Exploring the tunnels by foot was time consuming. I could map them out easily enough, and if I weren't limiting myself to basic movement, I could have cleared the entire system out quickly. But this was not the way I wanted to win this particular battle. This battle needed the soldiers to do the work, and I would need a handful of heroes for them rank and file to look up to. So I limited myself in order to allow my men to do the majority of the work. It took us ten minutes to search the different areas I could sense to find a communications room. The Praetorians set work securing the room and one of them prepared the system for a complex wide announcement. While they were busy preparing the announcement, I would make my next move.

I tapped on my communicator, "Caesar to Prydwen."

"Prydwen here," a voice came back. "What is your command, Caesar?"

Have the High Confessor get her gear on," I replied. "Coordinate her arrive with two units of Zealots at the Trapper unit's coordinates. It's time for her to put that pistol to use. Have her contact me when she's in position."

"It will be as you command, Caesar," the voice replied.

"Excellent," I replied. "Caesar out."

"Caesar," Eric said as he approached me and bowed his head, "the radio and video communications have been set up. We're ready to broadcast when you are."

"Video communications?" I asked curiously. "Is it a closed circuit system?"

Eric nodded and pointed to a small monitor mounted in the top corner of the room, "It seems to be something similar. We can use the camera in this room to broadcast to parts of the facility that have monitors. The rest will get the audio through speakers."

I arched a brow, "That seems awfully convenient for a single comms room."

"I thought so as well," Eric replied as he led me to a large desk with most of the machinery on it. He showed me a diagram that explained the communication channels and signals that could be broadcast on. "We found this in one of the drawers. I'm guessing it's mostly for training purposes or as a sort of reminder, but we can use it to send your message anywhere in the facility."

I looked at the diagram and considered it carefully, "I tend to agree. It's probably a reference guide. Good to have around but probably not used once someone gets used to the process."

"Shall we broadcast now?" Eric asked.

I shook my head, "We need to wait for the High Confessor to be in place. For now, just focus on making sure we reach as much of the facility as possible with a single broadcast."

It took nearly half an hour for T'Preea and the zealots to equip their gear and transfer down to the designated coordinates. We were given the go-ahead once they were in position.

The Praetorians manned the communications and we began to broadcast.

I smiled at the camera as pleasantly as I could manage, "Greetings, members of the Enclave. I am Merida Orodum, Caesar of the Legion. No doubt you are currently engaged with my forces at the moment, but I will make this announcement quickly."

I raised a hand in front of my face and shadows began to climb the walls behind me like a mass of roiling tentacles, "In mere moments I will command my High Confessor to unleash the horrors of the Wasteland and darker denizens upon you. When this happens, your minds will break and we will watch as you turn into gibbering fools who will not be able to tell friend from foe."

I reached into a pocket and pulled out a picture of Seven's face and held it out to the camera, "However, I am not without mercy. If, within the next ten minutes you can tell me the whereabouts of this man, or bring him to me, I will allow the people responsible for bringing him to me to live. His name is Liam McCLain, and he is a part of your security forces. If no one comes to me with information about him, or with him in tow, then I will initiate my plan in ten minutes and sort through the bodies one by one till I find him"

I offered another pleasant smile, "Have a great rest of your day!"

The transmission was cut and Eric looked at me, "Have a great day?"

I laughed and shrugged, "I like the irony of wishing them a great day even though we're here to kill them."

"With all due respect, Caesar, but has anyone told you that you're a sadist?" Eric asked with an ever-so-cautious tone.

"I don't think so," I replied with a chuckle. "But I can see how you might think that."

True to my word, I waited ten minutes for anyone to bring me any information about Seven, but no one arrived with him or with any information. Once time was up I gave a dejected sigh.

"Looks like we'll be searching bodies," I said mostly to myself. I activated my communicator, "Caesar to High Confessor."

"High Confessor here," T'Preea replied.

"Time's up," I said chipperly, "move in."

"As you command, Caesar," T'Preea answered.

As T'Preea and her zealots began to move into the facility, the Trappers would begin releasing the mutated creatures they had tamed over the years to run ahead and behind sowing terror into the heart of the Enclave soldiers. While this was happening, I called upon a power I hadn't really tapped into yet. The entity which I bargained with in this world had given me dominion over its avatars. I called to them, willing them to appear wherever Enclave soldiers could be sensed. The tentacles and various nightmarish appendages began to writhe and harrass the members of the Enclave, their otherworldly nature distorting their minds and causing their hold on reality to begin cracking.

The mutated beasts of the wastes charged in hunting down any prey they could find. Their appearance only served to break the minds of the enemy even more while they ravaged those they could catch. Finally, T'Preea waded into the tunnels alongside her Zealots.

T'Preea's task was very specific. It was finally time to put the Magnumnomicon to work. The pistol had a special property which instantly mutated anyone shot with it into a zombie-like creature, twisting their bodies into horrifying angels and sending them into a psychotic rage which only the wielder of the Magnumnomicon could control. The zealots kept T'Preea safe while she used the pistol to shoot and convert members of the Enclave into a growing group of feral madmen. These psychically ruined men sprinted into the Enclave tunnels, filling it with incoherent screams, frantic howls, and dissonant shouts. The tunnels began to be filled with the echoes of madness as more and more of these newly turned lunatics joined the fray.

The combined pressures of the entity's avatar, the mutated beasts, the ravenous madmen, and Meirune's frenzied pack was too much for most of the Enclave soldiers to bear. Those who held on to the tenuous grasp of reality from the psychic assault died from the attacks, or were routed, which only served to break the spirits of those that the onslaught hadn't reached yet. The cascading effect went on for hours, eventually causing the few sane members of the Enclave to flee the security of the tunnels and charge the Legion lines. In their panic, they were easy targets for Legion soldiers who simply opened fire.

The tunnel systems had multiple levels and spiderwebbed their way through the southern half of the Rocky Mountains. The initial tunnel entrances we had attacked were secure, but there were hundreds of miles of tunnels to still deal with. I ensured that no one would escape by reaching out with my senses to seal the tunnels, trapping the Enclave members inside.

As the first day of the attack began to wind down, I raised stone walls up in the tunnels approximately two miles from the entrances, allowing the wasteland beasts and T'Preea's steadily growing army of maddened Enclave soldiers to continue pushing further into the tunnels overnight.

I sat in the war tent with Meirune, T'Preea, and Malchaius, as well as officers from the different battalions. Most seemed eager to continue the fight through the evening and into the next day, but I had refused.

"The High Confessor's ability to convert the enemy is exactly why we should continue to press our advantage," one of the officers said. "The amount of expendable forces we would gain would only multiply."

I shook my head, "There's no need to push our men through the night to do the work that the beasts and the madmen can do for us. By the time the morning comes around, our men will be well rested and ready to overwhelm the enemy."

"Do you think the creatures and the converted soldiers will be enough to wear the enemy down, Caesar?" Malchaius asked.

I smirked at T'Preea, "Even if they're not, the madness will spread. And the fear of the madness will spread ever faster, compounding on the effects to make them even more infectious. We will have a relaxing evening of rest while the Enclave endures a full night of terror. By the time I open the tunnels back up for us, we should be able to wade through the rest of the Enclave without any real resistance over the next few days."

"The next few days?" an officer asked. "Just how dense are these tunnels?"

"Several miles at least," I replied. "With multiple layers and dozens of exits that I've already taken the liberty of closing. We have them trapped. We simply have put our faith in Atom that he will break the spirits of our enemies before we ever need to engage them."

I stood from my chair, causing everyone else to stand out of respect, "I want everyone to get their rest. Have your men ready for a full push into the tunnels by eight-thirty. I'll unseal the tunnels soon after."

The group of officers all saluted as I took my leave. The Praetorian Guard escorted me to my tent and I spent the next few hours drawing up battle plans for each battalion based on the layout of the tunnels that I could sense. Once the plans were finished, I had Eric deliver them to the officers while I went to bed.

The next morning I walked out to find the battalions ready for battle. I reached out with my senses to find that, apart from a few ongoing skirmishes going on, the tunnels had been completely overrun. I moved to the front lines and commanded the Legion to march forward. As a single unit, the Legion moved forward,the rhythmic footfalls of the soldiers were so precise that every step was like a crack of of the battalions split off according to the plans I'd written for them and waited into their designated tunnel.

When I lowered the stone barrier within the tunnels to allow us entrance, the sounds that greeted us threatened to shatter the minds of the soldiers. Madness. The echoing cacophony of broken psyches reverberated through the tunnels to create the roar of shattered souls which bellowed forth from the tunnels. I couldn't help but grin. This was better than I thought it would be. If things were this bad in there, it meant that we would simply have to clear the tunnels of mad or dying men to claim our victory.

The next few days were a methodical culling. Very few members of the Enclave had survived with their sanity intact, and the ones that had were too few in number to be any threat to the Legion in any capacity. The largest problem for the Legion became hauling the bodies out of the tunnels and checking their faces and ID's for Seven.

To my great irritation, he wasn't there. This meant that there still had to be pockets of Enclave members we hadn't found yet, or the Seven had somehow changed his appearance. Still, the Enclave was now all but destroyed. The only threats remaining to the Legion lay in the west with the New California Republic, and the Zetans. Once those two factions were handled, the Legion would control the United States and we could begin expanding our influence across the globe. It was only a matter of time now.