-fighting fleets were now being repurposed as hounds, and drawing nets around any of the Anti-Life who didn’t have the sense to flee the galaxy.

They did start running, slipping away into the void between galaxies and making their ways elsewhere. We watched them go, charted their paths and courses, and made note of their destinations, not following them directly.

We did, however, find that their emigrations from the Milky Way took place very close to the mega-phlos between galaxies, as the Ruk stumbled across four of them after arriving at their departure points. A lot of giddy math percolated through the Markspace as the discoveries went out, and intergalactic travel suddenly became much more viable...

------

There had not been so many Legionnaire Commanders together, ever. Indeed, gatherings of members of multiple Legions were rare enough, and were usually Company sizes meeting by chance at specific worlds. The full Battalion Commanders of the various Legion derivatives were almost never brought together, save for the grandest events and prosecution of multi-system engagements against terrible foes.

But now hundreds of them were here. They’d arrived in Corunsun hulls, because taking the Warp was a death sentence right now. After seeing the realspace speed of those ships, they were naturally all pining to have similar vessels for their own.

They were the Imperial Legions. When had they ever not been given the best and most effective weaponry of the Empire to use against the enemies of Mankind? They looked on the power armor of the Corunsun Tens, and the Briggs Brothers especially, and had to fight to not be green with envy.

It was an uncomfortable place to be in. Even Battalion Masters who had been alive for a thousand years or more could feel the air was strange in this meeting.

They had been directed not to attend in armor, and as a matter of security, to leave their standard Weapons behind. However, if they had unique Weapons not built to Legion standards, those were fine.

That ominous separation alone sent alarm bells ringing through the Legions, and even as the Battalion Commanders gathered about the Pennant of Victory, the fourth of the Tribute-Class Star Carriers, quiet orders were being sent back to Marshal Worlds to not wear armor or bear Legion Weapons without a direct order...