And just like that, all the Hag’s carefully crafted elites were ours to play with.

Werewolves get some pretty impressive physical buffs, and combined with that DR 10/silver, can both dish it out and take it. Lesser Exemplars got +4 to all Stats, speed increases, DR, fast healing, and some smaller Insight and Luck bonuses than their progenitor, still making them deadlier than any normal elite.

Some rare fellows got both. They were truly monsters.

In a splendid display of remorseless Chaotic Evil mindsets, the bloodlines of the Wolf turned on the drow they used to be part of, no hesitation, no regrets. The Brothers had already removed most of the Fiend bloodlines, so they had no real competition. With howls of glee, the slaughter among the drow abruptly exploded in area, and suddenly there was a massive pack of a thousand or so really tough bastards who were now working in support of us, instead of hunting us and getting ready to get killed on our Weapons.

Amazing how that all works out.

The amount of slaughter and carnage increased by a very significant margin. There were quite a few werewolf drow; after all, it would have been the easiest thing to infect them with. The ensuing chaos was not at all to the benefit of the drow defenders.

------------

Hazé materialized next to the Wolf. She held out her hand, enthralled by the magnificent sight... this was a Perfect Wolf, after all, the wolf all wolves aspired to be. The golden-eyed, grey-and-white-furred Wolf obligingly dropped the Rogue Stone into her palm, and she sat down on Haul as the Wolf immediately bolted back towards the Obelisk, moving faster than a sprinting cheetah without effort and dragging the Disk behind him.

There was a circle of carnage burning for three hundred yards around the Obelisk. The surviving drow forces had pulled back close to the walls ringing the area, or ran out the exits in terror. Slavering werewolves and ranks of enthralled Lesser Exemplars waited two hundred yards away, encircling the Obelisk, just waiting for the enemy to make a move again, at which time the slaughter would recommence.

“The Wolf Taxi service has arrived!” she said, jumping off the Disk as it reached the edge of the black area.

“Hey there, pretty lady,” Briggs smiled, leaning against the thing. “You all ready to go?”

Hazé nodded, fingers moving, focusing elemental energies. "Fifty feet down, right?” She eyed the diagram in the Markroom of how things were spread out, taking note of how things were unstable given the mass of vivus starting to permeate and feast on the large amounts of energy artificially being gathered and sent off underground.

Sama was right, this was indeed a key part of whatever great Formation they had set up, sucking in massive amounts of power built up in the slow time zone and forcibly sending it out to multiple other Obelisks quickly, dispersing the load and stress on the system. The stress in the slow time zone would have to be incredible; no wonder it took so long to build this Formation.

“How are you going to tip it?” she asked quietly, as she began to turn a spell into a Ritual.

“The Stillflight aspect of our Interdiction is currently down, and there’s a Wolf sitting over there who can fly and is very, very lucky.”

She glanced at the Wolf, whose tongue was lolling out of his mouth in expectation, watching her.

“That sounds just wonderful,” she said, and began to draw the magic to her.

-----------

The drow were having a heck of a time.

I could see the smoke rising, and see the occasional explosion outside as the chaos spread. All the werewolves and Exemplars were obeying the call of their bloodline, and creating havoc outside. Havoc meaning engaging in mass slaughter of their former fellows and trying to make it here to join the pack of their progenitor.

The drow outside were slowly getting it through their drug-addled brains that bad stuff was happening, and while the werewolves and Exemplars were powerful lads and ladies, they weren’t us, definitely weren’t Grandmasters, and were running into the zillions of drow out there and getting themselves hacked.

The Wolf didn’t mind at all, and considered it quite a fitting end for those who’d stolen their power from his bloodline to begin with.

The only people who would be resisting this would be the Hags and the Hagborn. What Hagborn had been in the plaza had been singled out and killed, being effectively enslaved to their mothers’ wills. There’d only been a few Hags here, and they’d died in passing among the many other creatures here, noted for their status, given a few whacks, and burned in passing.

The real Hags would now have to be coming to pursue this fight. They’d probably thought their fanatic legion of addicts could do the job for them while they continued desporting themselves. Alas, they’d run into a wall of Deep Forsaken who really, REALLY didn’t care about their massed magical ability, and lo, were now Acme Land Food.

I had no doubt that the rebellion of the werewolves and Lesser Exemplars had been very bloody, frenzied, and probably gotten their attention. But, if for some craaaaaazy reason the Hags were so intent on their vices they still didn’t pay attention, well, Hazé was just about to really rock their world.

The magic went off, and that carefully polished and designed foundation for the Obelisk liquified into mudrock, piercing down deep around half the base... and half the bottom.

Why only half? Because the Wolf sitting up there in the air with the strength of an elephant was going to give it a push. He only needed to move the center of balance a few feet, and y’know, he was lucky enough to push it at just the right place and right angle for maximum effect.

There was about ten seconds of effort on his part, nothing too ominous. The tip of the obelisk waaaay up there moved over several feet, got past that critical part, found there was only mud there to support it... and began its long, mighty fall.

The Wolf got out of the sky quick. He probably didn’t want to be there when the thing hit down, even if he would enjoy the view.

Down down down... damn, hundred-paces tall things take a while to fall. I wanted to say ‘Timbuuuuuuur’, but Briggs beat me to it and yelled magnificently, “Ba-saaaaaaaaalt!”, getting all the snark points for himself.

It was loud when it hit the ground. The tiles all jumped, the shockwave bounced drow off their feet, rippled past under my lightfoot, diverted around Briggs, pretended the Brothers weren’t there, and the Wolf was sitting on Haul with a fanged smile, Hazé next to him.

Oh, did ya feel that... like a little popping in the ground, as the Obelisk shattered into many, many parts, which all the Hag’s werewolves and all the Hag’s drow couldn’t put back together ere now...

Lots of power down below the ground there, and now the thing which had kept it circulating wasn’t there anymore. Which meant all that incoming power, and whatever was circulating, had nowhere to go.

The ground began to vibrate, at first almost unnoticeable without a Vajra, and then picked up pace. It was more discernible further away from the center here, except along that ley line path towards the slow zone several hundred miles thataway.

It picked up more. The walls started shaking, loose stones skidding away, falling, cracks subtly starting to spread. Even the enthralled wolf-blood drow started to panic, as they subconsciously realized they were not standing in a safe spot, and they should run.

And then it all flashed and let go.

Walls of bloody light blew from the ground towards the sky from those buried ley lines. The entire plaza, except for a hundred feet around the foundation, heaved itself towards the clouds in ripping profane energy and channeled arcane spellfire all released at once. The vivic energies still burning on the dead roared along it like det cord, raging out along the pure, raw energy, igniting all the abruptly dead creatures caught in it, and really making a rather spectacular show of it.

There were five irregular lines running out from the plaza. The shockwave of the plaza itself going up blew the wall to smithereens, and whatever legions were encamped outside had an even worse day than they’d started with. Three of those lines ripped off towards neighboring zones, including the Mu Spore region whose Obelisk we’d toppled. The feedback from that one was probably going to be bad, too.

Another one headed over for that garish pleasure palace over yonder. Stood to reason she’d be sucking in power to support her personal Wards and little pet projects. Now, they all blew at once, which I thought actually improved the view. That designer really had no taste...

The biggest one of all went feeding back towards the slow zone. The ripple effects of that would echo through the whole Formation. The surviving two relevant Obelisks would have to take on the load, stressing the system, and as of right now, whatever they were trying to do, they couldn’t. The Formation could probably ignore the smaller Obelisks we’d toppled, but not a major junction like this.

Likewise, the Hag Empress here couldn’t gaff this off. For this level of a failure, she’d be deposed and someone else installed in her place... unless she fixed this, and fast!

She’d be coming over with what Hagdaughters of hers survived, to get some revenge.

Bricks, tiles, stones, and bits of vivus burning on bodies was raining down all over, but around us, not on us. The plaza was now a broken pit, with trenches a hundred feet deep blown out of it in five directions, and the walls had fallen outwards and buried whole swathes of the elite armies out there.

None of them felt like coming in and investigating, apparently.

Ah, there we go. Motion!

They were all Witches of course, so they were flying, swooping in our direction on a variety of brooms, bats, bat-wings, pet demons, or just streaking through the air. Looked to be about a dozen of them, all of them with scraggly red hair, just not looking their best right now.

The Wolf withdrew judiciously. He wasn’t going to be of too much use in this fight, being barely able to hit them, and not doing near enough damage, but that was fine. He was plenty happy having slaughtered just about everything that had stolen his bloodline.

I saw three of them that thought they were being sly by being invisible, which just made me laugh. Three of them were like crimson shadows, Umbral Lesser Exemplars; three of them were shape-changed to normal forms, but the reality-bending nature of Pseudonaturals was following them, impossible to miss; five of them were Lesser Exemplar half-Fiends of various parentages, with a panoply of feathers, horns, slime, extra arms, tails, and cloven feet to proudly display their heritages; and the last one was nine feet tall and had a very impressive aura of power around her.

Exemplar Shellycoat. Used the wolf and the power of the Obelisk to catapult herself into an unchallenged position of dominance here, and her Template was naturally layers above those of her Hagdaughters.

Yeah, I could see a resemblance to Amber, twisted as it might be. I didn’t know if this Shellycoat was a true Hag or a Hagdaughter herself, but it didn’t matter; she was still going to die.

Definitely had the orange eyes. They were burning as they fixed on me. Fixed, because an acting 50 Charisma is going to catch all the attention.

The Brothers and Briggs got to their feet laconically, Weapons out, clearly undeterred by all these powered-up Witches. Hazé calmly stayed in Briggs’ shadow, readying her own assortment of spells.

Fun was coming!