Khufu nodded and began to tut with his hands lines of magic began to appear visible to the naked eye. The ritual circle began to slowly dim, Morpheus grunted in pain as he prepared his body for the magic that was about to erupt.
"How do you not have a anti magic circle here." Morpheus grunted
Khufu practically growled, "It was destroyed, now stop talking you're distracting me."
Khufu's chants rose in intensity, his voice blending with the howling winds that spiraled around the ritual circle. The ground beneath them pulsed with life, golden lines of ancient script flaring to life across the sand, interwoven with Morpheus' own magic. The air grew thick—charged with something old, something primordial.
Morpheus gritted his teeth, his body tensed like a bowstring ready to snap. The Stone of Dreams embedded in his chest blazed with an eerie, unnatural light, its glow carving strange shadows across his face. He could feel the magic latching onto him, demanding more, siphoning his energy to fuel the ritual. It was reaching its peak.
Khufu's hands moved in quick, practiced gestures, his eyes darting between the battlefield and the shifting magic beneath them. "Almost there," he muttered. "Hold."
The god, a massive being of fire and shifting sand, roared in defiance. Anubis, still in his jackal form, darted and weaved, his sleek black fur a blur against the golden sands. He lunged, snapping his powerful jaws around one of the entity's shifting limbs, dragging it down. The god writhed, its form flickering, unstable—but not yet defeated.
Morpheus exhaled sharply. Now.
With a final push, he reached out, his magic seizing the ritual's power. He twisted it, forced it into shape, and drove it into the battlefield.
The sand beneath the god exploded upward.
Not just sand—figures. Statues of warriors, sculpted from limestone and obsidian, carved with hieroglyphs of servitude, rose from the earth. Their eyes burned with the light of Ra, their hands gripping weapons imbued with ancient enchantments. These were not mere constructs; they were the last remnants of a long-forgotten order, bound to the will of the ritual.
Khufu's voice rang out. "Sekhmet's Judgment!"
The statues moved as one, surging forward like a tidal wave of stone and fury. Spears of enchanted gold pierced through the god's shifting form, disrupting its magic. Blades cut through celestial fire, severing the bindings holding it together.
Anubis leapt back just as the final blow struck. The tallest of the statues, a towering figure with the head of a falcon, drove its weapon deep into the god's core. The being let out a final, piercing wail—then collapsed inward.
Its form shattered, exploding not in fire or sand but in raw, uncontrolled magic.
The battlefield went still.
The very air thickened, saturated with untethered energy. It clung to the warriors, the sand, the ruins of the battlefield itself. The magic was heavy, oppressive, almost suffocating—a dense, unnatural fog of pure power.
The ICW reinforcements stood frozen at the edge of the battlefield, staring in stunned disbelief. They had arrived too late to understand the ritual, too late to grasp what they had just witnessed.
"What… what the hell was that?" one of them whispered.
A senior enforcer, a scarred woman with a hardened stance, stepped forward. "Fall back and secure the stragglers," she barked, trying to regain control. Her gaze flicked between the still-glowing battlefield and the monstrous remnants of the god's energy lingering in the air. "…And someone tell me what in Merlin's name that thing was."
No one had an answer.
But there was no time to process it. The battle wasn't over.
Morpheus took in a breath, grounding himself as the last of the magic settled. His muscles ached, his body screamed in protest, but he had no time to stop. The demons and angels that remained, disoriented by their god's demise, had begun to retreat—but not all of them. Stragglers still fought, still clawed toward the pyramid's entrance.
"Finish this," Morpheus ordered, his voice cutting through the haze.
The ICW enforcers snapped out of their stupor. Wands rose, spells fired, and the final push began.
Inside the pyramid, the Sage's Eye was still locked in brutal combat, demons and angels forcing their way through the labyrinthine kill boxes. The reinforcements moved swiftly, charging into the depths of the temple to assist their struggling allies.
Morpheus turned to Khufu, "Anubis's friends would have felt that ritual complete, you will have your wish my friend." he said before striding off to deal with the stragglers
***
The catacombs of the pyramid reeked of death and blood. The last of the demons and angels fought like cornered animals, their usual arrogance stripped away in the face of overwhelming odds. The ICW reinforcements pushed forward with ruthless efficiency, filling the labyrinthine halls with flashes of spellfire and the sharp clang of steel against flesh.
Sage's Eye, battered and depleted, didn't relent. They had fought too hard, lost too much, to leave any survivors.
A demon lunged from the shadows, claws outstretched, only for a shimmering blade to slice through its throat. Vesper, her face streaked with blood some of it hers, most of it not, twisted her wrist and ripped the blade free, sending the creature gurgling to the ground. Behind her, Cairn staggered forward, his arm clutching a wound at his side, his breathing ragged. He had lost his wand somewhere in the chaos, but his dagger was still gripped tight in his bloodied fist.
"Clear," one of the ICW enforcers called from ahead.
Silence fell over the catacombs.
Vesper exhaled, her shoulders slumping. She turned, glancing down the dimly lit corridor where two of their own still lay dead, their bodies mangled, their eyes staring at nothing.
No victory felt like a victory when the dead outnumbered the living.
With slow, weary steps, Sage's Eye emerged from the pyramid. They walked into the open air as if stepping out of the underworld itself—war-torn, bloodied, exhausted. Their eyes held the weight of the battle, the weight of loss.
The ICW enforcements gave them space, uneasy. These weren't ordinary fighters—they were killers, hardened by the kind of warfare most wizards never had to face.
Morpheus stood near the remnants of the battlefield, dusting sand from his sleeves like he had just finished a minor inconvenience. The ritual's lingering energy still hummed in the air, making the desert feel charged, alive in a way it shouldn't be.
That's when he arrived.
A tall man, broad-shouldered with streaks of gray in his dark hair, stalked toward Morpheus with purpose. His long ICW coat was stained with dust and blood, his sharp eyes filled with a fury barely kept in check.
"Everglade."
Morpheus barely glanced up.
The man stopped just a step too close, the kind of deliberate intrusion that signaled authority. His wand was already in his hand, the tip sparking faintly with residual magic.
"You're going to start talking," he said, his voice low, dangerous. "Now."
Morpheus raised a brow, unimpressed. "About?"
The man's jaw clenched. "Don't play games with me." He jabbed his wand forward, pressing the tip against Morpheus' chest, right over the Stone of Dreams, still faintly glowing beneath his shirt. "What the hell were those things? What was that—" he gestured to the battlefield, to the fading traces of 'divine' energy still clinging to the air. "What do you know?"
Morpheus met his glare with absolute indifference. "A lot of things. You'll have to be more specific."
The ICW officer let out a slow breath, visibly restraining himself from lashing out. "This isn't over."
"No, it's not." Morpheus tilted his head, his smirk faint, but knowing. "And that's the problem, isn't it?"
The realization settled over them all like a cold weight. This battle wasn't the end—it was only the beginning. The creatures, the forces behind this attack, would return. They weren't after conquest. They were after this pyramid.
"This place," the officer muttered, looking back at the ancient structure. "It's one of those damned anchors, they told me but I didn't believe it. This cannot be real." he groaned into his hand
So tired. So confused.
Morpheus nodded. "And unless you want to go through this again, you're going to have to do more than throw bodies at it."
The officer's grip on his wand tightened. He clearly didn't like being told what to do, especially by someone like Morpheus. But he wasn't an idiot.
"…We reinforce the defenses."
"A good start," Morpheus mused.
The officer's eyes narrowed. "This isn't a partnership."
Morpheus smiled. "Of course not."
They stared at each other, tension thick in the air, but the unspoken agreement had been made. The ICW would fortify the pyramid. They wouldn't trust Morpheus, but they wouldn't ignore him either.
The war wasn't over.
It was just waiting for its next battle.