Thanks for sticking with me so far guys! I've enjoyed writing this far and all of those reviews are great! The Rise will start soon, and trust me Arty will have a part in it. Oh, just as a notice, please turn PMing on, because if it is off, I can't respond to you guys. Thanks. Read and Review! -LinkinYM

"War is pleasureable to those who have seen its merits. War is terrifying to those who have seen its horrors."

"Greed leads to Betrayal. Betrayal leads to Hate. Hate leads to Violence. Violence leads to Death."

Chapter 10

4 hours before the Sunrise of the Ancients.

Romania, HQ of the First Eight

When Nu' Taruk came out of the wall again, Bealklor approached him.

Bealklor asked with his usual pale expression. "How did your little encounter with the truth go?"

"Why are you not with everyone else?" snapped back Nu' Taruk

"I have my decisions."

"And so do I." Nu' Taruk walked over to the empty room, where the tall seats made a ring in the middle.

"We have no knowledge whether we will be able to return alive."

"Best make most out of what we will do in less than a few hours."

Nu' Taruk looked at a crystal ball and using his monocular eye, projected a laser image into the ball. It showed a live feed image of LEP fairies getting ready, and it also showed his forces marching to Australia. The imaging briefly buzzed to that of Vinyaya getting ready, then quickly went back to the image of his army.

"You still care for her, do you not?"

Nu' Taruk quickly used Vinyaya's words for his response.

"What was between us is long gone. She is nothing but another enemy." Nu' Taruk stopped the projection. "The warning will start in precisely 4 hours. Make sure that all of our forces are assembled. Now leave."

"How will you get there? All of our jet-bikes are gone."

"I have my methods."

Bealklor transformed into a giant grey wolf, the size of three bears. He growled "I also have mine."

Nu' Taruk nodded and let Bealklor exit the massive church, to go to Australia. After Bealklor left though, Nu' Taruk went to the throne room, and punched Frond's seat so hard that the seat broke into millions of pieces of marble stone. "Damn you Frond. Damn you. Damn you to hell and even further."

Nu' Taruk pulled out Vinyaya's picture and began to whisper to himself. "I will get your blood." After this he crushed the picture and set it on fire. "I will drain every last drop from your body."

LEP HQ

"Well, I guess we should get geared up for anything basically. I mean, the possibilities are endless."

A fairy could be heard talking with his friend in the middle of a hallway as Holly was heading through them. Her target location was Vinyaya's office, to say her last goodbyes before she leaves to support the forces who will encounter The First Eight's. When she arrived though, she was surprised to see Vinyaya also putting her gear on.

"Wait. Are you going too?"

"Holly, you must understand. This is concerning all of the LEP, not just Recon. And I have some of my personal reasons behind it too."

"What is it?"

"I fell in love. With who I thought was a good man. But I was wrong about my decision."

"Who was it?"

Vinyaya responded with a wink. "That, is my personal reason."

"Okay. When are we leaving?"

"I think it will change for every individual unit. We'll try to avoid too much conflict, so we'll send some negotiators. I just hope that nobody will get killed."

Vinyaya walked over to a shelf, and pulled out her own Neutrino. For some strange reason, it was a 2000 model, but you have to make do with whatever you have. Right when Vinyaya put all of her gear on, she spoke with a voice of slight realization.

"Oh, can you get some incinerator packs from Foaly? I have a feeling that we'll need those."

"Okay, sure." Holly left and had a feeling that there was some kind of greater meaning behind all of this.

After Vinyaya watched Holly leave her office, she pulled out a picture of an unmasked and unscarred Nu' Taruk, and shot it.

2 hours before the Sunrise of the Ancients

His eyelids felt like as if they had weights attached to them. The last thing that he remembered was Holly's small fist making exceptionally large impulse on his facial section. Artemis realized that he was on the couch and by looking at the distinct loss of dust on the floor, he deduced that after Holly punched him, she dragged him onto the couch.

The darkness outside with a faintly glowing light showed that sunrise wasn't too far away. Even in the darkness, Artemis could see that everyone was gone. Retrieval, the medical warlocks, even Holly. They were all gone.

"Lollipops. I mean, where is Butler?"

Artemis noticed that Butler was on the couch opposite to him, no doubt carried there after Holly and everyone else left. He was unconscious, but otherwise okay in appearance. With one less object to worry about, Artemis recalled what Trouble told all of them. Even though the majority of it was directed at Holly, he could still recall his exact words.

Assemble all forces. Attack is imminent, Australia, Sunrise. Artemis glanced at Butler's unmoving body. Then his attention diverted to the phone on a, well, phone stand. The new message button was blinking red. When Artemis pressed the button, his mother's voice was ringing out.

"Hey Arty, listen, your father and I are going to be late tonight. Don't worry, Myles and Beckett are going to be with us. So make sure you and Butler have fun, okay? Bye."

When the message ended, it announced that it was made an hour before Artemis woke up. As this message ended, he realized that if he didn't act fast, a war will happen. Artemis quickly began to walk to his workshop, and it slowly escalated to running. If he didn't act fast, people and fairies will die. Someone who he cared about. Holly, Butler, his parents, his siblings. His sweat was spilling out of him like a wet sponge and by the time he stepped into his workshop, he was nearly out of breath. He smashed his fist onto the button, and his large pet project pulled itself out of the floor. Not even the nitrogen mist slowly covering the room could calm his nerve.

Holly was right. Too many people sacrificed what was important to them for his cause. It was time that he returned the favor. As he activated project IT and donned it, he didn't even bother to walk back up the staircase. He activated the jump jets and shot through the wall.

1 hour before the Sunrise of the Ancients.

Australia, Central desert

Holly could feel the dry Australian air rushing past her pointy ears and her hair. They really didn't have many fairies, only about a thousand. All shapes and sizes were there, dwarves, elves, demons, sprites. Unwittingly, Mulch managed to hitch a ride there.

"Oh c'mon, I couldn't resist coming along! I mean, if a lot of LEP are going aboveground, it has to be something valuable, right?"

"Or did you consider the fact that it may be something dangerous, that something a greedy dwarf shouldn't be meddling with?" Vinyaya casually walked behind Mulch, and whacked him on the head with her buzz baton.

"Ow. You didn't need to do that."

"Actually, you are now stuck in a potential war. Chances are, you will die."

Mulch could only gulp a ball of saliva, and took this as an opportune moment to pull a beetle out of his beard and eat it with surprising speed, partly out of fear for his own life. Vinyaya was getting negotiators ready in case that the other army wants to negotiate. Holly could only caution all of their forces to remain extremely vigilant and wary. Trouble Kelp was constantly looking at live satellite feeds, to be able to see anything suspicious, in a tent that was set by the other fairies.

A demon, one of the ones that was rescued off of Hybras, asked Trouble in a gruff voice. "Where is what you are looking for?"

Trouble also gave a quick response. "Our adversaries."

Mulch suddenly turned his head, and placed his jaw against the ground, his individual beard hairs snaking into the dry surface. He felt a slight shaking, easily dismissible by even dwarves, but not for Mulch Diggums.

"Something's coming here. Fast. And it's big too."

Holly was quick to react by responding. "Can you tell where it is?"

Trouble's head popped out of the tent that he was working in. "I can't find anything on the satellite. Are you sure about that?"

"Who says it's coming on the ground? Ever thought that it is coming from underground, 'Grub'?"

"I'm not my idiot brother, 'convict'."

Right after he finished his sentence, the ground began shaking so rapidly that even some of the dead trees around them began falling over. Holly climbed up a tree that seemed sturdy enough, and saw a frightening sight.

Bodies and spirits seem to be walking out of the ground, and slowly approaching them. All of them seemed to be in different stages of death, and they all varied in species. They were mostly fairies, but there were humans in there as well. Led by a giant wolf(aka Bealklor), Injis, Deimos, and Nu' Taruk, they all continued straight toward where the LEP were making their stand. When they were about a hundred meters away from them, Nu' Taruk stepped forward.

"I demand for the descendent of Frond to step forward." Both his monocular and normal eye glared at Vinyaya who quickly looked away, in a cocktail of shame, hate, and fear.

Vinyaya quickly motioned for the negotiators to go, apparently they were two pixies. When they arrived in front of Deimos though, he pulled them both up by their heads and ripped them in half. Nu' Taruk continued as if nothing happened.

"If you fail to comply…"

Bealklor morphed from a giant wolf back into his needle cloaked form, and finished Nu' Taruk's sentence for him. "Then death will be your optimal decision, if not the least of your concern."

When Trouble was about to say the opposite, due to the growing army in front of them, Vinyaya yelled out one simple word. "No."

Injis stepped forward and couldn't resist to yell back to the gathered LEP. "Are you people mental?! We have one big army, and we can stomp yo' lil' asses if we wanted to! So I wanna say that sayin' no is pretty stupid! In fact…"

Before he could finish his sentence with a few more insults though, Holly headshot him with her Neutrino. A hole instantly developed through his head, and he resumed. "I think I'll shut up now."

Nu' Taruk didn't even wait for second chances. "Get the cannons. Crush all of them."

A row of about 10 trolls armed with 16th century cannons stepped forward. It was clearly visible that all of the LEP's forces took one step back. If that wasn't bad enough, Holly could see a figure flying with an arc through the sky, no doubt reinforcement. Injis also noticed this, and quietly commented to Deimos.

"Nice, we've got air support."

"What air support?"

The figure fell rapidly toward the Earth and when it landed, it made a crater that stretched from one army to the other.

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