Fear was an emotion Chris had grown accustomed to over a very long time of dodging death. He could now deal the weak feeling to his knees and the sweat drenching chill that came with sensation of looking the reaper in the eyes.

Right now, he felt a swelling up of that most primal emotion as he looked at the woman who's scythe shimmered so brightly that it almost seemed to burn.

" What is going on, I just fought off an entire army, why would I be feeling fear? " He thought as he steeled his grip of his sword.

"Calm yourself, it's some kind of spell from her, the woman with the scythe, I can feel the fear as well." Ishtar whispered to him before she took a few steps forward.

Chris took a deep breath and though something that he knew was foreign in his mind screamed for him to turn and flee in dread, he pushed it back.

"I would advise you to surrender, if you still value your lives," Ishtar's voice was oozing such power and authority that you would have been forgiven for forgetting that she had been near defenceless not too long ago.

She stood ready to strike with her full power at the drop of a coin like a serpent poised to strike. This was the true Ishtar, the knight who had earned the terrifying monicker of goddess of war and Chris could not be more pleased to have her on his side.

The woman could clearly tell this as well because he eyed her up and down before chuckling with a mocking tone of of amusement.

"Forgive my lack of manners, oh princess. Allow me to properly introduce myself, my name is Virgo of Zodiac and this young lady besides me is Juno Freya," the woman spoke with such a lazy smugness that it made Chris want to rearrange her teeth with his fist.

"A pleasure. You are aware that your people are committing an act of war?" Ishtar asked as she drew the twin blades which hang from her back.

"Oh my lady, we are most aware." Virgo responded with a mocking gesture. "But I am afraid that some of you hold the keys to our goals and we cannot depart your land until the blood of the king sleeping under mountain is with us. It was quite a hassle getting here and well...we just can't leave empty handed."

"If you want so desperately to die, so be it." Chris spoke while casting a side glance to Ishtar, they did not need to share a word to know that blood would be spilled here.

" Now, let's see if your bite is has sharp as your bark." Virgo coldly taunted as she got into a battle stance with her scythe.

In response two yellow insect like wings erupted to life upon Ishtar's back. Their constant vibration as his sister readied them for combat was mesmerising and reminded Chris just how no matter how he tried, the Fae side within him always felt like a foreign intruder. He envied just how easily Ishtar could turn it on and off, but those thoughts did not matter now.

"So, who shall be your dance partner?" he asked her as he stretched limbs and prepared himself for combat once more.

"The one with the scythe looks important and I have some questions to ask her." she responded while an aura of golden energy surrounded her swords. " You can take the other one, try not to maim her too badly, I plan to have a long conversation with the both of them after all this is over."

"So it's you and me princess." Virgo spoke with a tinge of sadism laced in her voice. " You shall do quite nicely. She told us not to hurt you people too badly, but then you won't need more than one arm for what's in store for you."

No more had second passed from when those words escaped Virgos lips did Ishtar blasted forward leaving a sonic boom in her wake as she raced to face down Virgo, who likewise was burrowing towards her like a lightning bolt.

They met with a collision which shook the earth and almost deafened Chris. Ishtar won this clash as she tackled Virgo out of the crater, leaving only the young prince and the Lunar Empire warrior.

"You know that it is not too late to surrender?" Chris asked her as they both began circling eachother, looking for a window to strike.

"I know, but I would say the same..." she paused mid sentence and she swung her bone axe in an arching motion sending forward a turbulent gust of wind which would have ripped apart steel "... about you!"

"Damn." Chris cursed as he raised an ice shield to protect him from the winds.

The winds were like a warhammer to the ice and it shattered into a thousand pieces, sending Chris reeling to the earthen walls of the crater.

Juno wasted no time in launching forward with her wings aid to drive her axe into him. Chris rolled out of the way and avoided the bone battleaxe which would have been driven into his left shoulder.

He thrust Lucius-Aurora forward but Juno managed to use her axe to block it. But this was something he had accounted for, as while her axe was wide enough to act as a shield, it was also wide enough to blind her from realising that he had gotten closer to her.

She lowered it and she was met with a headbutt which sent her staggering back. Chris fought to keep focused as his head burned from the sharp pain born of him slamming it into Juno's skull.

He took a step forward and with blinding speeds he threw upwards an uppercut which caught the Fae flush on the jaw and launched her out of the seven metre crater. Chris leaped out after her, his sword midswing and ready to end this.

XXXXXXX

The name Ishtar Ddraig or as many called her the goddess of war, was a name that carried power, respect, fear, awe to many Avalonian's for different reasons, but all of them earned by her strength in arms.

She had been thrust into adulthood when her mother had been split into two entities. The civil war that erupted needed the whole royal family's attention. Whilst Christian and Joan were too young, she was old enough to be thrust into the battles that came.

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The child went into the furnace and she was reforged into a warrior beyond her years. Through those battles her prowess grew and so did her legend as for all the fifty high class missions that she had taken part in, she had only failed four.

The crown princess was blitzing across the dark thundering skies with Virgo in her grasp. She sailed far from the battle and into the side of the nearest mountain. She slammed her foe with such force that great cracks spread across the mountain which violently shook.

She raised one of her blades to stab down at Virgo, but the Zodiac would not let her. She thrust her knee upwards and she caught Ishtar in the gut with enough force to send her flying backwards.

She was sent sailing through the air and would have been sent down the mountain were it not for her wings which managed to halt her acceleration in midair and Ishtar was able to bring herself safely back to the mountain top.

Virgo struck forward with her scythe but Ishtar deflected the wicked blade with her twin swords, Shamash and Ashur. The impact of scythe and blades echoed from the mountain top like thunder and the sparks given off by their weapons clashing could be mistaken for large lightning bolts from a hundred kilometres away.

Virgo was not slowed down in the slightest and she kept coming with a furious grace which made using a six foot long scythe in combat look effortless, but Ishtar was equally as skilled and though her weapons were smaller, she managed to deflect and get close enough to leave dents upon Virgos armor.

Ishtar could not help but feel impressed by the skill which Virgo displayed in this dance of death. Though that was to be expected from a member of Zodiac, if what Ishtar heard about them from Dolton was true.

This unit of the Lunar Empires military was the equivalent of Avalons Knights. They were the elite of the elite, the spear point by which the Emperor extended his will, and yet none what was happening made any sense to Ishtar.

Not one of their spies within the Empires structures mentioned that war with Avalon was something that the Emperor and his inner circle were planning so soon. Infact it was the total opposite and every report stated that the Emperor was trying to hold back his most zealous officers.

And as she thought more deeply about it, she wondered why was it seemingly only Zodiac's forces here, surely if the Emperor sought to do serious harm to Avalon he would have added more troops to supplement Zodiac's ranks, especially the legendary Black Raven.

"Oh princess, I think your attention ought to be here," Virgo snapped in annoyance as she raised the scythe and she brought it down with all her might.

Ishtar used the twin blades to block the scythe, halting it's tip barely a quarter inche from her forehead. Though the force imparted by the blow cracked the earth and sunk her legs halfway into the solid earth.

"I was beginning to think that you lost all interest in me and that hurt my feelings. I thought that we were becoming best baddies." Virgo sneered before pulling the scythe, trying to drag Ishtar towards her, but the crown princess was too fast for that and so Virgo pulled back a hook without its catch.

"You really do love to hear yourself talk," Ishtar said as pulled her feet out of the ground.

"Well, when you have a voice like mine you can never get enough of it. All the boys would agree with that fact."

"Is that what you tell yourself."

"Every morning of every day," the Zodiac responded with a chuckle.

"Fine, you want to talk, tell me what you are doing here?" She needed to get this motor mouth to say something useful.

Virgo began to chuckle at her before the Zodiac made a slashing gesture with her scythe and a wave of a black ink like substance raced forward from nothiness. Ishtar was startled as she recognised the black purple substance.

Calling upon the enchantments carved into every piece of her armor, she banished her twin swords and in their place was a red hunting bow.

She pulled the bowstring and from it was formed an arrow made completely from flame. She loosed this inferno arrow and it shot forward before splitting in midair into more and more arrows that all consumed much of the dark purple substance.

That which was not destroyed landed upon the earth and it's properties took immediate effect. Some rocks near it began floating through the air in defience of gravity, some other parts of the earth became a layer flesh and those plants that near instantly sprouted from this mutated soil either had had teeth or were composed of a dark purple crystal.

This was the effect of dark energy, the substance which composed the home of all Night Terrors, mutated and twisted everything it touched in defiance of the natural order.

"Dark energy, are you out of your damn mind, this could corrupt you and everything around you," Ishtar snapped as the sight of the mutagenic effects of the substance brought back memories of the civil war.

"Do you think that I am like the rest of you. I have trained in the control of this power, it is mine to control, not the other way around." the Zodiac's ranting reminded her of the dark half of her mother and Ishtar snarled as her rage began bubbling upwards.

"Will You Shut Up Already!" she roared as she raised her bow, Latarak.

She pulled back the bowstring and another fire arrow formed. She loosened the arrow and whilst flying the arrow broke apart into thirty smaller arrows, and though Virgo managed to deflect some, one managed to strike her facemask so hard that the steel mask shattered.

But this was not enough for Ishtar, she leaped into the air and her wings carried her into the clouds as she bound and weaved the threads of magic within her was condensed into a Alpha-Spell.

"Ebih!" she roared as a burst of flame came to life in her right hand.

The flames were bent and twisted into the shap of a spear, she raised it overhead and she launched it at the mountain. The moment that the flaming spear struck the mountain, it instantly spread across the entire earthen structure.

The supernatural flames were of such intensity that the mountain began to crumple and bend over as millions of tons worth of rock were near instantly rendered to ash.

XXXXXXX

Chris acted in a split and using Lucius-Aurora he managed to block another one of Junos wild swings. After perusing the Fae out of the crater, he had found her boldness in combat to have increased by a large amount.

The impact of both weapons colliding with each other created a shock wave so powerful it tore apart the very ground that they stood upon, nearly knocking both warriors off balance.

"You have an admirable fighting spirit, for an Avalonian that is," Juno said with a mad glee burning in her eyes as she increased her axes strikes from every angle but Chris parried them all.

"How flattering, do you have any more honeyed words to pour down my ear?"

He met Junos blows strength for strength and expert pary for expert pary. When she would fired blasts of air, he raised walls of ice and when he fired off shards of ice, she raised twisters of air.

In other words, the two were evenly matched in every way, except that was in one. As Chris parried yet another strike that was too close for comfort, he knew that he had two cards on the table which he had not yet brought into play.

Juno would have no way of countering them, but first he would need to use them in quick succession in order to stop her from realising them all too quickly.

Juno was in the process of aiming for his hip when Chris took a step backwards, though in his place he left a mist wraith. The gaseous clone of himself didn't react as Juno's axe tore through its midsection.

It only acted as Chris commanded it to act and it raised its sword, Juno was too dumbfounded to realize this in time. She had just seen him become a colourless ghost and she was trying to understand just how that had happened. These internal musings were halted when she saw the mist blade not more than five inches from her face.

She screamed in a panic and raised her axe to parry the blade, but it was too late and Juno Freya could only accept her fate as the blade struck her forehead.... and nothing of actual value happened.

All she felt was a slight breeze and cold wetness were a burning open wound would have been. She looked up and thus did she realise, this wraith was but a creature of literal mist, it had no power to harm.

"What a cheap trick!" Juno snapped enraged by how she had been tricked by such a simple illusion.

"If it is so cheap, then why am I winning with it," he responded as the next stage of his plan came to life. He swung his sword wildly, he didn't know what he hit but he knew he hit something from the sound of splitting flesh, spilling blood and most importantly Juno's scream of agony as she fell backwards clutching on to her left eye which leaked a steady stream of crimson.

"You beast!" Juno screamed in an enraged hysteria. " I shall skin you're soul!"

Chris had heard many strange things said to him before, but now he just had to ask. " How?"

It didn't matter much what insanity was escaping Junos lips, what did matter was that he was close enough to grasp both sides of her head, holding her place.

"What the hell do you think you are doing!" she demanded as she tried to escape Chris's grip and within his lungs, the Alpha-Spell that he had been weaving since they arrived upon this battle.

Chris opened his mouth wide, almost like he was trying to devour the Fae in his hands. Within his chest, the Alpha-Spell was birthed into reality and an ever shifting hue of light began to eminent from his throat as he almost whispered the words.

"Gola...." he never got to finish his incantation as something hit the earth with the force of a hydrogen bomb.

The force sent both and Juno flying off of their feet. Chris staggered back onto his feet as fast as he could and looking around him, he saw that thousands of other combatants had shared a similar fate.

At the centre of this mass of bodies and death stood a woman of pure white armor, she was almost angelic in appearance but the unconscious bodies of his parents in her hands said otherwise.

"No," he whispered as it felt like a hand was gripping his heart.

He tried to rush forward and defend them, but a pair of hands from behind grasped on to him, halting the prince in his possible suicide charge at the woman who he did not know as Nimue.

He looked at the hands and he realised that they belonged to Ursa and Hamanymu.

"What are you doing?!" he demanded.

Neither got to opportunity to respond as a burst of purple energy flowed from Nimue. The energy came with high pressure winds which blinded the prince from everything as he eyes closed and raised his arms a shield Infront of his face.

The earth beneath his feet began to shift and contort into

strange geometric patterns as the energies materialised a cosmic distortion into the very fabric of reality which dragged everyone close enough through it and away from Avalon.