"I can't see a damn thing," Hamanymu muttered in annoyance.

"I know," Chris replied feeling the same way as he looked up to the mountain where the supposed orb was.

Unfortunately a thick blanket of clouds had formed around the mountain top, obstructing it from view. It was a frustrating experience, like nature itself was taunting him by keeping this threat hidden, like an unseen sword of Damocles.

The same frustration was shared by the Asikari and Knights who had formed rank around the mountain.

Looking through their masses, Chris could see nervous and frustrated faces even amongst the veterans. He could not blame them though, they had been been dragged off to face a threat that had passed their borders and yet they had not taken any actions yet.

All they could do is sit here and pray to Leza and Sophia that their invisible enemy didn't take the opportunity to take shots at them.

The close call which had brought him and Ishtar down here had not helped matters in the slightest. They should have began bombarding that thing with artillery shots that would not have stopped until they had leveled the entire mountain range.

But on their way, a message had come in from their parents that they were still to wait for them to arrive. Ishtar was less than pleased and Chris, though he loathed to admit it was relieved when he heard it.

Blindly rushing that thing without any serious powerhouses in their corner was nothing less than pure insanity.

"What do you think it is?" Thor asked them.

"I don't know," Ursa replied in a bored tone of voice as she lazily kicked about the rocks that lay at her feet.

"Why can't we just move those damn clouds," Chris snapped, the stress from what was happening was beginning to feel like a massive pair of boulders on his shoulders that was growing heavier with each second.

"Because there are Mizihimo in the winds. Controlling the weather is hard enough on its own, but with a bunch of spirits giving it borderline sentience, good luck." shockingly the response did not come from Ursa as would be expected, but from Hamanymu.

He looked at the red and gold Knight in pure suprise, and he wasn't the only one, as both Thor and Ursa shared similar expressions of disbelief. Hamanymu on the other hand looked utterly offended at their dumbfoundedness.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he demanded sharply. "I know stuff too."

"Yes stuff," Ursa replied with a cheeky smile. "Was that stuff so happened to be gleamed from my books?"

Hamanymu's face got as close to red as it could and he turned his face away from Ursa who had a triumphant smile gleaming off of her face.

Chris wanted to ask what she meant about her books, but his voice was drowned out by a loud rushing of the winds and repeating tremors that flowed through the soil in waves.

He instinctively reached for the hilt of his blade, just like many Asikari and Knights around him who quickly got to their battle stations facing the mountain and expecting the orb to descend, flinging whatever weapons it possed down upon them.

But no such attack came, in fact everyone turned and began pointing to the back of their ranks. They cheered and howlered in such delight that their collective voices were greater than the winds.

Chris followed their line of sight and he saw a spectacle that he had only ever seen once. The entire might of Avalons military forces came, with hundreds of thousands of massive tanks rolling upon the ground and crushing everything in their path underfoot.

Slightly ahead of them was a fast Calvary of armoured vehicles and horsemen riding not only stallions, but also great lions and rhinos.

In the air, so many flying vessels and beasts had amassed that they blotted out the sun for hundreds of kilometres. Beholding this sight, he felt the weight of fear and frustration that had been on his shoulders wash away.

It was replaced with an elation and new boost of confidence. He pumped his fist into the air and joining his comrades, cheered as loudly as he could, until his throat hurt.

"Come on, let's go to the command tent!" he shouted to the others.

"What?" Ursa asked him, the cheering too loudly for the both of them to properly discern the others words.

He considered shouting out his statement again, but the sound was too much. He simply grabbed Ursa's hand and he began sprinting through the crowds with her in tow. Hamanymu and Thor both followed closely behind.

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They sprinted towards the command center as fast as they could without bumping into anyone else or any of the artillery shells which had been stockpiled next to the great canons.

Eventually they managed to reach the tent that was acting as the main command center. The guards at the tents entrance didn't even bother to question him and he simply flew past them.

The tent was filled with close to a hundred officials walking around, talking to eachother as they focused on hundreds of live video feeds of silver sphere.

Chris ran his eyes across this ever shifting sea of Humans, Fae and Elves. He stopped when he saw his sister Ishtar, but she was not alone and two familiar figures in green and blue stood besides her.

Standing around them and keeping anyone from getting too close were the Vortiguard in their gold and scarlet plate armor, ever silent in their stoic vigilance.

"They are here already," he nervously thought. "I can just turn around now and book it out of here... oh, who am I kidding. Just go and face the music, she probably knows that you are here already."

Chris sucked in his breath before he stepped forward to them, knowing that his mother would less than pleased when she caught sight of him.

He slowly walked closer as not to give the Vortiguard the opportunity to see him before he reached them, because unlike the guards outside the tent, rushing towards the king and queen would end with him on his back with far less teeth.

Though they were the least of his worries as low and behold as soon as he got within her line of sight, he saw the already present scowl on his mother's face grow even deeper.

"Mot.." he tried to politely greet them, but his mother cut him off, sharply demanding.

"What in all the hells are you doing here?"

"Acting in the defence of our home," he replied trying to keep the hurt her words had caused out of his voice.

Natalia Ddraig turned to face Ishtar with a angry glare that if looks could kill, would have killed the crown princess a million times. Ishtar for her part did not seem bothered by it, she simply stood in a perfect emotionless stance.

"Why did you bring him here Ishtar, especially when I specifically ordered you to keep your younger siblings out of such matters?"

Chris bit back a sneer at her words as he thought, "I am nineteen years old, woman. Besides, the entire bloody kingdom is being invaded by an unknown threat. Can't she just put are overbearing ego aside for one."

"Your grace, in all due respect. Aris Christian is a trained and active Knight, there is no reason why he shouldn't be here." Chris was breamming with pride as he heard his sister's defence.

"Ishtar..." Natalia growled with a dangerous sharpness in her voice.

"Ladies please, play nice with eachother," their father finally decided to step in and play at peacemaker.

"Your grace, your grace!" shouted one of the technicians who was monitoring the orb.

"What is it?" his father asked.

"The Orb, it is sending out a radio wave to communicate with us".

"Then turn it on," Ishtar ordered him.

The technician raised the volume and a female voice came through the speaker. "Roland, Natalia.... If you can hear me, it has been a long time. I hope you two remember me... I understand that you are on edge with my little entrance, but please understand, I mean you no harm. I simply want to talk to you, I look forward to meeting you up here."

The two rulers looked at eachother in suprise as the audio looped back to reply the entire message.

"Who is that?" Chris asked them.

"It's Nimue." his father responded.

"And a Nimue is what exactly?" he asked again.

"An old friend, who we have to see now apparently," his father responded as he reached for blowhorn strapped to his waist. Chris recognised the blowhorn near instantly, for it was Olithinas, the horn that could move you across great distances.

""Ishtar, come closer," his mother ordered and Ishtar followed the example of the Vortiguard who had gotten closer.

Chris tried to step closer to be in the field of the magic that would take them, but his mother's hand come and stopped him in his tracks.

"What are you doing?" he asked her.

"Stopping you from doing something stupid and before you ask, Christian, no you will not be going with us and that is a none negotiatibal position," her words were backed up by her cold grey eyes gazing into him with a piercing intensity.

"That isn't fair, you just can't do that!"

"Yes I can, I am your mother and your queen," she coldly responded as his father blew the horn and they began to dissolve from sight.

Something inside Chris broke, like a dam that had been filled over its max capacity and as Natalia fully desolved from his sight he sharply responded saying.

"You are not my mother, only the poor mimicry of what remained."

He watched her face twist into suprise as she finally vanished and Chris would be lying if he didn't feel a sense of satisfaction looking at her.

XXXXXXX

"That was cold," Hamanymu whispered, but Chris didn't think so.

In fact, in the ten minutes that they had been gone,he had thought up a thousand different crueler statements that he could have made against his so called mother.

"She deserved more."

"Chris..." Hamanymu tried to force the conversation but the Avalonian prince was not interested, some of the anger that had burned within him was still alive inside.

"Let IT Go!" he angrily responded whilst slamming his fist into the nearest table.

"Can you both please keep it down," Ursa snapped at the both of them.

The two of them fell silent, their attention focused upon the radio broadcasters in the tent. In fact, everyone in the tent was focused on the radios that were buzzing with static. No other soul uttered a word as they waited in bated breath for any feedback from the mountain slope.

The static began to slowly reduced as pauses of live audio began to emerge untill Chris could hear his parents voices through the speakers.

"Nimue.... wh... the green...." his father's voice came through the speakers distorted and with gaps.

"Can't we get a clearer audio?" Chris asked the closest radio operator.

"We are trying, but there is so much electromagnetic radiation up there, it's screwing with all our systems."

"...See reason... I wish that thing's were different... It must be this way, it is always this way" a female voice that he was not familiar with filtered through the speakers.

"Nimue!" his mother's screeched loudly.

Her scream was followed by an earthquake and an ear piercing sound that was a simulacrum of having two cold nails driven into his eardrums. But that the least of their problems as the very earth that they stood upon shook madly.

Chris watched as large cracks began to speard across the hard tarren as one would expect to seen on a sheet of ice that had multiple hammers driven into it.

The Avalonian prince tried to stand tall, but the earth beneath his feet shook so madly that he was thrown to the ground with a tremendous thud. He groaned in pain as he had landed heard first and it left his head spinning for a few minutes.

Thankfully the earthquake stopped it's vioilent shaking and with a sigh of relief he was able to stagger up to his feet and out of the tent, though he was not the first to do this or the last as the entirety of the tent had was semi collapsed.

The outside world was an apocalyptic vision plucked from the dreams of men and plastered upon reality. Green bolts of lightning arched across the clouds in the hundreds, iliminating the earth in a green glow.

And where the mountain had once stood was a large plume of dust that stretched into the clouds.

"What?" he muttered in confusion as he looked at the plume of dust.

Chris's confusion was answered as large pieces of debris began raining from the dust cloud. He was lucky enough to step out of the way of one such building sized chuck of the earth. The mountain was destroyed and it was landing within their ranks and sending the Avalonian defenders into a panic.

But their troubles were not yet over as from this thick blanket of dust came an army in silver armor that shimmered even as they marched out of the thick dust. The infantry of this force carried black guns that fired burning red projectiles into the panicked ranks of Avalon who had been closet to the mountain.

Some fired back or drew their melee weapons to engage the enemy, but the enemies calvary came upon large horses, came swinging their blades swinging and cutting down any Knight and Asikari unfortunate enough to be caught by them.

"Draw ranks!" Chris shouted to the panicked masses around him as he charged the army coming his way.

He didn't know what ghost had possessed him, but he hoped that the image of him rushing towards the enemy would be enough to rally the men and women around him.

Shots from the enemy came in the hundreds, and he avoided them all. For the enhancements of all Knights drove them above even their fellow superhuman Asikari.

As he weaved and ducked through the hypersonic energy beams, Chris drew Lucius-Arora and he cut down the first enemy combatant who he met.