Most of the mice on both sides of the conflict had their own problems, and thus had little time to look skyward. Very few noticed the strange, red cracks which had appeared in the air, far above them. These glowed brightly and grew in intensity until the space about them finally burst outwards, revealing a strange, floating portal into an even stranger dark realm. A large, feathered figure stepped from it, standing in mid air as the rift sealed itself behind them, leaving behind no trace of its existence. As she stepped forward, ten red, spectral mice comprised entirely of dark energy floated along behind her.

Recovery had been slow for the being after its last defeat. Its past two defeats, really, as it was still badly wounded when it had stood against Jerin and her allies, but now things were different. Ahnymah Ex Mortis, the dark overlord had regained her lost strength and then some. She had truly never been stronger, and now? Now the time was right to have her revenge against those who had so wronged her!

The great bird looked down at the spectacle below and frowned a little. That's an awful lot of mice, she thought to herself. Well, no matter. More vermin to destroy. Of course the many explosions were of a far greater concern. Still, no matter. She was the mighty dark overlord, after all. She was without equal in this world, and the time for the mice to realize that fact was long overdue. The creature scanned the landscape once again and froze, its blood-red eyes locked on the distant figure of the armored white cat.

~What's she doing here?

It asked itself aloud, backing up a step. Even the normally expressionless faces of her minions looked nervous. No, it's fine, she thought to herself. I let my guard down before, but I'm stronger now. I can handle this. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, looking up, away from the chaotic battlefield below to gather her thoughts before opening them once more. She then stared upwards, eyes wide, and her whole body shaking at the sight of the bizarre alien constructs which filled the skies.

-What the hell is that?!

She again asked aloud, cringing, backing up a step. On second thought, she reasoned, revenge is rather pointless. All that it does is validate the worth of the target of said revenge. She sighed, forcing a smile. In truth, the best revenge is, and always has been, living well. Especially the 'living' part.

She turned to her soulless minions for validation, and all of the strange, semi-sentient mouse shaped balls of energy nodded enthusiastically in agreement, looking equally terrified themselves. Ahnymah Ex Mortis turned and flew from the battlefield at a great speed, her presence going almost entirely unnoticed by the creatures fighting below. The mice had been spared the terrible wrath of the dark overlord, but that didn't mean that their presence had no effect. The energy of such a creature travels far. It could make the fur on the back of a neck stand up, without the owner understanding why. It could cause sleeping mice to toss and turn in their beds, suddenly plagued by the most terrible of nightmares. It could also be felt by similar creatures, awakening that which had long since lain dormant.

<3~

Fury turned from the broken mouse lying beneath him as a bright light caught his eye. Far in the distance the faint crackling of energy could be seen, flowing across the grass, meeting within a large pile of rubble, before it burst away in a grand pillar of shimmering, rainbow colored light. The many broken stones, boards and... well, whatever else it is that Maker's shrines are made up of floated, frozen in mid air, as the pillar began to not quite fade but rather shrink, no longer piercing the very heavens, now simply hugging and flowing across its owner like a mane of fire.

The orange cat, well, now a truly radiant mesh of colors which danced across its fur, shook itself off, knocking the bits of dust and debris from its coat and opened its eyes, revealing two seas of color and stars, each naturally looking in an entirely different direction. Even in a huge battlefield covered in flames and explosions, it was impossible for each and every combatant to not stop and turn to face the sudden spectacle.

At the last possible moment, Sellas managed to raise her mace to deflect the claw strike of the formerly invisible Midnight, the intense light even enough to penetrate this empty void. The force of it still threw her backwards and left her panting, and the mechanically augmented dark lord was rendered visible for just a moment, but that was long enough. The priestess smiled as a path to victory had finally revealed itself.

Seraphim had similarly stopped to face the light. Surprisingly, so did Annabelle, who awkwardly stumbled to her feet, her outfit tattered, the mouse bleeding from a great deal of mercifully minor wounds. Perhaps she could simply feel the strange warmth, or maybe those ruined eyes of hers were incapable of hiding something so powerful from the mouse. She coughed and stepped forward, and for just a moment, in the back of my mind, I had expected her to take up a martial arts stance and prepare to fight. Instead, of course, she had immediately tripped and fell, a sign that she might have been more seriously hurt than she seemed had it happened to any other mouse, but for her it was a daily occurrence. She blindly groped around smiling as she finally found her instrument, and sat in place, crossing her legs, cradling the not quite ruined tool to her neck, preparing for a final, grand performance.

Vania stopped, mid-blast, to try to scan the distant source of energy which had appeared, but it was nothing that even her advanced sensors could make sense of. The stoic figure backed up a step as she simultaneously realized that her opponent was, somehow, still standing. The one-eyed mouse had his hands held out in front of him, the air around them shimmering with golden arcane energies. The barrier he had recently developed wasn't a complete success, his green outfit and eye-patch torn to shreds, his body dripping with blood, and him left panting and exhausted, but the fact that the mouse hadn't been completely annihilated by the weapon was as much as he or anyone else could have possibly hoped for. That fact certainly took the crystal headed mouse by surprise. The stone glowed once again, ready to finish off her enemy, but even she had suspected that it wouldn't be quite that easy.

Gwendolynne was similarly distracted by the radiant pillar of energy, but only for a moment. That was as long as she could be distracted by it, as something else had then earned her divided attention: A heavy fist slammed into the side of her head, shattering the red-glass eye and the mechanisms around it, and sending the heavily augmented mouse stumbling backwards, falling to one knee. She looked up to see Meryll still standing, a gaping bloody hole in the middle of her chest which seemingly caused the rat no pain whatsoever. The platinum angel couldn't even feel angry. She was, instead just shocked by the absurd spectacle.

All at once, many of the fighters come to realize, sometimes to their benefit and sometimes against, that the battle wasn't over yet.

<3~

Jebediah had reflexively crossed his arms over his face and closed his eyes. Not the most effective defense against a rain of bullets, but I can't say that I would have done anything differently. The countless projectiles sailed past him, and tore at the earth to all sides. This continued for several long seconds, at which point the farmer gradually calmed, slowly lowering his arms, his expression of shock fading to one of confusion and eventually boredom.

"Hmmm," the shadow king said, rather dismayed. Standing at the side of the tall throne, Claire looked to be equally annoyed. "I was expecting for you to dodge out of the way."

"Well, I thought about it. In the end, I figured that here was as good a place to be as anywhere, though." the farmer shrugged, even as the countless small bullets continued to whiz past him.

Those devices were some that I had learned of during the interrogation session. Devastatingly powerful weapons which traded a dramatically increased rate of fire for a severe drop in accuracy. They were not the only weapons that the augmented mice had used which suffered from this, in fact all of their rifles did, to some extent, and the more regularly that they could be fired, the less accurate they tended to be. Those massive rotating barrels, however, were unique in that they boasted an astonishing 0% accuracy. They were not simply prone to missing, rather they were literally incapable of hitting what they were aiming at.

That might sound quite useless, but when you fire quickly enough, that means that being virtually anywhere else in front of the guns aside from that specific target would be instant death, and, well, the natural instinct of most creatures when being so attacked is to try to move out of the way, invariably out of their own safe zone and into a region that nobody could possibly hope to survive. Of course Mollenoch could have avoided this problem by simply aiming somewhere else, just a little bit to the left or the right of the farmer would have done it, but he was a little too proud to deliberately 'miss' with such weapons.

As for Jebediah himself, I couldn't imagine that he knew of this in advance. I certainly didn't tell him. Perhaps I should have, but I had seen to many terrible weapons over a period of a few days that it was so hard to think of any specific potential threats to warn of. Perhaps there was some deep warriors instinct within him, telling him to remain in place, or perhaps it was something much more simple than that: That, in the end, Jebediah, the great hero, was just natural man of inaction.

<3~

Sellas backed up and looked about. There was nothing to see, at present at least, but she had a sneaking suspicion that that was about to change. She caught a faint glint out of the corner of her eye, and raised her glowing mace over her head with both hands to try to hold back the claw that struck downwards from behind. It wasn't just the claw that was visible, however. the faint shape grew until a clear outline of the entire paw could be seen, then the shoulder, then the head with its pointed ears, the image growing ever more concrete. Midnight looked about with confusion, unable to understand why he had suddenly been revealed, as the old priestess ducked away from under the claw and turned to face him.

"You are powerful indeed, and very much a worthy foe." She said, turning to the now fully visible cat which stood in at the center of the empty void. "We were just a poor match up for you. You see, unlike most mice, we have no fear of the darkness of night..."

The dark lord tensed and backed up, squinting as the mace grew ever brighter. It looked all about to see each and every one of the surviving cultists kneeling in prayer, paws raised above their heads, a small ball of magical light shining within their hands. A tendril of energy snaked from each of these single stars, gathering together at the tip of Sellas' mace.

"After all," The priestess smiled, "Midnight is the time that the stars shine their brightest."

Part of being a good leader lies in being easily understood by your followers. She didn't need to give her loyal acolytes any verbal commands, instead they all understood right away. Well, maybe not right away, but as one or two figured it out, the rest were quick to follow. As stated before, mouse magic wasn't very powerful, and these mice were not grand sorcerers, not by any stretch. Still, if you combine enough drops of water, you'll end up with an ocean. Or, at the very least, a wave.

A blinding point of light had now gathered at the end of her mace, just as the dark lord regained his composure and pounced, just a moment too late. The spell was fired towards him, a torrent of intense magical energies striking him, throwing the cat backwards, aimed directly at its head. Even so combined, mouse magics were not very strong, certainly not enough to destroy a dark lord. Even such a direct hit at point-blank range to a vulnerable point wasn't enough to cause any real injury, but then it didn't need to. All that it needed to do was disrupt the rather delicate mechanism behind the ear of the black cat. Instead, it completely blew the disk and most of the other devices secured to the upper body of the dark lord clean away.

The dark field that the mice were trapped in blinked out of existence, returning them to the not necessarily more welcome landscape of the ongoing battle.

"What... what happened?" Midnight groaned, shaking his head, rising back up to his feet. "Where am I?"

"Oh, good. I see you have returned to your senses." Sellas said to him. "It's... complicated. The simple version is that you were being controlled by a servant of the Devourer to serve their evil ends, but now you are freed."

I wasn't sure that the part about the servant of the Devourer had really made things simpler, but who was I to judge.

The black cat blinked and coughed, nodding his head. "Um, yes... exactly as I had intended."

"Really?" The priestess asked, raising an eyebrow in suspicion.

"Of course! Why, you didn't think that someone as mighty as myself could actually be defeated and captured by some puny little mice, did you? It was all part of my plan." The black cat smiled, idly shaking a paw which still had a broken device half-stuck to the fur, before looking about at the many explosions and bursts of gunfire coming from all directions. "Um... I suppose I should be getting back to my lair... you know... to enact the next stage of my brilliant scheme... away from here."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Oh, of course!" Sellas nodded, clearly just humoring him, but having no problem with that. The fact that he had no more interest in fighting, and things could have turned out much, much differently was more than victory enough. "While I have no doubt that your completed plan will be truly terrifying, I thank you for sparing us this day... even if it is just to destroy us at a later date, when you're truly ready."

"Um... right." Midnight nodded, clearly suspecting that he wasn't fooling anyone, but still wanting to get back to his dinner and soft bed as quickly as possible. There was a nearby blast followed by a scream as a cloaked mouse was sent flying, tumbling to the ground at the cat's feet. "Excuse me." he said, gingerly stepping over the body. He once again shook a raised paw in an ineffective effort to remove the machine part from it, and walked away. After several paces, he turned, clearly considering asking a few more follow-up questions about what, exactly, was going on, but another loud explosion made him jump, turn back, and bolt away from the battleground.

As for Sellas, she could only sigh in relief, falling back into a sitting position, panting heavily. The overall battle still continued, with countless smaller skirmishes happening in all directions, but her and her followers were spent with that magical attack, not to mention the battle which preceded it, sapping any strength that they once had. She couldn't enjoy the relief for very long, however. She knew full well that the real battle was still to come.

<3~

"What are you doing?" I asked Annabelle. Oh yeah, I was back at the battle with Seraphim, by the way. All this while, I'd been running myself ragged across the battlefield, going from fight to fight in a desperate effort to document the events happening within them. "You've got to get out of here. You can't possibly play with that broken instrument."

The overall shape of it was still intact, even if it had more than a few holes in it, but a chunk of the head of the instrument, where all of the strings met, was broken away.

"Don't worry." She panted, smiling but clearly in bad shape. "I've still got one string left. And it just so happens to be the most powerful one."

Looking to the wooden instrument I could see that there was, indeed, a single shining string remaining among them, all of the rest severed or otherwise nonfunctional. I barely managed to resist commenting that I was pretty sure that stringed instruments don't work that way, but knew better than to do so. As for the blind bard, she took a few deep breaths and began to play.

I backed up a couple of steps. It was an obviously simple rhythm, as she only had one string to work with, but it was completely unlike anything that I had heard her play before. While most of her music, even the energizing and motivating tracks sounded gentle and soothing, this was harsh, intense and with a very rapid tempo. The other songs raised people up and encouraged them to fight, but this? This was no buff or boost. This was a weapon, designed to strike down those who dared to face it.

Mecha-Seraphim felt a similar effect, backing up a couple of steps but no more, before glaring at the mouse with her vacant, golden eyes. The stone at her forehead shined, a heart shaped blue glow surrounding it before it fired. While aimed directly at the defenseless mouse, however, it didn't hit her. The force of the song of that one, forbidden string was enough to knock even the beams of energy aside, and the intensity and tempo of the music was only increasing. The intensity of the laser weapon was increasing as well, but it still wasn't enough, splashing and splitting against the now visible bubble of music which consumed the nearby battlefield.

Annabelle seemed to actually be winning, to my shock, but it was clear that she couldn't keep this up for ever. Her fingertips were bloodied from working the string at such an incomprehensible speed, she was hurting all over, and, far more urgent, more and more cracks had begun to appear across the severely damaged wooden instrument, and it threatened to crumble to pieces in her paws at any moment. Seraphim wasn't gaining any ground, but she was no longer losing it, either. Matched for power, the dark lord only needed to to outlast the blind bard.

As per usual, there was nothing that I could do, but I wasn't alone in that regard. Reginald was there, too, standing in a daze. With his broken arm, there was no way that he could swing a bat, even his own weren't shattered into pieces. I thought that he was just staring, vacantly, at his feet, but no, his eyes were instead locked on something else. A perfectly round, bloodstained stone. A ball. He picked it up in his still good arm, and studied it closely.

He wasn't born a batter, of course. He was raised to be a pitcher, until he reached that rebellious phase which so many mice grow out of, but he actively refused to. Every once in a while, when nobody was looking, he would still throw a stone, however. He was just experimenting, of course, just to remember what it felt like. Everyone tries pitching occasionally. How else could they know how wrong and awful it was, without experiencing it themselves?

Of course, try as he might, he couldn't deny the truth. It didn't feel wrong or blasphemous. It felt pretty good to launch something forward with your own power, without relying on someone else to pitch it to you. Even now, he felt himself strangely compelled. Not to aid in the battle or to save Annabelle or to defeat his foe. In the moment, His frazzled mind could barely recall where he even was, let alone understand the direness of the situation. He just wanted, for some reason, to feel that ball fly from his paw, and see just how far that it would go. All sounds had drowned out. There was no battle, there was no intense, reverberating music, there was no electric whine of the laser. There was just his own heartbeat. But something else, too. The specific sounds melted away, conglomerating into a something new. Cheers. Applause. An eager audience standing from their seats, desperate to see the decisive, game ending moment.

And so he spat a mouthful of pink saliva onto the ball turned to his side, drew his arm back and threw. It was a pitch that would have made Archibald proud, flying upwards, through the shimmering bubble of musical force, through the split cracklings of the deflected lasers, up past the long, furred head, whizzing next to its large, pointed, metal covered ear, where it continued, a faint streak of blue, soaring beyond that his eyes could even see. Nothing could stop it, especially not some petty machine set at the back of Seraphim's head.

The laser stopped immediately, and with nothing pushing against the waves of musical energy, the great white cat was thrown back as well. Then, with a single, great triumphant strum of the string, it snapped with a twang, it being nearly all that was holding the ravaged wooden frame together, as the instrument crumbled to pieces.

"Sorry..." Annabelle panted, softly smiling, wiping the dirt from her face with the back of her paw. "No encores."

Seraphim shook her head and blinked, looking about. "Where am I? What's going on here?"

"Um, well, you see..." Annabelle tried to explain.

"You know, I don't really care." the long-furred cat said, looking down at her paws and body, "What on earth am I wearing?"

"Oh, that's..."

"I like it." Seraphim smiled, nodding approvingly. ""Hmm... how does this work..."

She turned her head, focused her thoughts, and a wide beam was launched from her headpiece, striking a large truck in the distance, cutting a smoking, heart-shaped hole clean through both sides of it. "Hmm... yes...." The white cat said. "I think I like this very much." she again nodded before properly taking in her surroundings, seeing the countless mice in all directions battling for their lives. "What's happening here?"

"Well, there's this..." Annabelle began once again, fully expecting to be interrupted once more. She wasn't disappointed.

"You know, I don't really care about that either." she said, pausing to think. "Hmm, you know, normally I greatly disapprove of the way that you mice live your lives. I see you as nothing more than a blight which should be wiped from this earth."

Reginald stepped in front of the bard, having recovered from the strange, pitching induced trance, something which affects all batters on occasion. He held no weapons but was prepared to defend her with his bare fists, if necessary.

"...but, I must admit, I'm very impressed with your new mouse killing hobbies. There might be some hope for you worthless creatures after all. Keep up the good work!" the white cat nodded with a smile before bursting into a series of small, white orbs of light which rapidly darted away. As for Reginald, he fell backwards, exhausted, both he and Annabelle finally starting to feel their injuries. They were also both a little bit concerned with the fact that an already very powerful dark lord had not not only regained her senses but also still had access to the advanced weaponry she wore. Still, that was ultimately a problem for someone else to worry about.

<3~

The dark overlords.

Mysterious, mythical creatures of terrible power. I had heard few stories of them, and they were rarely consistent.

There was the overlord of time. Time brings rot and death and hunger, feared by all mice, as deep within our bones we know that prey species such as ourselves are not entitled to happy endings.

Then there was the overlord of oblivion. Death. The void. The loss of self. The loss of everything. The end of everything. Feared by all mice, due to how simply incomprehensible the idea was. Nothing can hope to understand what it is like to not exist.

There there was the overlord of darkness. Not to be confused with oblivion. This wasn't figurative darkness. This was actual shadow and night. Feared by all mice, as who knew what horrors invariably lied within it?

Finally, there was the fourth overlord. The overlord of light. Feared by all mice because it revealed us to predators and hostile eyes. It reveals our shameful existence, as there is no existence without some measure of shame in this world.

Four entities based on our primary fears, but also our hopes as well. Time always brings new possibilities. Death brings rebirth and an end to suffering. Darkness shields exploring mice from their enemies, and light basks us in its warmth. Nobody quite knew what they were, where they had come from or why they even existed. Three of them had been at least sparsely been documented, even spoken to by mice. One was even fought and defeated by Jerin and her companions. The last was unknown. Until now. The overlord of light had finally awakened.

Tanzra looked across the field at the brightly glowing creature in the distance, barely able to see over the rim of the paw-print crater. Only it wasn't in the distance anymore. In the blink of an eye, it appeared at the feet of Fury. While surprised, the large, grey cat quickly struck at it with its paw, only for it to bounce harmlessly away from a shimmering bubble of multicolored lights which had appeared around Augustus.

The larger cat leapt backwards, its paw still lightly smoking from the earlier contact. Its face crinkled, losing the apathetic expression, now all fangs and brow and hate as it let out another deep, reverberating roar, lifting the disturbed dirt from the ground, making it fly in a storm of wind created by the sheer force of the sound. It all fell away. That wind immediately died away when faced with another sound, an exceptionally loud and high-pitched mewl from the smaller cat, which caused Fury to fall backwards, dazed.

In another blink of an eye, the tiny cat was once again right back in front of the opponent, who found himself engulfed in a pillar of rainbow energies, and before he knew it, his paws were no longer finding purchase on the ground. The huge cat was thrown straight up into the air, but the smaller one was quick to follow. From down here it was difficult to see exactly what had happened next, but it looked like there were several, maybe dozens of copies of Augustus, flying at, striking Fury from every direction at once. The huge cat had no chance to defend itself from the barely perceivable onslaught, before the many afterimages all merged into a single, radiant entity, high above the still airborne grey cat, striking down like a bolt of lightning, slamming into Fury's back, and sending the mighty dark lord crashing into the ground.

Tanzra's crater was nothing compared to this new one, the creation of which even knocked distant fighting soldiers from their feet. With a flash of many colored lights, the smaller cat re-appeared, standing atop the rim of the crater, as the beast once again rose up, not unharmed, but showing troublingly few signs of injury. While the cat itself might have survived the barrage of brutal attacks, the many attached machines did not, as not even a trace of them remained stuck to its fur, every one shattered, nearly vaporized. This, off course included the one which had held it under Mollenoch's spell.

Fury blinked and shook its head, clearly aching a little, but having no idea why, as it looked down at the comparatively tiny, shimmering cat. As for Augustus, he closed his eyes, smiled as he always does, and let out a soft, happy mewl, clearly having no intention of continuing the battle.

"So... cute..." Fury murmured to himself, looking down at what he had assumed to be a kitten, but was, in truth, as large as he would ever grow. He looked around with an expression of dismay at the destruction all around him, the destruction still continuing. He wasn't sure where he was, or how he had gotten here, but one thing was clear: This situation didn't concern him. He gave the smaller cat a nod and turned, slowly padding away.

All the while Tanzra had watched this with wide eyes, all the wider when the small cat, now a glowing entity of rainbow colored energies appeared next to her in an instant. She stared, afraid to move, afraid to speak, but couldn't help laugh as Augustus leaned its big head forward, opened its mouth and gave her face a long, wet lick.

"It really is you..." She said, weakly, stroking the side of his face. "I was so worried about you... but I guess I should have known better, right? Nothing can stop lord Augustus!" she chuckled briefly, before the pain forced her to stop.

Her mount looked to her with a concerned expression, nudging her with his head in an effort to help her stand up.

"Ow... sorry, it looks like I can't get up quite yet." she smiled, "I'll need a few more minutes."

The cat softly whined, tilting his head at her, sitting down next to the wounded rodent.

"I'm sorry... you've done so much already. You always do, and it seems like I'm always asking more of you..." The mouse coughed, sliding her fingers through the warm, glowing fur of his cheek. "But my friends..." She paused, smiling a little wider, "...our friends. They still need our help. I don't really know what you can do, or what's even going on, but, well... you're clearly special. No, that's not right, is it? You never settled for just being special. You were always, instead, perfect." Tanzra did her best to sit up, but couldn't quite manage it, but fortunately she didn't need to, as the dark overlord instead pressed its own massive forehead to her own. "So please, help them. However you can. I still need to rest for a little while, but I'll join you soon. I promise."

While very much hesitant, the small cat was always obedient to a fault, and couldn't go against her wishes. It gave another quick lick and walked away. taking several steps before turning to look back at the mouse. It was clear that she hated to lie to him, but it was hard to say whether it really qualified as a lie, since both people recognized it as one. As Tanzra fell back and breathed her last, still wearing a proud smile on her lips, Augustus let out a single, soft, pitiful whine and lowered his head.

He raised it once more as another loud explosion rang out close by, opening his eyes and, perhaps for the first time in his life, he growled, looking out across the battlefield where the fighting, where the dying continued unabated. The newly awakened dark overlord crouched down and darted forward. Tanzra wasn't wrong. He still had friends, an entire world of them, in fact, who needed his help.