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Grant's ninja monkey lizards were dispatched to the imperial isle to get some intel on the state of things there.

Meanwhile the team of Solars met Song in Nexus to discuss her, and thus her master, Cecyline, relaying the location of the ebon dragon's core self at the proper time. Song agreed, and said once the empress was defeated and we were ready to jump planes that she would appear and lead us to him or give us his location at least. Good, one big thing taken care of.

Next, the monkey lizards returned with some very disturbing but not wholly unexpected reports. Almost all non-exalts had fled. The dragonbloods that were there were permeated with infernal essence and their appearances reflected it. The flesh of their faces had rotted away below the nose and around the mouth. Dead bodies lay in the street untouched, ignored. The armaments were dense and soldiers everywhere.

Also, there was a giant column of like shooting up to the sky from the imperial manse. Probably the gateway from hell to heaven.

The solars then sat down to confer with their generals in deciding how to proceed. They named Leviathan the overall commander of the combined forces with the caveat that he is required to put up with the dragonbloods on our team; they are important to the assault. Once the empress is slain and theoretically the imperial dragonbloods were free of her control and are able to reclaim some about of free will, he was to give them a chance to surrender or flee. The solars dictated Ejava should be there by his side, and possibly give a speech if needbe, to give them the best chance of getting the imperials to break off engagement and allow the fighting to stop. If they continued fighting, Leviathan was free to do whatever was needed to hold, or even win, if it was at all possible.

The assault would begin just before twilight. A team of Grant's ninja monkey lizards would be in place to begin sabotaging the imperials' equipment as the fighting began. The submergable fortress would appear off the coast first and open the engagement with the enemy. The air fortress would be right behind it with a team of mages and possibly Sidereals hiding it in a huge bank of storm clouds. Once engagement had begun in earnest, just after twilight, the strike team would head from their shadowland exit to the imperial manse while the imperial forces were distracted with the assault.

Once the overall order of battle was decided, the Solar's broke off in the discussion to select the specific members of their strike team. The three of them, of course. Three Lunars (Shadow, Grant's follower, and a third). One Sidereal (Berrel). Three Lookshy Dragonbloods, three imperial Dragonbloods, and two human mages capable of casting Terrestrial-level spells. The Abyssal, Alabaster Twilight, was the final member.

When it came time to leave and get going on this assault, Alabaster Twilight whisked the team away into the Underworld, into the Labyrinth, and lead the way to the shadowland closest to the imperial manse.

Upon evening time, the team waited in the closet. The sounds of battle began, and increased, and persisted. And then, at twilight, the team exited the closet and snuck out into the city. They were inundated by the tainted essence channels…. yet another thing to repair once they cleaned the infernals' clocks. But, no matter, the team snuck to the outer wall surrounding the imperial manse. Isha repelled up first and immediately she was targetted by essence cannon volleys. She purposefully drew their attention and run/leapt over to one of the batteries and axed the men there a question in a major way. Searing appeared next and was greeted with a couple of inferals fired out of a cannon from across the way. He beat the snot out of one and started working on the second just as Grant appeared. Grant made short work of the second infernal while Isha drew the attention of and worked on the second essence cannon battery. The others helped to finish off the essence cannons bugging them as a mini boss appeared.

He was like an old dude with a big staff…. obviously a spell caster with some pimp dodge abilities and magical armor. As he landed before them he stood, pointed his staff to the two remaining essence cannons sitting on the interior wall who were still firing and nuked them both. He then turned to the Solars before him.

The high-level infernal immediately dumped on the situational control spells. Most of the solars were unable to act early on. Then the attack began. Isha and Searing flailed. Grant seemed unaffected but the infernal was blinked here and there making him extremely difficult to hit. With a good bit of luck and a distraction by Isha and Searing, Grant was able to blow the dude away in one hit… good for us, but bad for Grant. Grant had just nearly blown his whole load of essence to do it, and we still had the empress and the ebon dragon to deal with…