Hello everyone, I know that in my AN of my Resident Evil story that I said I would be updating my Marvel story. However, as of late, I've been running into a bit of a writer's block for the next chapter along with a lukewarm reception to its return. So I felt it best to attempt writing on another story to see if it may do some good instead.

So, here we are with the next chapter and fourth part of Glory of Camelot before we move onto the next part, and then finally the Fall of Camelot. In this chapter, you'll see quite a few Tolkien inspired things and elements within it, and I do hope everyone enjoys it. The Black Speech that Morgan uses here is a mix of both canon, newly constructed from the films, Shadow of Middle-Earth and a fanmade version. Still, there will be translations of it at the end of the AN for you guys to understand what is being said along with some Fae speak by Naruto, a mix of Gaelic and Elvish from Tolkien's amazing works.

This chapter also takes a theory that's been circulating in the fandom since the second Lostbelt opening dropped some time ago, so I apologize if it ends up not true, but if it is, then wow will that be awesome. On top of that, several other things that will help set up the future are presented in this chapter, along with some humor to lighten the mood up a bit. Now, whether or not the English Lostbelt does do what I think it will do with what's been theorized and implied so far, I will continue on with this. If it adds something new to the lore, then I may be able to incorporate it into the story, I don't know.

Also… CASTORIA AND PROTO MERLIN WERE MADE FOR FGO! Seriously, I did not see either coming, but I can't wait for the former to arrive in the NA servers with Proto Merlin hopefully coming to the original game. I would start a JP server account, but I don't feel like going through all of part 1 and Epic of Remnant again, being forced to rebuild my entire collection of Servants from the ground up. Especially since some of my Servants have become so rare that it's almost impossible to draw them.

The Gacha is hell…*shudders*

In TYPE-MOON news, Spring Song released, I'm neither here nor there on it, of the three routes Heaven's Feel just never clicked with me. The first FGO Camelot film has been moved to December of this year, and we'll also be getting the Chinese Lostbelt in the NA servers. Now as for that Fate route remake, in all honesty, it may not release until after the Tsukihime remake sad to say, which is a major downer for Arturia fans, even though Ufotable has already animated the Last episode from Realta Nua and is in the TYPE-MOON museum in Japan. I've heard that they MIGHT put it as an extra on the Spring Song Blu Ray, but I doubt this as it makes no sense whatsoever, speaking in terms of storytelling since it's Fate's True Ending, with no ties to Heaven's Feel.

I mean Nasu has stated previously that he wasn't proud of how he wrote the Fate route and rewriting has been something he's wanted to do. Ufotable already has the assets to do it now. Even many of the voice actors from some other shows of Fate have wanted to see the Fate route remade with today's tech and let's face it, the DEEN series while not bad, hasn't aged well in comparison and not entirely faithful to the original VN, despite their efforts to make it better. But the success of FGO is actually slowing down the production of other projects that TM has had on the backburner for getting near 20 years now. I sincerely hope Nasu and Ufotable reconsider in developing the Fate route remake as soon as possible and complete Stay Night in its entirety, only make it better than both the VN and the DEEN series.

Now, onto reviews whom I wasn't able to respond to –

Guest, Chapter 10; July 28th – Lol, thanx. So, what else did you like and/or dislike about the new chapter?

Anyways, on with the story!

Chapter 10 – The Glory of Camelot Part IV

-Late Summer 478 AD; A Village in Wales-

Months had passed since Morgan began to preach her sister's legacy as the Holy Dragon that would never die, with the villagers she found to be easily swayed by the wonder and legends of Arturia to be like a God among Men. In her mind, Mordred was a blunt object, meant to be wielded with delicacy, but still one with an all too destructive purpose of smashing down the pillars of faith that held Camelot up. That plan had however been curtailed by the affection Naruto had shown the child, weakening the influence that she held over Mordred with each assurance of care and empathy, just the thought of the word threatened to twist her cruelly beautiful lips into a disgusted sneer. The plans she had set in motion here would make sure that her next masterstroke would be born well away from being contaminated by something so repulsive as human sentimentality.

The Witch of Britain made her way into the village square where the dawn was slowly approaching to wake the inhabitants from their sleep, "All that power; power to change the world and yet he rejected me. Choked by human morality even when he long since passed beyond it, how utterly moronic." She said to herself in slight disdain, "On that day dear sister, if our positions had been switched, would I have your life and you mine? Would a golden-haired Apostle have courted me to the ebony throne?" Morgan mused in a rare moment of pensive self-reflection before dashing it aside like waves breaking on the coast. Regardless of what kind of man they were, the pleasure of power and joy of flesh was something they always inevitably gave into. One or the other, or even both, Men would fall to these desires. Urien, Accolon and other men considered to be great kings and warriors were such fine examples when she ensnared them to her will and power, "The naivete of dedicating oneself for something as frivolous as love is not even commendable, it's just moronic."

As the sun continued its lethargic rise over the eastern hills, Morgan amused herself with thoughts of what could have been, traipsing down the mental menagerie of maybes and never-weres. What if she had taken her younger sister under her wing when she was still too young to be influenced by the late Ector's repulsive chivalry or the half breed incubus fanciful love for the human race. Would the great Holy Dragon have helped her tear down their decrepit fossil of an uncle? Making Britain a place where the Fae were no longer restricted in their torment of humans? Would the Wild Hunt have rallied behind a Black King to chase down those that slighted either of them in a bloody chorus of roars? So many thoughts, so many possibilities and none of them within her grasp.

Alas, such thoughts were nothing but foolish for they spoke of lost pasts and did not aid her in the present. Now, she had been hard at work creating the tools necessary for her to take Britain, be it by sword or shadow, Morgan would have what is rightfully hers.

As the villagers began to awaken with breakfast having come and gone, many of them gathered to listen to her words and fell into a trancelike state before she conjured up a silver chalice that held an unmistakable sanguine liquid, "Gather 'round! Gather 'round my followers, for today, we ensure our king's bloodline continues on!" Morgan explained, fully consumed in her guise as 'Envoy of the Dragon', a title the people of this nameless village had made for her.

Her words honey in their ears, a roar of elation and applause came from the villagers as their faces filled with joy at the prospect of aiding the King of Knights' bloodline continue on after death. Morgan hoisted the chalice above her head to showcase the dazzling shine it held to draw their attention towards it, "In this chalice, this grail, holds the blood of our king." Bringing it back down to rest against her midriff, Morgan continued on, "I ask of all those who can bear children, to take this blood into them. This blood will one day give you and your family the privilege, the honor, the noble grace to bear the future embodiment of our king." The witch gestured for the women to come form a line in front of her, "Come forth, bend thy knee in acceptance of the king's blood! True salvation shall not come from the shepherd God of the Hebrews but of the Dragons of Britain!"

The first woman who came to Morgan bent down as she passed the chalice down to the villager who took the blood-filled cup as she took a single sip before Morgan took it back, "Rejoice young one, for you will be one of those who will carry on the glory of our king."

The young woman smiled as the blood dripped from her lips and stained her teeth with red while her eyes were in a hypnotized fog, "I am honored, my Lady. May I one day bear the future of our people."

Morgan gently traced a finger along the side of the woman's face before lifting the blood-covered digit up to lick clean, "Yes my dear, you truly are honored…" Despite the low chance of a new puppet being born within this era, Morgan had no doubt one day, a child would be born that would grow and mold into an exact copy of Arturia in body. As for the mind, she would work on that bit herself personally.

Sometimes all she needed to do was bend, manipulate, even break minds to mold into her liking. Perhaps they would even prove more powerful than her sister or Mordred. In truth, Morgan did not hate her sister, not so much as envy what was given to her since birth along with the love and adoration of the people that came with being the ruler, the savior of their homeland. All of which she had desired since she was still so young. Was Morgan hypocritical for desiring the love of the people yet treating the emotion itself as anathema? Of course, but she had long ceased caring for her own flaws.

She would be the savior of Britain, not Arturia, nor her secret Apostle consort.

-Camelot; Tower of Magi-

Months had passed since Naruto learned the location of Morgan's lair, brought Agravain to heel in a deep enchantment with his Mystic Eyes, and told Arturia of it in that meeting of the court. Rather than march straight onto the Dark Fae's hiding hole, it was agreed that they would need to gather more information and plan accordingly before going on such a dangerous mission. Ultimately though, it was decided they would finish Morgan under the light of the next full moon when Arturia's power was at its absolute peak and allowing her to draw out Excalibur's maximum capacity for them to gain the best odds.

It was not without its flaws as it would put Gawain, arguably one of the heavy hitters of the Round Table, as far from the Sun as possible, but even without the Sun, Gawain was still a skilled knight the likes of which could decimate an army by himself in a night. When brought up in their planning, the man had been adamant that it was worth the trade-off to give the King the totality of her power.

They would be heading into the black heart of Morgan's stronghold, a place that very few had seen and of them most were either dead or so thoroughly traumatized that they had rather killed themselves in their cells then reveal what they had seen. Excalibur would smite down upon the bleak edifice of the dark Fae like the wrath of an angry god, its golden light smashing through malignant curses to bring justice and vengeance long due.

"And, done…" Naruto had gone to Vivian in the hopes of gaining more information about Morgan and her abilities as Merlin could only provide that she was skilled in the Black Arts. Now he held his latest work high to inspect it with the glamour it held, all the while thinking back to his meeting with Vivian.

-Weeks Prior-

Naruto rode out to the lake where Vivian had requested they come to years prior when she had given her gifts to them at Dozmary Pool, only now Naruto sought her out hoping for an audience to learn more of Morgan.

Having taken Dun as his steed, he made it to the pool within a short amount of time early into the night only to find two Seele Fae of the summer court waiting in the trees that marked the beginning of the hidden path to the pool where Vivian dwelled. At first on guard by their appearance and the fact that their presences blended seamlessly with the surrounding environment, slipping past his senses as a sage, only the briefest hints of veiled mischief had alerted his empathetic sense of their presence. But feeling the beginnings of his ire, the two Fae quickly explained that they were there to greet him, that apparently Vivian had been expecting him, signaled by how the pathway into her domain was already lit with violet lights.

As before, Naruto dismounted Dun before he made his way along the path to the center of the pool, where the willow wisps brightened up before he closed his eyes to shield himself from the overwhelming light. Naruto opened his eyes to see that Vivian had brought him once more into her domain, a place that was close to the Reverse Side of the World; yet held part of its atmosphere and Mystery. Glancing around to see that the numerous phantasmal species that once permeated throughout the area were fewer in number now, "Vivian?"

"Yes, my brother?" The Lady of the Lake's voice came from behind him as he turned to see the Light Fae sitting on a nearby rock stroking the back of a dog with bright green fur, a Cu Sith he realized after a moment. Naruto noted her expression was one of slight discomfort within this place.

Making his way towards her, Naruto began his inquiry on Morgan, "Vivian. I found out the location of Morgan's lair, and we're going to make a raid on the place to end her for good come the full moon." The Apostle soon stood close to Vivian as she listened to his words, "I came because I was hoping that maybe, you might have an idea what Morgan will have to use against us."

As Vivian listened to the Apostle's words, she ceased her petting of the Cu Sith that laid down and turned to him, "I am aware of what thou and thy beloved are planning, and what thou intends to do." Closing her eyes, Vivian took a deep breath before she turned her gaze to Naruto, "As for what Morgan holds within her domain, I know not much of what she has at her disposal. Many of our kind do not intrude into one another's domain as it is not welcome to do so, without their permission that is. It would be seen as an offense in the court without good reason." Naruto knew that at times Fae did cross over into the World to interact with mortals and one another, though he wasn't aware of any Fae laws per se.

Titania and Oberon were the Fae that ruled over all others, having set their courts within Avalon, but not aware that they had set up laws of their respective sides. He thought that the Fae could freely go wherever they wanted so long as their destination held a good measure of Mystery for them to manifest into. Naruto supposed that it was too much to ask any more of Vivian for anything, "Alright then, I guess I came here for nothing. Thank you though, for giving me some of your time." As Naruto turned around to head back to the Material World, he felt Vivian's hand on his shoulder, holding him in place to stay. Confused by her actions, Naruto turned to address this situation, "I didn't do anything wrong, did I?"

Vivan gave a small chuckle before she gave him a smile, "Nothing at all, save for perhaps that you did not listen closely to thine words." Her smile dropped down while she kept her hand on Naruto's shoulder, "Recent days have simply proved a derision of good tidings bordering on obtuse calamity within the courts of both Avalon and Tir Na Nog. You are familiar with your Celtic brethren, yes?" Vivian asked with a brow raised in question.

Naruto nodded quietly at the Lady of the Lake's words because he had been looking into more on the Fae since his forging of Clarent. "The Celtic land of the Fae and eternally young and home to the two courts of Seele and Unseelie. I had read that they've had the run of the place since the Tuathan pantheon retreated to Denan after the end of the Age of Gods, and the Christian's began to arrive in Ireland." He paused then, seeing her nod in pleased acceptance of his answers. "Why, what happened? Have the Unseelie been pillaging children again, I had heard that it was one of their more despicable pastimes."

The Unseelie or Winter court of the Celtic Fae was a congregation of many creatures and Fae who sat more on the negative side of the moral spectrum, the kind of Fae who would set fires in a wicker house and bewitch the owners not to notice it only to cackle with glee as they burned. They were cowed in this behavior by both the British court at Avalon and the Seelie Fae of summer, thinking back now had two Seelie Fae not greeted him at the beginning of the path to the lake? "...Why is the Irish summer court in Britain? Vivian, what has happened?" Naruto asked, eyes narrowing in remembrance of the guard like pair waiting on his entrance.

Vivian shifted her weight from foot to foot as she listened to his question before letting out a sigh of resignation with underlying inflections of uncertainty as she spoke, "Thy lover's ascension to the throne of Britain's magical sphere hath had unforeseen consequences amongst a few of the Court. Gwyn Ap Nudd, Tuathan demigod fae and guardian of Annwyn, hath defected from Avalon to the Unseelie of Tir Na Nog." Naruto started at that as while the name of this apparent demigod did not ring familiar; he knew of Annwyn from his tutoring with Merlin, the great inverse tower that served as the unseen entrance to Avalon. "I see that mine words doth stir recognition in yee, brother of mine, yet I doth not think thee understand the severity of such an act of defection."

"Why, who is this Gwyn ap Nudd?" Naruto murmured in response, mentally taking notes for knowing his luck it was likely to be important later on down the line.

Vivian crossed her arms under her perfectly proportioned bust, cocking her head to one side, "While who he is matters only moderately, what he represents is far more the dire reality, brother mine. Gwyn ap Nudd was the former leader of the Wild Hunt before young Arturia." She said with an air of finality, taking Naruto's sharp inhalation of breath at her words in stride, "Indeed, thy response shows thy understanding of the stakes. There art some amongst the moonlit world discontent with a lynchpin so aligned with the light and thus side with those of a darker nature in the shadows of the world... many of mine own small court here have fled back to Avalon in fear of these uncertain times."

Naruto contemplated Vivian's words and actions and much as it pained him to admit it there was a strange level of sense he felt from all of it. Arturia's uniting of Britain was something unaccomplished for a very long time, and it was only wishful thinking to believe that ALL of the phantasmal creatures and Fae would rally behind Camelot, there would be those that preferred the way things were before, and this Gwyn ap Nudd must have been infuriated when his captaincy of the Wild Hunt had been all but usurped by this human. "Endless problems befall a kingdom for it to know prosperity, we need to remove Morgan now before these shadowy Fae conspire in the dark to begin some Fae civil war." Naruto concluded earnestly, his posture becoming rigid as freshly wrought iron, "Do you have anything to help me, Vivian? A decisive strike to the murky underbelly of the Fae will nip this civil war in the bud before it even has a chance to begin!"

"I hold both words of wisdom and caution that thou must listen, and a gift for thou's future troubles. One that I believe will aid in both here and then; in times to come beyond what is now." Naruto raised a brow at how she mentioned 'gift'. Was this another weapon of sorts like Excalibur? Or some defensive/healing item like Avalon?

The Fae dropped her hand from Naruto's shoulder as she held them both out towards where a bright light was conjured before him as he gazed at it intently once it was revealed by the dying light.

The object that Vivian had produced was without a doubt a contradiction in terms of its mundane looks paired with what it was made of, and all Naruto could do was silently break down what was being presented to him. A thin staff, some six feet in length with a dully shimmering indigo surface that the blonde immediately recognized to be processed Mithril, the bottom of which was tipped by the gold glinting of adamantine. The staff's head was a golden spoked basket arrangement with a coiling wooden branch curling out from it similar to Merlin's staff if less overgrown. Additionally, the staff had several pieces of ornamentation that the Magus of Flower's staff was lacking in. From between the spokes poked a hooklike handle that reminded Naruto of a beast's horn pointing downwards and at the apex of the entire staff was a blue and silver jeweled chevron bearing a pair of red tassels that fluttered lightly in the breeze.

"This is the Staff of Selection." Vivian began, "A staff that Merlin…" She spoke the flower magus' name with slight disdain in her tone, "…had fashioned for the king, should she hath chosen a different path to kingship." Naruto had known for many years that Arturia held great aptitude for becoming a Magus, and a rather powerful one at that given the raw output of her Dragon Core, but while he had done his best to teach his King some combat Magecraft she simply lacked the temperament for it. He had been like that as well once, but that had been tempered by nearly a century of self-reflection and Arturia did not have that. The path of the sword was one of pragmatism and in the land of Britain, the powerful and pragmatic ruled.

Oblivious of his internal contemplation, or perhaps perfectly aware and almost amused, Vivian continued her explanation of the staff in a sweeping tone. "It may look like a staff, but in truth, it was constructed from the remnants of Marmyadose, a Divine Construct once wielded by the Great Herakles."

Naruto whipped his head to look at Vivian with surprised crimson eyes. The revelation of the staff's true nature was a shock to be sure, and indeed it gave off a certain vibration to it, an echo of ages long past that only Divine Constructs could produce. "TheHerakles? Son of Zeus and Alcmene and greatest Hero of Ancient Greece?" Naruto asked, absentmindedly running his finger along the Mythril shaft that practically hummed with mystery.

Vivian nodded happily, pleased with Naruto's knowledge of the great yet tragic hero of the Twelve Labors, "The very same. Forged in the flames of Mount Etna by the smith god Hephaestus using Mythril from the walls of Olympus' throne room, Marmyadose was wielded by the great hero until his funeral where it was given away like much of his other gear to those that attended." She explained as she slowly began to circle Naruto and the staff, her footfalls upon the water's surface producing no ripples. "Battered, nicked and passed through the hands of hundreds, nay, thousands, it still holds its power of divine light even half a millennia after the son of the Hebrew God brought the Age of Gods to a close."

Looking at the staff in light of this, Naruto came to a few conclusions and a single question about Mamyadose, firstly that it was likely the Tang of the once bladed Divine construct reshaped for a more Arcane user. Secondly, 'Herakles must have been over eight feet tall to have had any hope of wielding this as a sword.' He thought incredulously at the mental image of a great wall of muscle barreling down a mountainside with the sword held aloft and calamity about to rain.

Naruto fixed Vivian with a curious expression before asking her the question that had begun to percolate in his mind the moment she had mentioned Merlin's involvement, "How did you come to have it if it belonged to Merlin last?"

Vivian's airy and serene facade broke for a moment, and in those scant seconds, Naruto could see her beautiful features overrun by the tide of negative emotions that cascaded out of her and caused the Cu Sith at the water's edge to whimper. The phantasmal beast's noise of discontent raised the Lady of the Lake from the tempest of frustration that had briefly overtaken her and sent an apologetic look to Naruto. "Forgive me," she said, almost sheepish in delivery while tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, "Mine experience with thine teacher is one of antagonism and annoyance as it has been since Merlin was but a half-bred whelp proclaiming of Dragons sleeping beneath the mountain. That iridescent haired knave gave it to myself as recompense for using his Clairvoyance to gaze upon my unclothed form as I bathed one evening." She groused, unknowingly reminding Naruto of his godfather. "From what I hath gathered, Mamyadose had fallen into the hands of King Rience of Connacht to the west who ran afoul of Tir na Nog and the Seelie Fae. Merlin, on one of the floral brigand's many journeys, agreed to assist the Seele in bringing mischief to the one that had crossed them." Vivian said with an inflection of grim amusement on the word 'mischief.'

Naruto rolled his eyes at that while Vivian held herself above many of her darker counterparts, she was still capable of vicious thoughts and taking enjoyment in misery, as was the way of the Fae. He sighed, "What did he do? Turn them into Tanuki's licking their own privates or something?" Naruto questioned, having once been on the receiving end of Merlin's so-called 'Magical chloroform' when the latter had wondered what Kurama's dreams tasted like.

Vivian smiled thinly, tempering her long elegant fingers, "If only it was something so simple and benign as mere transfiguration then mine temples would not be betwixt with such aggravation as I feel when recalling this tale. Neigh, he arrived on the eve of Samhain and begged hospitality from the little king who invited him to stay the night for the festival the following morn when the Seelie would arrive. That night did Merlin sneak herbal extracts most obtuse into the King's food so come the arrival of the Seele did the King's greeting consist of little more than uncontrollable defecation coinciding with his speech." She finished with a huff of annoyance, one that only grew in magnitude at Naruto's audible chuckle, "He made off into the night shortly after with Connacht's hounds on his heels, not without the progeny of Zeus' blade under his arm and having bedded all six of the King's daughters!"

The blonde Apostle did his best to maintain a neutral face as the story progressed, but soon his lips twitched upwards and wobbled with barely restrained amusement until eventually, it became too difficult to hold back. Vivian, ever the prim and proper Fae, began to pout and let her cheeks redden in embarrassment. Soon after other sounds joined with Naruto's stifled chuckles, its infectious miasma drawing chitters from lesser Fae and pixies hidden in the trees to troops of fireflies that glowed in time with amusement. Even the Cu Sith chuffed in amusement at the tale of Merlin's acquisition of such a famous artifact, it had helped to somewhat brighten Vivian's somewhat dour mood that had taken hold of her as of late.

Wiping a small tear away from an amused red eye, Naruto slowly came down from his amusement and slipped back into a semi-serious posture, face becoming neutral as Vivian continued. "From there he converted it into his Staff of Selection, but it had little use when the King chose the path of the sword instead of the Magus. I pray that this will be enough for you, my brother, to brave the evil that dwells in Morgan's domain."

Looking down at the staff once more, Naruto gently took hold of it to feel the aura of the thing wash over his arcane senses, feeling a bright light and warmth that resonated with his very being. Inspecting it once more, Naruto could see that there would be some adjustments to be made for the staff to be more battle-ready per se, "Thank you, milady." He said as he bowed his head slightly in respect to Vivian.

Holding the staff to his side, Vivan then spoke up, "As for what lies in wait for thou, Fell things are drawn to her power, misplaced though it may be…" Naruto listened intently to the Fae's words as he kept his attention on their meaning, "…the curse that inhabits these lands, the Umbra of civilizations light is a force that had long been formless. 'Tis only through our people's meddling and dalliances with Humanity's misery that it has become such a detestable stain on the world." Naruto furrowed his brows in slight confusion before he recalled Merlin telling him how the curse came to be, along with how Morgan was born a human girl before embracing her Fae heritage and becoming corrupted by it leading her to dabble in the Black Arts.

Such vagueness was par for the course with Fae and a century of life told the blonde to push on, Naruto voiced his own question, "So where did the Primeval Curse of Britain really come from?"

As the words left his throat, Vivan's expression changed to one of worry, along with a slight hint of fear if Naruto could guess, which did not make him at ease. She drew closer to him as Vivian carefully wrapped her arms around his waist before she moved her right hand up to the back of his head to whisper into his ear, "There was a time, when a great evil walked the Earth in the Age of Gods unseen, veiled by lies and trickery upon all… an evil that existed long before our birth, the White Titan's rampage, it is the shadow of civilization… we do not speak its name, for not even we know of its true name, merely one, a title that was fashioned to its likelihood…" Naruto was growing all the more worried by Vivian's words with the origin of the curse; something that was truly so evil and heinous that no one would speak its name out of fear? Names held power, a truth from both a magical and psychological standpoint that Naruto understood all too well. When Obito had begun his crusade under the Moon's Eye Plan, he had used Madara's name as his cover to incite great fear and hysteria amongst the Elemental Nations which was a testament to the power of a name.

"Formless, shapeless, silent yet ever-present, it is the shadow born to counterbalance civilization deep in the hearts of all capable of thought, hidden in shadows playing across cave walls. As time progresses and man generates their own light to beat back the fear of mystery, this shadow endures in physical form deep in the land of Britain, under even Avalon and the Reverse Side." Vivian explained cryptically in a whispery voice that somehow echoed over the pool's surface. "We Fae, the forebears of Avalon or Tir na Nog made sport of tormenting humans in spite of their civilization not caring that it fed this... this... Beast." Vivian said at last, a tremor going down her spine that Naruto felt as clear as a midsummers day.

"Beast?" Naruto questioned, keeping Vivian close for fear that she would bolt like some startled pixie, "It is a physical creature then, or was at some point in the past?" The Fae were, without a doubt, one of the scariest beings on the Reverse Side of the World when they put their minds to a task. The quality of weapons and artifacts that they could make, their manipulation of time and space as well as the general concentration of mana in the places they called home rivalled the now absent Gods. For Vivian, a scion of their race to be afraid of something was a perturbing thought to be sure.

The Lady of the Lake shook her head slowly and met her Apostle brother's gaze with reluctant eyes, some apparent uncertainty in them before speaking. "Perhaps once, and perhaps once again but right now it is merely an inert miasma of toxic karma endlessly spiraling within every rock, tree and river of Britain. A curse within the land and nothing more under the current circumstances." She finished, an open-ended answer that she had no intention of elaborating on from here.

Taking a step back as she let her hold on Naruto go, she smiled briefly before she held a finger up like a teacher would when they were about to begin a lecture, "Now. As for thou's upcoming actions, take heed. Too much light or darkness would be adverse for all, for some things are better left untouched." Naruto became visibly confused at her words as the Light Fae could see it in his mind for why he would likely question her words, "Thou must see, Morgan is the darkness of Britain, much as the usurper Vortigern before. Thine own power is the light of Britain, just as thou's beloved is now." She gently brought her right hand up to where she held her index and middle fingers that glowed a brilliant golden light as Excalibur did, "One must be careful with thou's actions, for they may result in great catastrophe."

Vivian brought her fingers up to Naruto's forehead before she gave him a mark that was reminiscent of four diamonds, two of which were connected vertically while the other two were horizontally apart on both sides of the other two. The mark glowed briefly before it faded, "I have given thou one last piece of my own power to aid thou in what is to come. For we pray for the safe return of thee and thy beloved, as well as the right choice made for the good of all. But know this, the both you will be welcome to Avalon in time."

And with that Vivian took a few steps back before the water began to turn, swirl and envelop Naruto to send him back to the Material World, yet it did nothing to stop him from trying to make sense of Vivian's words, "But what do you mean with the 'right choice'?" The water eventually made its way up to his head as it covered him yet did not restrict his voice, "What is the right choice in all of this?"

Despite his vision being blurred with being sent back, Naruto could still hear Vivian's parting words, "Tis something only thee and thy beloved can decide upon."

-Present Time-

Those were the last words Vivian had given before he was spat back out into the real world with the staff alongside the new blessing he received from Vivian. He had contemplated just what exactly Vivian was trying to impart to him, "What did she mean, by 'the right choice'?" Sensing that Kurama was asleep given that he hadn't responded, Naruto opted to take a look at the finished work he had made on the Staff of Selection that Vivian had given him.

To bring the former blade of Herakles more in line with what Naruto would deem as a suitable method for him he had made strides towards that most vaunted of True Ancestor abilities, that of Marble Phantasm. While the blonde was perfectly aware that it would doubtless take him decades before he could crack the truth of the ability to bend the texture of the world to his whims, he had come to understand one facet of it in his work to develop a Reality Marble, clustering illusions.

By giving form to illusion and layering it one atop the other a True Ancestor could trick the probability of the World into bringing about something that was otherwise impossible, it was as if one had a bag of one white stone amidst ten black. The clustering of illusions would shift the probability so that the white stone could be drawn from the bag one hundred times, which was statistically unlikely. When applied to the act of forging it meant that otherwise impossible amounts of energy or abilities could be pinned to the created weapon, though what Naruto intended was beyond simply that.

Marmyadose was a Divine Construct and thus beyond the scope of humanity to reproduce under normal circumstances. Moreover, the materials, method of construction and history were lost to the mists of time in an age where that level of mystery was long lost.

But Naruto was not human, he was a Dead Apostle Ancestor with the vestiges of the Divine clinging to his body and soul which was just enough to trick the thaumaturgical systems preventing Marmyadose to return to a vestige of its former power.

Naruto had meditated heavily with the staff across his knees in his workshop with the forges blazing and allowed himself into a mental fugue. Residual Memories was a form of Magecraft that he was not particularly good with despite his considerable use of other mental Magecraft skills such as Thought Acceleration and Memory Partitions, and the further back one gazed with an item or location the fuzzier the memories would become.

For the first few days, he had sensed nothing beyond the mystery of the object across his knees from morning till noon and noon till night, an endeavor that had yielded nothing but frustration until the fourth day it finally clicked. Within the deep recesses of his mind, he felt the deeds of the great hero for whom the weapon had been forged like smoke rising from a long since snuffed fire he could feel the beats of Hephaestus hammer upon the Mythril and the blaze of Mount Etna scorching his back.

It was a peculiar out of body experience that he could not maintain for any more than an hour at a time before the smoke of memory faded back into the mists of time, but it was a start, and Naruto Uzumaki was nothing if not persistent. Soon enough he could feel more than see the life of the man born as Alcides, of a youthful boy wanting to make his way in the world with optimism that the world seemed all too happy to strip from him. Red eyes had fogged with grief not his own as great madness yielded to a crying man cradling his wife and child, setting out before an unjust king to seek his redemption.

In the half-awake hypnotized state, Naruto had worked for days on end shunning food and water to give form to the labors as best he could and cluster them around the staff, not truly reforging it but letting the hopeful glow of a man seeking redemption to cling to the present day in some way, and Gaia answered. With every staccato beat of the hammer or whir of a Lava Style Rasenshuriken at the heart of his forge, Naruto Uzumaki gave life to something long since past, yet forever yearned for.

After much work and many sleepless nights, Naruto had been able to conclude the forging of his newest masterpiece. It was almost unrecognizable from the original staff that Vivian had given him with only the upper staff and chevron remaining, and even those had undergone significant changes. The basket and wood assembly had been removed and melted down to allow for addition to the top chevron that now gleamed in Adamantine splendor enshrining a large aquamarine crystal mined from the mana rich earth of the former stronghold of the tyrant Vortigern. The bottom half of the staff was now a completely different story, the Mythril shaft of the staff feeding into a golden hilt and thick 'blade' that looked to glow as glimmering ivory and Adamantine. The handle of the 'blade' was protected by a stout, spiked heart shaped guard, and the 'blade' itself bore a striking resemblance to Avalon. The entire staff from top to tip glowed with some unseen light that the mind could not quite comprehend yet knew was there not unlike Excalibur, yet while the Sword of Promised Victory projected an intangible feeling of Invictus, Marmyadose gave off something else, something more humble yet equally radiant.

Hope.

A humbling presence that he had whenever he was in the presence of his lover and their daughter. Hope that made one feel at ease whenever they wished for something better than what was.

Speaking of them, Naruto decided to pay a visit to his lover and their homunculus-made daughter, "I should go see them since I'm free now." Placing the finished Marmyadose into a cushioned box, Naruto made his way down to the barracks where he had Mordred placed into a private room until he could figure out a good way to introduce her and Arturia to one another in a safe manner; one that didn't result in him getting punched in the face by Arturia.

Slapped? Maybe. He was acutely aware that the sabatons he had designed for her cataphract armor may end up reducing his testicles to mush for this, but the blonde was confident that he could regenerate from it. 'Gods I hope so… maybe a slap is wishful thinking at this point.' That he could deal with via date with tender loving, reasonable conversation along with a good dinner between the three of them to talk like parents and daughter.

Making his way through the castle, he was saluted by the guards that stood to attention when they passed on their patrols, along with a kind greeting from sweet little Gareth who was on her way to find her brothers in preparation for the upcoming mission. The subject of that discussion was most likely going to revolve around Morgan given she was the Orkney siblings biological mother, killing family; Naruto realized was something that must have weighed heavily on the younger two of the trio. 'Gareth and Gaheris might have been part of the opening stages of our final assault on Castle Vortigern, but they did not assist Gawain in striking down their uncle. The prospect of Matricide must be... disquieting for them.' Naruto thought, exiting one of the palace's side entrances and beginning to traverse Camelot's high walled streets.

Eventually, Naruto made it down to the training grounds where he saw Mordred sparring with a newcomer; one who could very well have the makings of a Round Table member just as Mordred and Galahad do. His name was Ywain, for at the moment he appeared to be on the same level as his Little Mo was.

Ywain was perhaps a few years Mordred's biological senior with handsome features that fell in line with what many would call 'Princely', a sharp chin and high cheekbones paired off well with dark grey eyes with a dash of blue. His straight black hair was well ordered save a large lock-like fringe that fell over the left side of his nose. Standing at six feet exact, he was clad in a set of well-made matte black knight's armor that fitted tightly to his lithe yet athletic form. The cuirass was separated into two well defined upper and lower sections made slightly differently colored metal plates, the lower fit tightly to his ribcage and waist while the upper plate covering his clavicle to the beginning of his neck bore the heraldry of a gold lion on a pale blue plane; two white tassels with cross charms hung from either side of the plate as ornamentation. As with many of Camelot's knights, Ywain had rounded-off shoulder guards under which was pinned a knee-length black cape with white edging that swayed lightly against his greave and sabaton clad legs. His gauntlet and vambraces were two pieces of well-hammered steel with hinging at the wrist to allow for movement were resting against his waist where a matte black longsword was sheathed, though of note was the twin bandoliers of throwing knives slung around his waist as well.

Mordred parried Ywain's strike as she shifted her weight to drive the pommel to her opponent's midsection, only for Ywain to quickly step back before he brought his sword up high to deliver a vertical slash to the head. Mordred though instinctively brought her sword up to block the oncoming attack, "Come on! That was easy to see coming! It ain't an edged blade, so swing it like you mean it!"

Mordred taunted Ywain slightly, as she brought her sword down slightly to push Ywain back before he settled into a stance with a calm smile, "I should hope so, Mordred. Otherwise, our spar would become rather stale."

"You're a smart one, eh? Well, don't worry, I've still got plenty more to go before I beat you."

"If you can, then please… do come…"

Mordred did not take the invitation for battle lying down, launching herself forwards with a kick aimed squarely for the center of Ywain's chest aiming to knock him onto his back quickly. Ywain was a spry one though and sidestepped the initial rush and used it as the impetus for his own attack, swinging his training sword across Mordred's left side with hopes of landing a blow on her left arm. Mordred, however, had inherited the unpredictability of Naruto whether she knew it or not, letting her momentum from the earlier kick carry her forwards and pivoting on her right foot to perform a front flip. As her helmeted form went inverted the sabaton clad left foot caught the flat side of Ywain's sword kicking it wide before pirouetting in mid-air to bring her own sword to slash Ywain's right vambrace with a metallic clang.

Ywain grimaced as the vibrations went up his arm from the successfully scored hit but decided to keep the spar going, noting that Naruto's presence was the blessing to kick things up a notch. Making a chopping motion with his left arm allowed Ywain to draw forth four throwing knives from his bandoleros and send them whizzing at Mordred while the ravenette used the breather they afforded him to get some distance. Mordred tsked in annoyance and used her training sword to deflect the four razor-sharp blades that dug into the ground before she set off in pursuit of her partner. Ywain stepped in to meet her bringing down his training sword with all his might in an overhead helm splitter that Mordred met with a bark of joy.

Devolving into a blade lock, Ywain began to sweat as Mordred's greater strength was brought to bear on his blade, weary arms trembling slightly under the abuse while his training sword began to bow dangerously. Taking his left hand off of the hilt of the blade allowed it to twist downwards and let Mordred's own strength send her sword sliding towards the floor. What Ywain had not been counting on was Mordred letting go of her training sword entirely to launch a blistering straight punch right to the center of his cuirass. It was in this moment that Ywain showed a spontaneity and swiftness of thought worthy of praise, knowing that he was too close to dodge the punch he reached out with his free hand to Mordred's still falling sword and took it into his own. Just prior to Mordred leaving a sizable dent in his chest plate, the black-clad knight was able to cross both training swords edge out into the path of the oncoming fist.

From the sidelines, Naruto watched on approvingly as the pair executed such spontaneous moves and had to give credit to Ywain's action even if it would not stop Mordred, as was proved when the clenched steel fist thundered home against the crossed blades with a subsonic 'wump'. A shockwave of pressure expanded out from the point of impact sending the young man skidding backwards while both of his swords shattered under the force of the punch. Forced to let go of both weapons, Ywain was sent tumbling back a dozen feet coming to rest on his front under the shade of an old Yew tree. Mordred on the other hand, took this as evidence that she had won, thumping her hand against the center of her cuirass in a small celebration. "Not bad, beansprout! You're the only one out of this lot to give me a run around so far!" Mordred proclaimed boisterously before moving to help her training partner up.

Between the potential Round Table recruits, Mordred, Galahad and Ywain each held high aptitude for becoming members, having created a bit of a rivalry to see who among them was the most worthy of joining the King of Knights' highest order of knights. Galahad wished to join as a way to grow closer to his father, Lancelot, but to also continue carrying on the ideals that they all held to the next generation. Mordred wanted to join because she admired the King and Naruto, wanting to be just like them in a place where she felt that she belonged. As for Ywain, Naruto couldn't quite tell why he had joined, only noting how he was in a way, empty, in a similar way that he once was before he met Arturia. If anything, Ywain was looking for a purpose of his own in life, having joined the army several months ago; coupled with this little bit of friendly sparring with Mordred and Galahad at times, Naruto could see that the young man was slowly finding camaraderie in their group.

"As much as I'm sure the two of you want to keep things going…" Naruto said as he approached the dueling duo, both of whom had stopped to turn towards the Apostle smiling at them, "…I had hoped to speak with Mordred in private, Ywain. I hope you don't mind that?"

Ywain stood up straight as he gave a slight bow in salute before heading off back to the barracks, "Not at all, milord." He said before briskly jogging to the entrance of the field, as he made his way to the barracks, Ywain turned his head slightly towards Mordred as he spoke, "I do hope we can continue our duel at another time, Mordred."

Hefting the practice sword onto her shoulder and tapping it against her pauldrons twice, Mordred smirked behind her helm, "Oh don't worry. We'll pick up where we left off sometime later. But I'll still win in the end, maybe give you a few scars girly boy!" She chuckled at the small jest she made before Ywain smirked back as he waved it off before leaving the training ground.

Naruto turned towards Mordred as he gestured for them to head to her private room, to which she still didn't like, "Mom, why do I have to stay in my own room, away from the rest of the recruits?" She didn't want any special treatment as she wanted to prove her worth just like the rest of the recruits, just as Ywain did. Even more so to showcase that she could become a squire like Galahad was to one of the Round Table members. Mordred had hoped that her mother would pick her up once she had climbed up through the training camp, to become a full soldier, and earn her place at the Inner Circle. Some of the other recruits grumbled that she was getting special treatment from one of the inner circle, and despite not getting any looks, she could hear some of the jealousy in their whispers at being given a room of her own coupled with some of the rumors of who made sure she was given such things; the words 'vampiric devilry' had been said more than a handful of times. However, there was an overwhelming majority of appraisal from the recruits and trainers that witnessed her skill with a blade.

For Naruto, he had reasons to keep Mordred away from the other recruits since women weren't allowed in this society to take up arms in the army or become knights. Coupled with being the daughter of himself and Arturia that bore features that even the most dimwitted village idiot could see came from the King and her shadowy retainer. The prejudices of Britain were not yet culled enough to stop the fallout of a child not born of marriage from the King and Queen, the scandal alone was something that he did not want to even contemplate.

"Well for starters, other than your gender, I have my reasons." Opening the door, Naruto gestured for Mordred to head inside first before shutting the door behind the both of them and tracing a 'Hush' sigil in the air, "Not only that, I want to make sure that you're safe." Since detaining Agravain Naruto had become borderline paranoid that Morgan may try to take her away, that was not happening while he could still keep his daughter close and protect her from the witch. To him, he would do anything and everything to keep his little girl safe.

Was this what his own parents had felt on the night of his birth? Being willing to impale themselves to protect him from harm even at the cost of their lives and in his father's case afterlife. He did not regret slamming his fist into his dad's chakra-construct stomach for what he did but being a parent had given him a shade more understanding.

Removing her helm, Mordred shook her head from left to right to let her hair return to its usual spiky ponytail now that she was out of public view, the years of conditioning a psychological trauma inflicted by Morgan to maintain secrecy had left their mark, "I can take care of myself, mom." Mordred said indignantly, not liking the clear special treatment Naruto was giving her, though she would never admit that she was embarrassed by his actions of paternal affection given how starved she was for it. As paradoxical as it may be, Mordred desired her 'mother's' love with all her heart but wanted to earn it on her own.

Naruto merely arched a brow as he chuckled at his Little Mo's response, "Well, anyway, I wanted to drop by, see how you're doing." The blonde took a seat on a wooden bench as Mordred began to remove parts of the armor before she sat down to wipe the sweat off her brow with a towel she had been provided with by Naruto, "I can see you've been honing your skills alongside Ywain and Galahad."

Setting the towel aside and abandoning her current attempt to unbuckle her sheath, Mordred turned to Naruto to address his observations, "Yeah, I've been trying to get better, though I kinda feel… out of place when I see everyone else going about their business." Naruto knew that Mordred was different when it came to the other recruits. Where they learned the refined and somewhat elegant way of fighting from the Round Table and their chosen subordinates, Mordred had her fighting style practically beaten into her by Morgan's choice of trainer. She fought with ferocity and unrelenting power that could knock down just about anyone; even Gawain and Lancelot would have to watch out for her sheer power once fully perfected, then likely only Arturia or himself could match evenly.

Naruto reached around to pull her in close for a hug as he spoke, "I think it's because you already have a bit of a leg up on everyone else with your training." Mordred turned towards Naruto as he continued, "Mordred, you have so much potential and talent, with a good part of it already developed putting you above the average recruit by leaps and bounds. That means that it will take longer to find your limits and push beyond them, things that others struggle to achieve you can do with ease." Naruto assured her, reminding him of the feeling of alienation that could come from facing no challenge in a specific field, "All we need to do is find those limits and areas that require work, which is something you and I will be working on together after I return from our task tomorrow night with the King." Once they had dealt with Morgan, Naruto planned to help promote Mordred to the Round Table to help hone her power and abilities given the higher quality of training the group subjected themselves to maintain their positions as Britain's greatest knights.

But another part of Naruto hoped that Mordred's presence could help drag them out of the rough patch that he and Arturia had been getting into since his lover had been forgoing personal happiness in favor of duties as the King. In some ways, the thought of doing such a thing disgusted him, but a quiet voice in the back of his mind just wanted his little family to get to know one another, even if he was still formulating a plan on how to break the news to Arturia.

Mordred perked up at the news, "Really?" Naruto nodded in response, though Mordred's eyes narrowed upon processing the last section of her mother's words, "But wait, what task are you doing tomorrow night?" She had to admit, she was curious as to what it was since they weren't in wartime, it seemed odd that Naruto would be sent off with the King with so little fanfare dripping down to the other soldiers, "Is it another lord trying to start some coup?" If so, then she wanted to accompany them.

Taking a deep breath in, Naruto decided to tell his daughter in a show of faith, "No, it's not a lord we're going to deal with. We're going to put an end to Morgan le Fay."

The air seemed to drop around Mordred as her head turned so quickly one could almost hear the slight snap. For Naruto, such panicked and frantic movements made his blood boil towards the topical Fae, yet did not let it show on his face. Naruto inched closer as he wrapped his arms around Mordred who shivered ever so slightly in fear at the mention of Morgan's name. No doubt, that fear had been ingrained into her being by whatever Morgan had done to Mordred for whatever sake of her designs, yet he would not allow that Fae whore to continue plaguing their lives… "Mordred, once we return, she will never harm you, or anyone else, ever again. I promise you."

He hugged his child tightly, her own leeth arms returning the hug with bone-crushing strength, "Please, come back, mom." She whispered through her sharp breaths as the mixture of both fear and worry permeated in her tone.

Naruto leant down and planted a kiss on Mordred's head as he stroked her hair gently to try and comfort the scared child of what horror could occur should the worst happen, "I will." They remained holding one another in this moment and through the rest of the day, a parent comforting a child that their nightmare would soon end.

-Rome; Capital of the Roman Empire-

Having finished the dark ritual that would culminate through time, Morgan returned to her workshop where her Acolytes had finished working on her own gift to Lucius Tiberius, the upstart emperor that was likely the only real power that could rival Camelot at this point, though it was kept at bay by Arturia's allies in Europa through political influence and decent favors traded.

Now though, she had kept her fair guise as Morgause, one of several names and forms she took on to deceive others. Taking her stroll through the streets filled with people to the palace where Tiberius reigned from, Morgan recalled the history that led Rome up to this point.

In short, the current state of the empire was terrible, having become a shadow of its former self with the majority of the infrastructure had broken off to form the Byzantine Empire. They had suffered a series of powerless puppet emperors dancing to the strings of a corrupt Senate that elevated then killed emperors when they had served their use, sometimes multiple within a single year. Many ancient titles such as consul had long since lost their meaning and were doled out as party favors. However, things had been changing these last few years since the latest, and some argued 'Final Emperor' had been raised to the imperial throne.

Tiberius' rise to power had been like many of the dozens of puppet emperors that had come before him, a stopgap measure to prevent a full-blown insurrection from whatever demographic was proving hard to control that year. In this case, it had been Exercitus Romanus, specifically Legions two through to twenty-one of the twenty-eight standing legions of Rome.

A dedicated student of war, Legatus Legionis Gaias Lucius Hiber Tiberius was elected as Emperor after his prowess on the battlefield was noted by winning over twenty battles against seemingly impossible odds. His ascension had brought the unruly legions in line and bolstered the morale of the populace to levels not seen since Constantine the Great two and a half centuries prior. This ended up being problematic for the one that had elected him to the position as not only had Tiberius done the job that they had elected him for -quieting the legions- but his popularity was posing a threat to their rule. So as many times before the Senate arranged for an unfortunate accident to befall the Emperor of Rome, but when the Senate tried to dispose of him after outliving his usefulness, he fought back and murdered almost all of them in one fell swoop before beginning his bloody campaign to reclaim lost territories. While the people have suffered under his reign, they seemed to have become oblivious to their own suffering, rallying behind Tiberius as the first real force of the old empire's glory in two hundred years.

"What an easy man to use…" Morgan whispered to herself. Yes, Tiberius would prove useful in helping her dethrone her sister, even if he only held a single purpose. Approaching the palace itself, Morgan made her way up the steps up until she was halted wordlessly by a few guards crossing their wicked-looking halberds across the entrance.

"State your purpose, plebeian." The lead guard ordered with an authoritative air, "Or go back to the rest of the rabble in the streets."

Knowing full well that she needed to ensure she had an audience, Morgan's eyes glowed with a dull purple light that slowly leached its way into their waking minds, "My name is Morgause, the Bringer of Gifts, and I have come bearing one for your Emperor."

The guards hefted their weapons as their pupils dilated coupled with the lead guard's monotone voice, "Apologies my lady, follow me closely to the throne room." Morgan followed behind the lead guard as they made their way through the palace halls that were filled with servants and carpenters fashioning exquisite décor to the structure of the palace, be they walls, floors or the ceiling, it appeared that Tiberius was one to indulge in his power with such things despite their vulgarity.

Eventually, they were brought to a large pair of double doors that stood twelve feet tall, open to showcase the throne room in its splendor rebuilt to what once was lost from the fall of the old Empire. As Morgan was led inside, the lead guard approached a nearby table with whom Morgan saw was Tiberius himself, sitting down before a parchment of what appeared to be structural schematics as he took a knee before Tiberius, "My Lord Emperor, you have a guest. A Bringer of Gifts, Morgause is her name."

Not even bothering to look up from the parchments, Tiberius responded, "And what gift would some plebeian, a commoner, have for an Emperor of Rome such as I?" There was something about the man, something hiding within his voice and presence that set off alarm bells in Morgan's mind, a familiarity she could not quite place.

"One fit for an Emperor, such as yourself," Morgan replied to garner the man's attention towards her.

"Oh? Would you care to prove such a thing, woman?" Standing from the table, the notions that Rome's current emperor was some simpering boy with wet lips from his mother's teat were banished in one glance upon his figure. Tall, he was without a doubt a beast of a man standing at seven feet tall with broad shoulders and a well-muscled chest that could only be earned by years, nay, decades of endless graft and practice in the pursuit of physical perfection on the field of battle. He could have been called handsome had his face not been set in such a contemptuous grin, splitting otherwise delicate features to reveal the monster hiding underneath but that was nothing compared to his eyes; highlighted as they were by his thicket of messy crimson hair. His eyes were a vibrant and intense violet that gave the illusion of glowing amidst the flickering shadows cast by the nearby crackling hearth, filled with such endless ambition and will to move forward that had she been a lesser person, Morgan would have considered taking a step back in trepidation.

Yet she was not.

This was a man who wanted the world and would not settle until all walked under his banner, an admirable quality had it not been offset by such a manic demeanor. Compared to the gleaming silver of the knights of Britain, the Emperor wore matte grey plate armor with a hint of yellow playing across the surface like tarnished gold, frivolous yet undeniably practical with a thickness that a warhammer would have trouble denting and several grooves inset to allow blood to slues off without additional cleaning needing to be done. However, without a doubt, the ruler's most defining piece of clothing was the calf-length coat slung around his shoulders, predominantly black with vivid red lapels and a royal purple collar edged with gold leaf finery and pinned to his shoulders by a pair of golden tasseled epaulettes.

Morgan gave a wry smirk, one that wasn't unnoticed by Tiberius whose own dipped down at the unspoken challenge he made clear as day, "Indeed I do." Holding her hands out in front of her, Morgan conjured forth from her black mist a sword within an ornate, crimson scabbard, "A sword fit for an Emperor unlike any other."

Morgan did not bother to unsheathe the blade, but instead opted for Tiberius to approach her slowly, coming around the edge of the table until he stood opposite of her to stare at the sheathed blade and herself before he took hold of the sword in mild curiosity then smiling in what he thought would be a win on his part, "I sincerely doubt that a plebian…" Tiberius began to unsheathe the blade before he slowed down to see that he was going to eat his words, "…such as yourself… could… present a blade, like this…"

It was a greatsword not unlike Clarent in overall design with the same rounded guard and tasseled pommel, but that was where the similarities to the Apostle's creation stopped. Indeed, this sword was some two feet longer than the average greatsword with a predominantly silver blade, the edges of the entire thing were of sanguine shading that faded the further into the blade they went and were seemingly slick even when the blade itself was dry; it looked as if it were slick with freshly drawn blood. The silver body of the sword was thick with neatly inscribed etchings depicting floral designs from guard to tip in a black so dark it seemed to suck in the light of the surrounding area yet left the gleam of that crimson edge and silver body untouched in their radiant splendor.

It indeed was the blade of an Emperor, yet the aura it gave off would give all those that looked upon it a queer shiver up their spine, the beautiful artistry of a flower's path to the sun being twisted towards something foul and inhuman yet lacking any of the grace of the phantasmal Fae. "The name of this blade is Florent. As I said, 'tis a blade fit only for an Emperor such as yourself." With those last words, she was finally able to understand what it was about this Tiberius that was tickling feelings of remembrance in her waking mind, he was like her son Gawain. Indeed, within his strong and without a doubt well-trained body Morgan could feel that there were not one but several different fragments of divine blessings clinging to Tiberius like Ivy upon a castle wall.

Tiberius held the blade aloft and allowed his power to thumb to the surface into the new sword that this potential ally had gifted him, the lines and streaks of red beginning to glow as a thick shroud of mana the color of freshly spilt blood enshrined it. The entire throne room was illuminated in this horrific beauty while the last emperor began to chuckle lowly, "A far off woman comes off bearing a gift to a Roman Emperor which resonates with the powers of my divine ancestors, yes, this is indeed a most fortuitous day!" The redhead proclaimed lifting the blade aloft and walking to the open window. Outside the palace, the citizens of Rome would look up to the palace of their emperor where a majestic, yet terrible power poured forth under the cloudy evening sky. Taking the greatsword in both hands and raising it high above his head, a great pillar of sanguine mana rocketed into existence to tower far over the capital before Tiberius cleaved Florent heavenward with a jubilated cry. Like a certain Holy Sword, a beam of utter destruction was cast up into the cloudy sky in an arc, splitting clouds and evaporating them all at once.

With a boom of thunder that reached over the seven hills of Rome, the heavens parted to the will of Tiberius, a black yet open sky that had the people of the city dancing in marvel of their leader's power.

Morgan could only smile, oh what an ally she had made.

-The Next Afternoon; Camelot-

Having finished making the preparations for the upcoming raid, Naruto made his way to the Round Table meeting hall as Arturia made it known that all those involved with leading the upcoming mission must attend. Having spent some time with Mordred for the day, Naruto made it a priority to ensure that he would make a recommendation to Arturia for her to join the Round Table along with ensuring she would have the chance to prove herself in everyone's eyes without drawing too much suspicion to herself until the time was right to explain everything to them.

Opening the doors to the hall of the Round, Ehangwen, Naruto took up his place at the desk on Arturia's right where the rest of the inner circle had assembled, all of whom had chosen to not wear armor, opting for a more relaxed atmosphere before they jumped into the fire. Merlin was over in Londinium speaking with one of the leading Magi families that were currently constructing the eventual new Association branch. Taking in their expressions, Naruto could see that some measure of anxiety was present in everyone, most notably Gawain and his siblings and with good reason. Bedivere and Tristan appeared calm as could be with what they were about to set out on, as did the rest of the Round Table, although when he briefly looked to see Lancelot's own facial features, he could see that it was eerily similar to how Naruto was after his first time with Arturia; he appeared relaxed though with a glow of a great weight lifted off his shoulders.

Perhaps he found a kind woman in the city to have a relationship with? He pondered asking the Frankish knight after all of this was said and done, but discarded it, not wanting to pry too much into his life since Lancelot helped him and Arturia conceal their relationship. It was best to respect his own possible, budding relationship with this mystery woman.

Arturia turned her head slightly to glance at Naruto taking his seat, "Naruto, I'm glad you've arrived in time. We were just about to start the meeting."

"Apologies, my king." Naruto said as he situated himself, "I had to tend to some personal business alongside finishing up a project for the upcoming raid." Having finished the staff's design into a proper weapon that fit himself, Naruto was confident in its capability.

Arturia waved it off as if were nothing, "That is alright." Turning back to the rest of Round Table occupants, Arturia began, "Given all the time has passed since we were made alert to my sister's location, I hope that everyone here has made the proper preparations for what is to come." Seeing that no one spoke up, she took it as confirmation to continue on with the next subject, "Until we return, Sir Kay…" She said turning towards her foster brother who came to attention, "…you will remain as Lord Regent of Camelot until such time."

"I understand, my King." Kay responded respectfully with a nod, "I'll need to send word to a few people around to help keep order while you're gone." He wasn't as skilled as Ector was, and despite the last time having been left as Lord Regent, it was difficult to maintain order in the absence of his sister. The endless stream of questions had driven him to partake of the bottle far more than before stepping into his father's shoes.

"Do you trust these people to help govern fairly? Woe betides any that would abuse your good nature to take advantage of your forgiving heart" Arturia asked, not sure as to whether or not these people could be trusted to help her brother.

Kay could see the doubt in Arturia, but it wasn't misplaced, "Of course I do, although having a few other members of our court here could help as well, more so." Which in turn would help out with ensuring that the capital ran smoothly so long as the people could see that they were still under their protection.

"I see then…" Arturia mulled it over in her head of who would remain at the capital, along with whom they would need for this deadly raid coming up, "Percival, Palamedes…." She said, drawing their attention, "…shall the two of you remain behind in the capital to safeguard it?"

Percival was the first to respond, "If you believe it is best, I shall remain, my king."

"As shall I." Palamedes responded in kind.

It seemed that issue was settled, Sir Bors and king Pellinore also volunteering to assist managing the home front, both of whom, while were strong and skilled fighters, felt that their age and lack of innate unique or outstanding ability would be the weak link in the mission to Morgan's base. As such, they had chosen to remain in the capital as before and help Kay, Percival and Palamedes.

Nodding in affirmation, Arturia was about to launch into the logistics of their assault, that is until a rapping came from the door, "Enter, please."

The doors opened up for a man garbed in a scaled set of leather armor along with a cloak drawn over his head to help obscure his identity, "Apologies, my king. But I have important information on hand." It was one of Naruto's spies that had gone to ground after Agravain's bewitching months prior.

Naruto gestured for the spy to come closer, to which he handed him a parchment before making his way to the door and bowed before leaving the chamber. The guards closed the door as Naruto read through the contents before sighing in mild annoyance, "Perfect timing…" Dropping his hand with parchment in hand, Naruto rubbed his brows causing Arturia to grow slightly concerned.

"What has happened, Naruto?"

Naruto handed her the parchment as he cleared his throat; seeing that the rest of the Round Table had grown curious at his change in demeanor, "Lord Cerdic has been secretly gathering troops to fight under his banner..." Bedivere and Gawain's expressions were set in annoyed disbelief while Lancelot sighed in exhaustion at the news, "…it seems the mercy you had shown to him years ago was for naught…" he said to Arturia who narrowed her eyes as she read the details, "…he has grown tired of the regime we set up for the people. And now intends to march down south here with the intent to sabotage the capital's supply lines, convince guards to become turncoats, and crown himself as the King of Britain." The Apostle remembered all too well the unification years they were in when they began fighting against the chaos, some of the lords did not see Arturia as their king with the intent to overthrow her.

They had other ideas in mind.

Yet after forgiving the lords, allowing them to keep their lands and soldiers, giving them a second chance to showcase their devotion for their country. Even after making peace with the country, disposing of Vortigern, pushing off the foreign invaders, and establishing the greatest city in Britain's history… it seemed they grew bored with peace and decided to be resentful. Yet at the same time, the lords could not see Arturia as human, with her ever-growing yearning for perfection, not allowing her humanity to show to the people that she too was one of them.

Handing the parchment back to Naruto, Arturia's hands had balled into fists before a mask of neutrality took over, "We do not have the manpower to go put down both my sister and Lord Cerdic at the same time or one after another." She would've preferred taking care of something like this minor task first before mounting an attack on Morgan's lair, yet if she did so, she believed that if they dallied too long, then they would lose the element of surprise on her sister. Agravain, bewitched as he was by Naruto's Mystic Eyes, had been sending his usual report to Morgan save for being tweaked under Naruto's hand to make sure no truly valuable information was given away, or that the mole in their ranks was compromised. There could be NO margin for error with this or else lose surprise.

Tristan opened his eyes from their usual squint at Arturia's short dismissal of their latest problem, "My king. I understand that the evil that Morgan inflicts on Camelot, Britain and its people is great, but if left unattended, would not a rebellious lord be just as terrible to deal with?" In his mind, while Morgan was a dagger in the back just waiting, yet at the same time, a rebellious lord was gangrenous flesh upon the fine musculature of the country's body that grew more toxic by the day. To leave it unattended was to invite chaos and potential ruin.

Naruto broke the silence with a solution to the problem that fell in line with both his own desires and those of the realm, "I believe I have a way to deal with this, as well as showcase two promising recruits that they can help fill in the seats of the Round Table." This was it.

Arturia turned back to Naruto having taken her seat once more at the table, her features softening as she witnessed a giddiness glinting behind his eyes, it had been months since she had seen that, "What did you have in mind?" If Naruto was offering up a solution to a situation as thorny as this, then she didn't mind listening to what he had in mind. 'Perhaps once my sister and this last Lord fall then I can make amends for my mistake that evening.' She thought with shadows of self-loathing, months later and she still despised herself for what she had told the man she loved in that second of shortsightedness.

"Two of our most promising recruits, the young Mordred and Ywain have been training with vigor, seeking to climb the ranks to become leaders, just as the rest of us here at this table." He knew well enough that Mordred held some of that same charisma that Arturia held, just as he did before when he was still human. Mordred's style of battle relied on using overwhelming power and shrewd cunning to win a fight; being able to adapt quickly on the fly along with pushing through whatever pain was inflicted on her, yet she needed someone to act as a counterbalance to these qualities. Ywain was able to keep a calm and collected mind, looking at things with an analytical eye before acting; ensuring that he could find the surest path to victory. Although if anything, Mordred was the one who could just charge through whatever he had in mind.

"The two of their skills complement one another." Naruto began to explain things, knowing that this would convince her, "Mordred is headstrong and courageous; he yearns to prove himself as a member of the Round Table. Ywain wishes to find a place for him in Camelot, hoping through his work, that he can discover the kind of man he is." It was plain as day that Naruto was reminded of how he had been when first finding himself amongst Arturia's retinue, "I can have my network get ahold of the plans to Lord Cerdic's fortress by tomorrow. Send Mordred and Ywain to lead a small contingent of soldiers to put this rebellion down before it starts, whereas we continue on with our initial plans to assault Morgan's lair."

Arturia nodded in recognition of those names. Mordred was perhaps the most devout and outspoken of the recruits, according to the reports from Lancelot and the Master at Arms, the horn-helmed knight would be the first to verbally defend Arturia should any detract her. Mordred was one of the recruits who got up the earliest to train and the last to leave the grounds to his private barracks, yet the young recruit always wore a helm, which Arturia found to be a strange thing but what were they all of not a mass of contradictions and eccentricities? Perhaps he held some disfiguring injury under that helm that he was too vain to show to the world, if true then that was not good, vanity could prove to be deadly when commanding troops into battle.

Yet, she could see that Mordred held so much potential. When Arturia permitted herself enough leave of duty- a rarity these days- she found herself watching the recruits training and the silver knight with horned helm never disappointed in showing the willpower of a leader, if a little rough around the edges.

As for Ywain, Arturia could see the similarity in how the young man was to Naruto upon their first few weeks together. She saw no problem with Ywain wishing to look for his place in the world through joining the ranks of their army. If it aided Naruto in his journey, then so too shall it help Ywain, "Very well then." Understanding that this was the only solution they had on hand, Arturia acknowledged the plan and continued on with the meeting that would ensure the downfall of Morgan.

Once they concluded the meeting, it was agreed that other than Kay, Bors, Pellinore, Palamedes and Percival, all of the Round Table would take part in the mission, coupled with forty of their best, bravest and most skilled soldiers, including the young Galahad.

Despite his status as a squire, even if to one of the Round Table's most senior members, his skill was without question head and shoulders above your average knight, coupled with his choice in using a sizeable cruciform shield, allowing him to be able to protect several of their soldiers in this deadly mission.

With everyone having left for their rooms to prepare for the raid, Naruto and Arturia remained behind to speak in private, "You know, once we've taken care of your sister, maybe we can go out on a date?" Naruto said as he and Arturia held hands across from one another, "Like our first one? Fresh food, fresh sea air, dancing on the waves…" He listed off, "…cuddling together after a nice night." Mentioning the intimate nights in bed they shared prior to Arturia's change after killing Vortigern.

Arturia sighed lightly as she closed her emerald green eyes before gazing back at Naruto's vivid red, "As much as I would enjoy it, I must ensure that there is no political fallout from either Morgan's dying gasp or the preemptive strike against this infant rebellion. I can guarantee at least some of the barons will see it as an unwarranted attack the like of which they knew my late uncle for." The King of Knights could see the pain in Naruto's eyes over the rejection of his offer. Memories of her blonder from months prior swam before her eyes like seafoam washing onto the beach, Arturia quickly attempted to remedy it before it swept away any lingering chance of making amends, "But, I do not wish for us to continue like this. Being… distant…" She tried to find the right words, yet her throat ached to speak the truth, "…I want things to be like they were before. Like we used to." She reached up to his face to bring him down to her level as she placed a firm, yet soft kiss on her lover's lips who returned the affection and held her love closely before they broke, "But for now, we have work to do, my love." She stroked the right side of his face affectionately with his own calloused fingers rising to caress the back of her hand in understanding.

He would've brought up his conversation with Vivian over their choice to kill Morgan, being the right choice; however, he opted against it. Naruto simply wanted to be selfish for once in his life and have this moment and all of what he and Arturia built together to himself.

In another part of the castle, another pair of secret lovers were saying their own words before the great leap into the abyss.

Guinevere aided Lancelot in strapping his armor on as he stared out through the window, into the evening sky with night approaching, "Are you certain that your son should accompany you as well as the other Round Table knights? This seems to be too much for someone as young as him." Guinevere asked as she finished with the final straps to his chest plate. Over the months she had spent with Lancelot in secret, the queen often found herself watching from afar to see how the man she had come to love treated his bastard son. She had hoped that the two would grow close to one another. However, that wasn't the case…

Lancelot was unsure of how to approach Galahad, in trying to be a father to him. In his eyes, Galahad was practically a grown man that knew where his beliefs and priorities lay, "Galahad has come into his own without me. As much as I should have attempted to ensure we get to know one another, I fear that perhaps he has resented me for fathering him as a bastard." It didn't help that the family he was raised into weren't entirely on good terms with his own, and likely had told the boy of how he was hardly the spitting image of what a noble knight was. It didn't help that his concept of fatherhood was skewed by the River Fae that had assisted in his raising, they were very much the 'go with the cosmic flow' sort and had imparted on him enjoyment as opposed to responsibility. It took years of serving with the King to learn that one.

Guinevere however, refused to see it that way, "I do not believe that." She tightened the last strap on… a little too tightly for Lancelot's liking. A clear showing that the Queen was not satisfied by his reasoning, "Once you return, with the evil Fae put down, and with the stabilization of the kingdom, we will work through this." She reached up to Lancelot's jaw to turn his attention towards her, "Your queen has spoken."

If there was one thing that Lancelot could say about Guinevere, it was her tenacity to see through whatever it was she wished to do. Yet, it was a quality that Lancelot admired in her. With the last of his armor now strapped on, Lancelot turned to face the queen as they wrapped their arms around one another lovingly, "Very well… I can see that you are quite adamant on this matter."

The queen smiled, "Good. Now, before you go, your queen has one more thing for you to fight for." Bringing his face down towards her, Guinevere placed a loving kiss on his lips which the Knight of the Lake returned it in kind. It was a conflicting kiss; one that held him questioning the love he had for Guinevere, a woman who had taken vows before the almighty, despite it all being a farce for their kingdom, he still held his loyalty to his king. A loyalty that he swore to uphold along with the secret affair she had with his Apostle friend.

And yet… he was unsure which he held closer to himself.

-Several Hours Later; Northern Wales-

As the company assigned to the raid rode through the hills and plains of the country, many held their tongues at the atmosphere that had been drawn up about them.

Dread. Fear. Nervousness. Yet they all knew that this raid was the final battle to eradicate evil from their great country of Britain.

Naruto continued to mull over Vivian's words if perhaps imprisoning Morgan was the better option or if executing her still was far safer for them all. On top of keeping an eye on Agravain to see if his enchantment would keep hold over his mind.

Lancelot questioned his own loyalty briefly before reaffirming himself before they leapt into the abyss.

Tristan questioned Arturia's slowly degrading humanity despite the best efforts of those closest to her.

Gawain and his siblings had resolved themselves to see this through, yet despite Morgan's evil, she was still their mother who at one point in time, was not truly evil in life.

As the company traversed the hills and plains, they transitioned into forests for some time, until they arrived at a pair of mountains that scraped the sky with a large, calm lake that presented itself to them. Naruto had taken the lead alongside Arturia and Agravain whom Naruto also presented in part of discovering the location of the lair, held a hand up for their company to halt at the tree line before they exited into the clearing, "Hold. We are here…"

Dismounting Dun Stallion, Naruto carefully crept up to the clearing before he stopped entirely, "…an immensely powerful Bounded Field surrounds this land. It feels dark, old and full of hate." Speaking aloud mostly to himself, knowing that the rest of their company heard him.

Arturia came up behind him as she wondered how Morgan was able to hide in such a place, "How is it that Morgan has concealed herself and her lair here?"

"The Black Arts, my king, and something else…" Naruto spoke as he took Marmyadose from his back to undo the Bounded Field, "…its power is both a great source that many other mages would kill to have, yet it has a terrible curse that accompanies said power." Naruto began to channel his mana through the staff to charge up his spell to tear down the veil before them, "Cé ná ulco sís nurtaina... I ettuluvas caninye!"(1) Naruto spoke in the language that Vivan and the Fae used as opposed to Morgan's Black Speech; Quenya. One of Vivian's final gifts to him as she bestowed the knowledge that came to him from the mark on his forehead; a pair of diamonds stacked atop one another that connected to each other, as two other diamonds sat within the sides of the middle of the formation. His Six Paths power briefly manifested as the symbol appeared within the Crimson Moon on his back, "Cánin i sá tanuvaxe!"(1) Naruto slammed his staff down into the ground, where the local leyline was situated in. The power gathered from the spell channeled through the leyline and shot straight out into the lake, where it made contact with what appeared to be glass, as it made large visible crack where a pale green light peeked through the gap.

Everyone, even Tristan's eyes were wide in astonishment by this, witnessing the scope of True High Thaumaturgy. As the cracks began to spread throughout the air and lake, Naruto stood no longer alit with his Six Paths power, yet Vivian's symbol remained on his forehead. He narrowed his eyes at the Bounded Field was now on its last legs; no doubt Morgan's Black Arts were keeping it up, yet Naruto refused to allow this to endure, "Now… you fall." Channeling mana through to his right arm, Naruto created a sword of golden lightning and threw it at the originating crack to finish it.

The Bounded Field shattered in its entirety to reveal to all, the full view of Morgan's domain in the Material World. Before them was a great castle that darkened the earth and sky, one that held a black color to it with such luster that it seemed to glow with a dark light, creating a contradicting aesthetic, yet that wasn't what bothered him. Surrounding it, was a pale green luminous glow, giving it a veil of shadow. The spectral castle was perhaps once radiant when it was built to reflect a shining royal palace much like Camelot's, only now it paled like a corpse decaying in the water, filled with a damned soul waiting to unleash its evil upon whatever victim it laid eyes on.

A castle of nothingness, a pale imitation of the now lost Shadow Fortress of Dun Scaith.

However, that was not the only thing that resided in Morgan's domain. Surrounding the castle appeared to be what once was a small town where humans once resided, with large walls and massive gate lay before them. Beneath it all, was dark abyssal water, giving it an appearance of a bottomless cavern that glittered in the moonlight.

It was called Zídushgoi in Black Speech, the Black Sorcery City in the common tongue.

Bedivere had his jaw slackened slightly in shock before he asked the question on everyone's mind, "How has Morgan concealed this fortress from everyone?"

"Morgan is a master of Magecraft most foul and Archmagus of these lands…" Naruto began, "…on top of having so much knowledge at her disposal combined with her Fae heritage and power, she's combined it all to bend the textures of the World around the fortress to hide it from all." It was a similar theory to that of creating a Reality Marble except instead of turning the vestiges of one's inner world into a bounded field and expanding it into the real world, the existing reality spaces within the textures of the world were folded around the castle like a rubber band ball. But very much like with a rubber band ball, if you broke enough of the outlying bands of enchantment, then the outer shell would shatter under its own tension.

Naruto could see that there were some figures within the buildings up top that appeared as pinpricks at this distance, however, he wasn't able to make out their appearance. Applying Reinforcement and Structure Analysis to his eyes, Naruto gazed out at the occupants, only to recoil, shocked by what he saw, "I knew Morgan was a master of Alchemy… but I never expected her to be capable of this…"

Arturia grew concerned over Naruto's words, "Naruto, what is it? What do you see that we cannot?"

"Morgan has cross-bred Goblins and Trolls from the Age of Gods with Humans to create these… monstrosities…" Naruto had heard about the theory of such creatures passed around in some texts from the Age of Gods, but he didn't believe that anyone in the Age of Fairies was capable of creating them. "Uruks and Olog's. Goblin and Troll-Men that Morgan has created as homunculi soldiers." The names weren't something he was familiar with all too well, yet at the same time, he knew what to call them from another gift of knowledge from Vivian. Shaking his head at his own foolishness for not expecting such a thing, Naruto should've given Morgan more credit with her work.

He recalled old words that Jiraiya had imparted to him, something that at first, he didn't pay much attention to, and even now, he had nearly forgotten it. But now? Now he remembered them clearly –

"If you don't respect what your enemy is capable of, then you're going to be in for one nasty surprise after another."

Naruto didn't respect Morgan and thought he could take on whatever she had.

'Who gives a shit!?' Kurama bellowed from within, shaking him back to his senses, 'She's a cockroach that is long overdue for being squashed, now is no time for second guessing or hesitancy.'

Turning towards Arturia, Naruto whispered into her ear as her eyes widened in brief shock before closing them. Turning back towards their company, Arturia spoke aloud with her voice filled with charisma of inspiration as she always did before such battles, "Everyone, steel yourselves for what we are about to face will be unlike anything we have faced before, even as we assaulted Vortigern's stronghold. We know that our enemy will unleash all that she has to offer, so we must be swift and strong in our attack." Her knights stood at the ready as they readied their blades, bows and all their armaments, "Today…" she turned back to the fortress of shadow discarding all doubts in her mind, "…we purge our lands of evil!"

The knights did not say anything, for there was no reason to. They knew in their minds that they were making an ambush upon Morgan's fortress that stood before them, and the evil she spread was one that could not be allowed to persist any longer in the world.

The cloudy night above parted to reveal the cool light of the moon shining down on them all, Arturia unsheathed Excalibur as the sword became bright with its golden light, she stepped out into the clearing where the gates were before her. She raised her blade high above her head as she always had done to unleash the power of her blade, and let it loose with one last set of words to her men, "Give no quarter, for they shall give you none!"

-Some time Before; Morgan's Tower-

Having returned from Rome with a new pawn in play, Morgan returned to her domain to continue working on her litany of contingencies. Currently, she was in her workshop, engaged with a new autonomous Mystic Code; a weapon that would put all to shame once she finished it, "Oh, how the Atlas Academy would be green with envy at these."

The first Mystic Code was a set of armor, modeled after Arturia's armor that she had worn during the assault on Vortigern. The primary differences being that as opposed to the gleaming silver that Arturia wore, a pitch black colored the armor with a bright luster that gave it the appearance of violet. The helm was shaped like that of a hound's head that encapsulated the entirety of the head, and instead of lion fur adorning the coat, it was more akin to raven feathers.

The second was like that of a box with markings similar to that of a face, yet it held no presence unlike the first.

Bringing up a streak of long golden blonde hair, Morgan placed it onto to the armor as she channeled her Blackening Magic through it, into the armor as she spoke the wicked Black Speech, "Maausan avhe ukoul ro avhine ukiblaumn thrâk lat wiavh gazhumîl shal avime."(2) The words reverberated almost to where it sounds like Morgan's voice had doubled up. To most mortals, the Black Speech would rot their mouth and teeth to make it seem like they were on their last legs, yet this was not the case for Morgan. Her vast knowledge of Magecraft combined with her Fae heritage removed the adverse side effects that the Black Arts and Speech brought with them.

As the spell took hold, the armor emitted an eerie violet as the spell bound itself to the husk before dying down. Morgan took a few steps back to examine her work, knowing that it was at best, a time delayed spell that would activate upon certain conditions. Conditions which she could engineer somewhat, however, she also needed to ensure certain things were in place; if they failed, then this was all for naught.

She heard a pair of footsteps enter her workshop and turned to see one of her loyal Acolytes. He was garbed in a black cloak and hood that concealed most of his features save for the amber, slitted eyes and pale skin that was prominent. He wore dark gray armor, gauntlets and grieves that were spiked along the edges that ran down the center of them; underneath were dark red robes that appeared to be alive with Fae symbols, but more prominently the Black Speech. He carried a double-edged, longsword that was serrated around the mid-point through a loop on his belt. Gazing at the armor, the Acolyte wondered about the plan of the Dark Mistress, "My Mistress…" His voice carried both a sinister yet calm tone, he bent a knee down in respect to his teacher and leader, "…the other Acolytes are ready to move on your order. As for the Warchiefs, they are ready, Uruk and Olog." Turning towards the Mystic Codes, the nameless Acolyte voiced his concerns over their purpose, "If I may ask, my Mistress, you have said you wish to ensure the bloodline of Pendragon lives through time. But why create the elements for your sister's return from death?"

Morgan turned to the Acolyte and opened her mouth to speak, "My dear Hand, I inte—UGH!" She stopped mid-sentence as she gripped her head as she felt the sensation of the Bounded Field being attacked by magecraft empowered by, "Vivian!" She knew her opposite's power presence when used, yet she knew that her sister while had her blessings, she did not use her power. No sooner had she realized this did the ground they stood on be rocked by some vast tremor as if struck by a falling star, clots of dust falling from the ceiling as walls cracked and doorframes splintered. "No…" she grit out, eyes gaining the manic glint of a cornered rat, "…no no no no! NO! It's too soon, I'm not ready!"

Storming through her workshop out to the door leading to the balcony that overlooked her domain in the Material World, she gazed outside to see down into her fortress where, after sensing some of her Uruks were on guard duty, she immediately used a combination of Shared Perception and her own brand of Mental Domination to take control of the guard to look over the wall to see who it was that broke her Bounded Field.

However this ran into an issue when the first of her brainjacked creations took a long range arrow to the cranium less than a femtosecond after she had taken it over, a similar fate befell most of the unsuspecting wall dwellers until she lucked out in taking command of an Uruk with common sense to take cover behind the battlements.

The Uruk's eyes briefly glowed amber before he gazed outside with added Reinforcement by Morgan's sorcery, she looked out to see her own sister with Excalibur in hand about to strike at her doors, only to briefly see Naruto there with a new staff, the hopeful glow it exuded pain to her borrowed eyes, and then she saw him… Agravain… "Damn you, Vivian… Damn you, Agravain!" The Fae witch shouted in rage through the Uruk before Excalibur's golden light flooded her vision and blew the gates down in a single blow.

The explosion rocked the fortress as Morgan gripped the balcony's edge in anger, "But why?! How?!" Gone was the calm and collected weaver of webs, she had been caught on the back foot and was struggling to think straight with the hounds at her door. Turning towards the Acolyte, now identified as the Hand, who now stood beside the door, Morgan began to issue her orders, "Take the Corpse King with you, along with the other Acolytes through the gate, retreat to the Reverse Side and remain there until I order otherwise."

The Acolyte did not appear confused by her orders, although he did ponder one thing, "But what of you my Mistress? What will you do with your sister now at your doorstep?"

Making her way over to the center of her workshop, Morgan took out a golden dagger as she gave herself a cut across her palm, "If my sister has come to take my head, then she will not take it without a fight!" Dripping the blood down into the cauldron, she allowed it to settle in before she turned to eight doorways on the opposite side of the dark workshop. Channeling her Blackening towards the doors, she began her chant filled with a guttural tone, "Skaat foravh izub dyzårrzdaz, izub gûl. Zib jashat tak amirz brishzel kramp izish dam."(3) With the Black Speech empowering her magics, the words took effect as eight figures slowly stepped out from them. All were garbed in pitch black robes, yet their armor all gave them distinct differences with helms that concealed the entirety of their faces, almost giving them the appearance of being blind, yet one remained different from the rest as where what one would expect a face to sit, yet there was naught but a black void, and a kingly helm of a crown sat upon the emptiness of its visage.

Morgan gave them all each a look before she addressed them one by one, "Accolon, Golumar, Ogier, Lot, Catigern, Vortimer, Claudus…" Turning finally to the one that stood out from the rest, "Urien." All of these men were her lovers, her allies, her unwitting pawns that she ensnared with her power to enchant and corrupt.

They were the Burzgûl. Her Shadow Wraiths. Her deadliest servants to her will and whim.

"You know what must be done. Do it." Morgan voiced her command as the Burzgûl bent their knee in recognition of her authority.

"Yes, my Mistress." Their hollow and metallic voices rang through the room that would've instilled fear into their enemies, yet none stood around. They soon vanished into a dark violet mist as they travelled throughout the domain of darkness to repel the attack.

Morgan turned to the Acolyte as she gestured towards the suit of armor. The Acolyte bowed before he made his way to the Mystic Code and took hold of it before he made his way out towards his compatriots in their part of the domain. As for Morgan, she remained alone before she began to cuss a series of language that would make any language deities blush with flustered disbelief, that so many swears could be strung together in such short order, across so many languages. "-cking obtuse cunt suckling at an Ultimate One's crystal encrusted scrotum!" She eventually finished, the room having visibly degraded from her output of mana before pulling at her disheveled looking platinum locks and tearing away her face veil in frustration.

She had not been prepared for this, so cocksure in her own ability as the master manipulator that not only had she not taken the chance of Agravain defecting as a possibility but such an attack when she was only freshly returned from Rome… it did not look good for her. Her domain had its defenses that led from the surface all the way down to the Reverse Side of the World but against such a force with the element of surprise there was no guarantee that they would stop the attackers. She had a lifeline in case things should turn dire for her, but it was a Greater Ritual, and all Greater Rituals took time to enact without sacrifice, something she was aware she was in short supply of when a second Excalibur blast rocked the castle. Peering down into the cauldron, Morgan could see that the process had begun, "Asht ob za krank, vybvgrohmärgakhbrav ryvdräzkuz."(4) Morgan pulled out a bone from her robes as she dropped it into the cauldron, where a tremendous green fire erupted before displaying that Morgan was unaffected by the flame.

"Grish ob latobgur, grohmärgakhbrav dazbääzzürruzzübruv."(4) The cauldron began to boil as bubbles rose up and popped rapidly. She soon produced a small piece of dead skin; skin that once belonged to Arturia after she scoured the ruined fortress of Vortigern after the battle, having collected blood, hair and skin from her sister and the Dead Apostle, "Maushat ob za shin, zørgḧhvogbḧækbrav krÿnhrüzrup."(4) Dropping the skin into the cauldron, Morgan channeled her power into it through her hands, where black mist was produced, pouring into the cauldron, "Gâkh koh thrak lat brüüzmyrb, agh marr zna mÿzgmuz zambzurbruüzborz."(4)

Soon, the black cauldron began to emit a red glow as it rumbled before Morgan took a step back. Seeing that her plan was taking effect, a last minute one at that. Morgan did the math and knew that she would need an hour before the process was complete and gripped the golden serrated dagger in her hand to the point of bleeding when realizing she might not have that long before her defenses were breached. Much as she claimed to be beyond death, there was a singular mote of blackened humanity left in Morgan that was misshapen and alien amidst the black torrent of the world.

"I don't want to die." She whispered for none to hear, the 'last enemy that shall be destroyed's' cold breath on the back of her neck.

-Outside the Castle-

Seeing Excalibur's light once more inspired the soldiers that accompanied them with a breath of fresh air to fight once again having laid their swords down but only to put down rebellious lords and their soldiers. Now they fought against abominations of nature; creatures brought forth from dark magics with a role to only slaughter the innocent.

"Archers! Second Volley" Nock!" As Arturia led the charge through the destroyed gates, Tristan stayed in the rear commanding several archers to let loose another barrage of arrows that would rain down fire beyond the walls, down onto the abominable homunculi, "Draw! Loose!" The hail of arrows shot into the sky, accompanied by the streaming silvery-blue trails of energy that came from Failnaught.

As the barrage arced up into the sky, it came down to where it pierced the bodies of the various Uruks, ending their lives, while some survived as they hid behind their shields and buildings, although some Olog's managed to shrug off the arrow fire that hit them.

One in what appeared to be garbed in various furs and skins from different animals around the isle, though he had their skulls wrapped up onto his shoulders like trophies, along with a large pair of elk antlers that he wore on a leather hood, "Is that the best these Manswine have to offer?" The Olog's name was Ar-Benu the Beast, and he commanded the troops in the city here, underneath his Mistress and creator, "If that's the case, then this will be nothing but a few bugs to squash!" He bellowed in a deep voice. Ar-Benu knew that his creator's sibling was the King of Knights and that she had a plan for her. What that plan was, was something he didn't know. Nor did he really care; he just wanted to pop some heads off some humans after coming out of the spawning pits. His mind was already imbued with the knowledge he needed to function properly in the world, along with what his creator intended for them to do.

Now he raised his great flaming mace high into the air to rally his Uruks and Olog's to his, as he saw the King of Knights leading the charge with many of her knights beside and behind her. Ar-Benu gave a toothy grin as the two opposing groups clashed with one another, although he could clearly see some knights were better than others, as the more colorful ones were hacking through Uruk's quite easily, no doubt due to the blessed blades they were given. Ar-Benu saw the king and took his chance as he charged right up to her with her back turned away from him. As he swung his mace down to strike at the king, she quickly snapped her head towards the stomping that his feet produced, and rolled to the side to take a stance, "You will die tonight, abomination!"

The golden sword of Excalibur was poised to strike at him, though he felt he should at least say some words as a courtesy before beating her down into a pulp, "You've taken a few steps towards victory, but many more remain." Ar-Benu gestured around her, even though she kept her eyes narrowed at his form, never deterring from it, "And the next one is the toughest yet: getting through me!" He gave a toothy grin as he raised the flaming mace up into the air to quickly strike her down, although once again, the King of Knights twisted out of the way from the mace before she thrust her blade into his hide as the sword seared his flesh, giving it a great sting that irritated him before he quickly took her by the hand and shoved her off as the blade came with the king.

"Is that the best you have?" The Olog captain asked rhetorically through the pain of the wound that was now bleeding profusely and smoking as the King of Knights stood poised once more to attack. Yet, she did not move as she kept her gaze on him, no doubt trying to figure out a better what to take his head off, "I can handle a little sting like that, but what about—" Ar-Benu quickly felt a great pain on his right elbow before he was dragged around with great strength to see the so-called Dead Apostle that the king had in her court secretly, reducing his arm to mincemeat in less than a second.

Naruto had seen the great Olog make a bid to fight Arturia and felt it best to deal with the beast from behind him, as their real target was now likely in a panic to make a run for it. If Morgan did escape, then they would never find her again. Now as Naruto forced the Olog to come swinging around, only to be unable to move thanks to his vampiric strength, although he could feel the abomination still attempting to move while Naruto held it still, Arturia quickly came up behind to stab Excalibur through his back. The golden blade pierced his chest, protruding through to the other side as he now held his free arm where the sword wounded him. Taking Excalibur out from the Olog's back, Arturia ran up his back to face the creature as she would deliver the final blow with Naruto's aid. However, it seemed that the Olog still had some breath left in his lungs as he spoke, "I have failed the Dark Mistress, but her designs remain unaltered. She has plans for these lands. Plans for you tiny king and plans for you Bloodsucker." As blood dripped from his mouth, Ar-Benu gave a mocking laugh as Arturia made a horizontal slash across the Olog's head to silence him.

Scowling at the Olog's words, Naruto waved his hand to unleash a pillar of cobalt blue mana that reduced the Olog's corpse and a contingent of Fell troops to ash with little effort. Turning back towards the castle illuminated by shadow, Naruto could feel something deep beneath the surface, beginning to stir and sending a primordial shiver down his spine. Destroying the domain was all well and good, yet if they did not kill the master, then it could be rebuilt, moved, etc. Arturia came up beside him as she spoke amidst the melee, "We should move quickly before we lose Morgan. Or we may never find her again." Her words filled with simple logic, yet there was also a hint of some brutality in her tone.

A sign that her own disgust of her sister was seeping into her motivation. Naruto knew that these dark emotions would likely surface, but now that they were in this place, a cyclopean edifice to the profane and most inhuman, he would not be surprised if Arturia's actions ended up sliding beyond the edge of the moral compass and into savagery. 'Enough, you have more important things to focus on.' Naruto berated himself.

Having been awake since they were half-way here, Kurama chimed in before he stayed silent to let Naruto concentrate on their task, 'Don't worry about her. If anything, she'll bring whatever happens here up with you after you kill the whore.' Knowing that his partner was right, the Apostle silently agreed before he spoke up.

"You're right, my King." Naruto turned back to see that despite the fact that they were clearly outnumbered, they held the element of surprise, Naruto couldn't help but notice that the Olog's had retreated from the time being, yet the Uruk's remained to combat their soldiers and the inner circle members, of whom were faring well. Perhaps Morgan just bred them to hold the numerical advantage over them as opposed to making them of fine combat quality? Or maybe these Uruk's were just grunts while their captains, like the Olog they recently killed?

Either way, Naruto knew that at least one of the Round Table knights would need to remain in command while the rest of them made their way inside to Morgan's inner sanctum, "Perhaps Bedivere and Galahad should remain outside in command of the garrison we brought with us, while the rest of us head inside to confront Morgan." He knew that Gawain and his siblings would need closure to this ordeal, just as Arturia did, "And we should stick together…" Holding the staff of Marmyadose out, he conjured up four crystalline spears that were now situated behind his back as per the staff's new ability to allow him to incorporate his own weapons into the staff to grant it new skills, as Naruto went out to inform the rest of the Round Table of their next phase of the raid.

High above them at the very apex of the castle did an oddity begin to emanate, a half-formed bell with a dodecahedral chime began to slowly ring out over the bleak castle. Set into the black marble beside it were several fluted pipes connected up to an unseen mechanism that came to life with dark purple light. All noticed, but none cared for the oddly disjointed and haunting music to waft through the air, not knowing of the insidious defense that it contained as they continued their siege. The magecraft of the Unseelie was about to make things an uphill battle for the forces of Camelot.

-Inside the Castle-

The Hand carried the Mystic Code, the Corpse King underneath his left arm as he quickly made his way to the other Acolyte's location in the castle. He had already contacted them through the connection they shared with one another, having established it upon becoming Morgan's followers through a Geis signed in their own blood, swearing fealty to the True Heir of Britain.

He relayed their tasks to them in preparation for their leaving the domain to enter the Reverse Side, where they would have more freedom in a place where their enemies could not enter without severe repercussion. His task as the Hand, was to manipulate people where he could as ordered by Morgan, yet he was also the leader of the Acolytes; the man who would command them whenever Morgan herself or even the Wraith of Urien was not present.

Arriving in a large, dark, circular room, where the other Acolytes stood at present with the gateway into the Reverse Side, a large ornate mirror decorated with ornate purple carvings of shadowed beings, and a shimmer within the mirror to represent the active way into the other side. He peered to three men, each having their own distinctive armor and identity with their title to go with, having forsaken their actual names for the Dark Mistress, "We will move forward with the plan; I will take the Corpse King and arrange for it to be stored until the time is right."

"And what of the Dark Mistress?" The one on the right inquired in a deep, yet commanding tone. He wore dark ornate armor overall, with a large demonic mace, formed out of human bones. He wore a helm that covered his head, save for exposure to his face with a scar running across his right cheek. His title was the Hammer.

"She will join us soon…" The Hand answered, "…but we will go through with her plan now, with the Bastard Child having taken us by surprise." Turning towards the Acolyte on the right, he gave the order, "Go and ensure that your task is fulfilled in east Europa. Certain mage families are seeking ways to use animals as viable sources of magical power. You need not stay for long, merely ensure that the idea itself remains."

The Acolyte's skin was deathly gray, and his lips were either rotting away or being stretched apart. His mouth resembled that of the Acolyte in the middle, though deformed to a greater degree. He was bald and held piercing blue eyes, with armor that was fused to his skin and did not grow with him, causing excruciating agony no doubt. He had a metal apparatus on his mouth, preventing it from closing, possibly contributing to its deformity along with four swords impaled in his back, the two on the end adorned with two banners made from some of the faces of his victims prior to becoming an Acolyte. And then there was the headdress that seemed to be implanted into his head.

This Acolyte was known as the Tower, for he stood taller than the rest of them, "I understand. This will set in motion certain things that cannot be undone." Yet, despite these almost reverberating words, it brought him joy, though his armor prevented him from showing it. It brought the Tower glee.

As for the final Acolyte, the one in the middle, he wore black robes primarily with some armor on his chest and arms, yet the helm he wore was reminiscent of those that the Shadow Wraiths wore, for it lacked the part that concealed his rotting mouth, "And of the Uruk's and Olog's, I will command those useful to retreat, leaving the weak swine to die." His voice reverberated while the gums and muscles stretched to the point of almost snapping, but they did not, "Better to cull the weak from the strong, to allow us to rebuild." He was known as the Mouth. Cruel and vicious, as his words would cut into people, even if they were naught of the physical injury, but one that would weaken and attack the mental condition of his foes, to instill fear and anger into them.

The Hand nodded in acceptance of the Mouth's reasoning. As he was about to speak, the Hand turned around to face the echoes of footsteps making their way towards them and despite being surprised, he did not show it by what he and the other Acolytes saw…

-Outside in the Ruined Town-

Bedivere and Galahad had remained outside with the rest of their garrison to provide safe passage out of Zídushgoi. As they slaughtered the remaining Uruk's, they began to set up a small perimeter from the castle's entrance to the ruined gate that Arturia blew down with Excalibur, yet despite this small victory, Bedivere was uneasy, "Something is wrong…"

Galahad came up beside his primary mentor, seeing how his body language showcased a dissatisfaction with some element of their surroundings, "Sir Bedivere, what do you mean exactly?" The young squire gestured around them briefly as he had yet to see anything that posed an immediate danger, "We have secured the main gate into the enemy's domain, and the King as well as the rest of the Round Table and… father…" The word did not roll off his tongue as much without a semblance of displeasure, "…have stormed the enemy's keep. Should we not take solace in the fact that victory is almost within our grasp?"

Bedivere could see in Galahad's eyes that despite all the training he had absorbed from his teachings, as well as the other Round Table members -at least those who had the time to spare to give advice- Galahad still had a ways to go before he was accustomed to such situations, "Galahad, while your words hold merit, we are still in enemy territory. One that belongs to a dark Fae with profane magics and sorcery at her disposal." He had heard the stories that surrounded Morgan of what she could do, and it set his mind ill at ease, "This is her domain. A heretical land tailored to her liking. The abominations we have just slain will without a doubt not be the last and are likely planning on mounting a counterattack to push us back, and they will not show mercy to us, as they—AGGH!"

A short and sharp whizzing was the only warning any of them received, concealed within the midsummer night's breeze.

Bedivere was cut off by an arrow piercing his right arm through the bicep, yet this arrow was glowing green, its matte black shaft alite with a mist that almost made it appear smoldering charcoal bereft of flame, "Yoohoo!" The wounded knight and squire turned to see down a street where an Uruk armed with what looked like a spent crossbow was perched atop a stairwell, aiming right at Bedivere. The first knight's assailant it seemed. He wore a rough, leather tunic along with scaled leather armor along his arms and legs with a hood draped over his head, yet when their eyes were able to catch a glimpse of his face they saw that he bore a Glasgow Smile.

"Let's see…" the Uruk sneered as he loaded another bolt into the crossbow, "…fourteen. That's how many bolts I think I can stick you with before you give up and drop dead. Think you can make it to fifteen?" The Uruk called in question to some unseen ally, quickly raising its crossbow to aim at Bedivere's left arm to disable him entirely, seemingly forgoing its own wicked bet, "The little Manswine's all yours, Akoth! I've got the white 'n' shiny one!" Bedivere broke the long shaft of the arrow jutting from his arm to allow him more mobility and not bleed out from the injury. Picking up his dropped sword with his left hand, Bedivere took cover behind Galahad and attempted to take the circular shield from his back and attach it to his right arm, gritting his teeth through the pain. It was a cold and numbing pain that grew outwards from the point of impact like a cold fire which seared the nerves into twitching oblivion, he could still roughly move it, but fine motor control in the limb was fading by the second.

Springing into action at seeing his mentor hit with such a debilitating injury, Galahad brought up his large cruciform shield to block the second magically enhanced bolt that detonated on contact, exploding into a small pulse of black flecked green energy. Planting his feet against the cobbled ground, the scion of Lancelot endured the strike without being pushed back and went to draw his sword when a sixth sense alerted him to the danger bearing down on him.

His golden eyes snapping skyward, the white-haired squire caught a glimpse of a large and rapidly descending figure jumping down at him from the smoldering debris of the smashed gate, warhammer primed to smash his skull in. Bracing both arms on the inside of the shield, he wrenched it upwards into the path of the oncoming storm of iron and intercepted the hammer with a clattorus bang. Four hundred pounds of Uruk slammed down onto the shield causing Galahad's knees to buckle under him, the aspiring knight still managing to shunt the brute away several feet before his back met the ground. The Uruk let out a grunt of annoyance that its initial attack had been thwarted and barreled forth at the now downed squire.

Seeing that he was now down on the ground like a dog, Galahad quickly reached for his dagger to strike at who he assumed was this Akoth, only for the large, pale Uruk to grab his offending arm and give an angered sneer to the prodigious squire, "I was downin' down a nice barrel of Ale, but then you Manswine gyts just had to make me spill it with your noise and killin'. Now I'm gonna kill you and sleep like a babe in a bed after that! And if Tûmhorn ain't done killin' yer shiny Manswine gyt friend by the time I'm done with you, I'll skin 'em alive!" Galahad let go of his dagger to grab it with his free hand, he needed to break free from Akoth's grip before he brought down the hammer atop his skull. The golden eyed young man thrust it into the roughly made armor of the Uruk's vambrace deep into the pale postmarked flesh beneath, drawing an angry shout of pain from Akoth who's iron grip on his wrist loosened a fraction.

Twisting his body enough to maneuver his left leg, Galahad gave an additional kick to the Uruk's face with Akoth finally letting go of him to pull the dagger sticking from his arm whilst his intended prey unsheathing his blade. It was nothing special like those of the Fae blades that Vivian had gifted some of the senior members and the king, nor was it a new Fae construct like Clarent that Sir Naruto had forged, but rather castle forged longsword that he had taken a liking too in training and sharpened to a razor's edge.

Rapping the pommel of his sword against his shield in challenge, Galahad launched himself forwards into combat with the great pale abomination. "Sir Bedivere, I'll handle this one, command the troops!" he shouted to his liege, performing a shield bash into the side of the recovering Akoth.

The Uruk did not take kindly to the rounded edge of the shield catching the side of his chin and withdrew a wicked-looking curved knife from his belt that was practically dripping with Fae script of some kind. "Lil' shit!" he cursed Galahad swinging his hammer again, succeeding in hooking his warhammer's head around the edge of the squire's shield before yanking back hard, the shield tipping forwards and leaving him exposed. Akoth's dagger was little more than a gleaming arc of silver under the light of the moon and would have split open Galahad's throat had the lad not the luck of the devil and the mind of a knight. Angling his sword upwards until it pointed straight upwards, the son of Lancelot waited until he could all but feel the cold silver of the Fae weapon kissing his neck before thrusting his own sword deep into the armpit of the Akoth. The Uruk let out a pained yelp when the castle forged steel pierced through the joint of his knife arm that went limp seconds later, "AAAAAGGGHHH—" Akoth scrambled in pain before Galahad's follow up shield bash had not caught him in the throat.

Continuing to push, Galahad slammed the Uruk into the wall of a building and continued to press the entirety of his weight through his shield against Akoth's throat, meeting those bloodshot amber eyes as they grew more panicked with each second the squire deprived him of oxygen. Dropping his hammer, Akoth used his one good arm to frantically claw at Galahad's face fruitlessly, his razor-sharp nails just out of reach of the one currently choking him. With no warning Galahad twisted the shield and pressed forwards against Akoth's neck until a wet crunch was heard, the tall Uruk's eyes widening before going empty while his body went limp. Letting up on the pressure, Galahad watched the Uruk once known as Akoth slide down the wall dead, his neck snapped and jutting at a sickeningly wrong angle. He lingered there for a moment before running back to the other troops, pocketing the Fae dagger that Akoth had dropped along the way. He was needed now; murderer's guilt could wait.

With the battle now returning to the town, a second wave of malbred creatures seemed to crawl from every shadow to face them, Bedivere could see that they were likely going to be surrounded. Thus, he issued his orders as senior a Knight of the court, "Soldiers, guard yourselves and regroup! Shields up!" The soldiers compiled as they held their own against the incoming horde of Uruks, yet Bedivere was not finished, "Archers regroup and switch weapons! Spears and shields!" Bedivere quickly rushed at Tûmhorn with his shield raised to protect him from incoming fire, yet Bedivere's approach had forced the crossbowman to run through his first quiver of bolts.

Bedivere quickly raised his sword to make a strike that would've bifurcated the Uruk diagonally from right shoulder to left hip, yet the Uruk swung his ironclad crossbow in return resulting in a blade lock, "You and me're gonna have so much fun!" Tûmhorn cackled psychotically. The weapons were placed into a deadlock, with both struggling to overpower the other, yet neither was gaining ground. Bedivere was the superior technical swordsman with far more experience than the crossbowman, but the arrow in his right arm had him wielding his sword with his off-hand, something the physically stronger took advantage of to push down on the gleaming silver blade.

"Rezhdar!"(5)

Suddenly a booming voice accompanied by a bone chilling scream came from the sky, and all the knights winced as their ears were assaulted by the foul sound, yet the Uruk captains simply smirked before Tûmhorn leaned into their deadlock, "Well, I guess the Mistress wasn't puttin' up with you filthy Pinkskins and sent the Shriekers to kill ya!" Bedivere could only wonder just what it was that Morgan had sent after them, with most of the Uruks now retreating, "And that's my cue to let 'em have your head." Breaking off the deadlock, Tûmhorn maneuvered Bedivere's sword away and gave a quick kick to the knight's chest plate before backpedaling to raise his crossbow having reloaded a spare cursed bolt on the fly.

Yet, Bedivere knew better as he quickly closed the gap and swung his sword horizontally, catching the front hook of the weapon sending its aim wide as its owner pulled the trigger, leaving Tûmhorn temporarily vulnerable.

However, a shadowed mist erupted between them with something locking around Bedivere's blade with a firm grip. The shadowy smoke soon cleared and receded into a singular pillar of opaque miasma that grew more humanoid with each passing second, Bedivere could quickly make out the details of his armor and gauntleted hands, his silver blade held fast in an armored left hand while the hooded figure brought his own bastard sword down on him, "Die, worthless knight." With the fell sword poised to strike, the first Knight of the round brought his shield high to protect his head when the blade slammed into the shield with full force, Bedivere gritted his teeth in the face of the terrible weight bearing down upon him pushing him to his limits. Quickly seeing that he needed to get out of this disadvantageous position, Bedivere let his weight shift with the shield rolling off to the side to break free from the Wraith's strength.

Maneuvering behind the shadowy interloper, Bedivere snapped around with his sword as he delivered a horizontal strike to its unguarded back, only for the sword to barely meet any resistance with shadowy wisps rising from the point of contact. Not a touch of flesh within the fell enemy, "What…?" despite the metallic echo his voice held, Bedivere recognized it, "Accolon… what evil has taken hold over you?"

Accolon was one of the men that had participated in the jousting competition years ago when Arturia pulled Caliburn from the stone. The man was a knight that was among the best, having both admiration from the common folk along with the noble status, Accolon was poised for candidacy for membership of their group when he had dropped off the map. He took part in the drawing of the sword, and just as all those before their king, they had failed to draw forth Caliburn. Yet upon witnessing Arturia do the impossible in drawing the sword from stone, Accolon had outright refused to join them, believing that a child was not fit to be a king, nor was Merlin's magics fair to those who he believed was far more fit to take the throne.

His father was one of the rebellious lords who had risen in opposition of the unity, yet he only did so due to political pressure from his close allies and was, in fact, a loyal man to the king. Yet despite these things, Accolon fled his father's service leaving him saddened. What became of him after this was unknown for some thought they saw him sailing west to Ireland. Others say south to Spain, others even say to the east where the Saxons once sailed from. Yet no word of his landfall had ever made it back to British shores.

Now the truth had been revealed. Morgan le Fay had ensnared him, transforming him into a servant of her twisted ambition.

"Reborn anew with strength and power…" Accolon's hollow, metallic voice struck a fearful chord within those present, yet they held their ground, despite the opposition, "…you cannot hold out against us!" Accolon quickly closed the distance between them dashing in a dark mist with sword raised to cleave Bedivere's head, but years of experience aided the latter as he raised his shield to guard himself. As the Wraith's blade struck the shield, the inhuman strength of the man once known as Accolon overpowered Bedivere sending his shield arm to the side of his head, breaking his guard and sending the pale haired knight skidding backwards.

The force of the blow shattered the Radial, Ulna and Humerus bones in Bedivere's right arm with a sickeningly visceral wet crunch, drawing a strangled gasp of pain from its owner as the cursed flesh became peppered with bone chips. It was plain for any soldier to see that Bedivere, brave and wise, was physically outmatched by his opponent by leaps and bounds, as the Wraith saw the opportunity for the killing blow, he twisted his sword into a stabbing grip to drive the blade into his victim's chest to squire the heart.

Though fate said otherwise, as Galahad had finished his fight with the Uruk captain, he ran straight to the back of the Wraith to save his mentor's life. With a thrust through the Wraith's back, causing Accolon to hiss, Galahad soon brought the full attention of Accolon to himself now, "Your fall is inevitable." The Wraith pivoted around to bring the sword down to the young squire's shoulder, yet his cruciform shield was still in his grip to defend himself.

The resounding clang left the Wraith stunned briefly before it quickly retaliated to strike at Galahad's other side, though it was met with the squire's sword, "You may find that our fall shall not be by your blades!" He stared into the masked helm of the Wraith once known as Accolon, only to see nothing of what once a man.

Bedivere saw Galahad now struggling against the Wraith, yet now perhaps despite the loss of his right arm's main strength, they could defeat the enemy before them. Only now was to hold out long enough to give the King time to end her twisted sister.

-Within the Black Castle-

The remaining members of the Round Table had been gathered by Naruto and led into the castle by Arturia, all of whom held their guard up, not knowing what Morgan had laid down to trap any intruders that managed to get this far.

Entering into what could only be assumed as an entrance hall, lacking a grand staircase that led the way above to the next floor, in its place was instead a doorway that led downwards where stone statues of hooded figures stood guard with their swords drawn yet their blades pointed down to the ground.

Despite their mundane appearance, the ornamentation did little to remove the unease the small company had, "We must stay together; do not allow yourselves to separate from our group…." Arturia said as Naruto stood alongside her with Marmyadose emanating a golden light just as Excalibur to push back the gloom, "…we have the element of surprise, but that can only take us so far, for now, we must make haste to find Morgan no matter what lies before us." Turning back to the descending path before them, Arturia led them on to their goal. "Sally forth, do not let yourselves fall to my sister's devilry that putrefies this place."

Lancelot and Gawain held their respective Fae swords up, letting their own light illuminate the way to ensure nothing would catch them off guard. The bluish reflected light of the moon glowed outwards from Arondight, whereas Galatine ignited with a brilliant flame covering the entirety of the blade, both lights speaking of the breath of Sol and Luna illuminating their path. Passing by the statues, Arturia was the first to head down followed by Naruto through a series of arches that separated the hallway off into sections composed of doorways that held no doors but monolithic slabs of obsidian instead.

Naruto snapped his fingers to wordlessly summon a simple mystery to increase the amount of light that they were working with, an orb of white light rising from a small magic circle that spun into existence. He watched as it floated ahead of them beating away the shadows of the hallway until it began to bob slowly once it grew near one of the obsidian monoliths. Eyes sharpening with analytical steel, Naruto held out his hand to halt Arturia's progress into the hallway and indicated for her to watch the light mystery that grew more erratic in its bobbing until it unceremoniously popped and disintegrated into motes of white mana that fell lethargically to the floor. "There is an enchantment upon this hallway, one of Unseelie design going by the music." Naruto said, drawing attention to the eerie music that seemed to resonate through the castle despite being no louder than a whisper.

"Unseelie? The Winter Court has allied with Morgan then." Arturia frowned. Taking a few steps deeper into the hall, she kept her eyes peeled on every shadow and kept her senses sharp to not let any waiting attack pass her notice. "Can you sense the nature of the enchantment, Naruto? Is it intrinsic to the castle itself or the music?" The King inquired, looking over her shoulder at her Arcane Knight.

Naruto's face was one of deep concentration, the other members of the Round Table had remained in the main entrance hall while Naruto puzzled out what the issue was. Approaching one of the pillars Naruto covered his fingers with a flicker of pale blue mana and began to run his fingers along its surface. "Hard to say, my king. Fae Magecraft has always been elusive in its eccentricities with particular attention to illusion and alteration, be that of the weather, space or even time... there's something else though, underneath it." The vampiric blonde's ominous words caused Arturia to turn and face him completely, her silent question apparent. "There's something here, something operating on a grand scale and calling something, I can't pin down what though. Can you feel it?"

Arturia shook her head in negative, all she could feel right now was the disquiet associated with that music reverberating through the walls with each passing second, "No, I don't like this at all."

Naruto gave her a bright and goofy smile in hopes of cheering her up, but it didn't reach his eyes, for in that moment a trap was sprung. All the obsidian monoliths glowed a dark purple as he felt a disgusting mana thrum through the corridor and before Naruto could voice his warning, the passage changed. The Knights behind them called out a warning in vain as the entrance to the hall was consumed by more of that odd obsidian that was several meters thick, sealing the lovers in the now boobytrapped hall. At the far end of the hallway between two more of those hooded statues became covered in swirling lines of Black Speech before projecting a beam of mana between them that widened to cover the entire end of the hallway, upon its surface was a large rotating sigil signaling a powerful Bounded Field had been erected.

"Spatial Quarantine!?" Naruto exclaimed, sprinting towards the sigil in a blur of movement, however, that all came to a screeching halt when the section of floor on which Naruto stood vanished in a flash of mosaic light. Looking down into what had once been the floor, the blonde saw instead a moderately sized opening surrounded by a mosaic-like pattern that he quickly recognized as Flash Air, although that thought was derailed quite suddenly when the feeling of 'calling' he had been sensing underneath the Unseelie enchantment intensified by several orders of magnitude. "Arturia-!" Naruto's startled yelp was cut off when a very physical force from deep in the seemingly bottomless pit locked around the Apostle and dragged him downwards.

"Naruto!" Arturia had turned suddenly to try and reach his hand to prevent this, yet as she soon made contact with the opening, the stone floor reappeared before her, "No!" Scrapping at the floor with her gauntleted hand, Arturia was helpless as Naruto was now separated from her. "NO!"

Lifting Excalibur overhead to bring it down onto the black marble point first with a manic expression in her emerald green eyes, "STRIKE AIR!" she screamed, the Barrier of the Wind King exploding downwards with a lethal force more extraordinary than any drill, burrowing deep into the earth beneath the black marble floor. When the gale of wind and dust had cleared enough to see again, Arturia felt her lower lip tremor as no bright thicket of golden spikes nor ruby red eyes greeted her from below. No, merely a fifty-foot deep hole that she had blasted into the foundations under the castle.

Was there no cheap trick that her feculent excuse for a relation would not stoop to make her feel miserable? Months of frustration born of her ineptitude with how she had handled her waning relationship with her beloved roared to the surface of her soul with a potency far beyond the Holy Sword clutched in her right hand. A shockwave of pure mana exploded from her form with a thundercrack, slamming into the vaulted ceiling to the corridor and sending uncountable spiderweb cracks out from her feet. The golden and blue-tinged magical energy crawled along the walls as she began to walk forwards, each step cratering the ground beneath her the closer she grew to the purple and green magical sigil that blocked her path forwards. A sensible part of her waking mind told her that Naruto would be perfectly fine and would make his way back to her side, that his disappearance was temporary, but that was drowned out by the Dragon lineage roaring in the halls of her mind, "No quarter, Sister! Until I can make this land perfect enough for Naruto and I to be together, then there is no hell I will not rain down upon you Morgan!"

Arturia roared, Excalibur swinging up in a vertical arc through the heart of the slowly rotating sigil bifurcating it with only token resistance, the array attempted to repair the Bounded Field, but cracks continued to splinter outwards from her slice until the bounded field shattered. Gritting her teeth, Arturia summoned her helmet with a thought before donning it and setting off into the bowels of the castle.

The Red Dragon was going to war.

-The Entrance Hall-

With their separation of both the King and Arcane Knight from their company, Gawain swore that they had been divided so easily, "Stay together! Do not let the domain lead us astray!"

Tristan now held his bow up, pointed to their back where the main door had been covered over by that oily black obsidian the moment they were separated from the missing two members of the group, "Perhaps we should've sent in scouts to trip the traps beforehand." he pondered aloud.

Lancelot stood next to the Knight of the Lamentation eyeing the shadows with Arondight at the ready, though he did not fully agree with Tristan's words, "And have those poor souls fall to whatever horrid traps she has within the walls? We take point because we are the only ones with the power to finish this before Morgan regains her foothold." During the initial planning of the raid, Naruto had gone to Vivian hoping to find more information on Morgan's domain, yet all he was able to return with was that they would only encounter very dark and powerful creatures here, along with some knowledge of the mechanics of Fae Magecraft. Yet despite this slight advantage, it wasn't enough to create a foolproof plan as they had strived for in the past.

Agravain, his mind bewitched in loyalty to the King, was not one to allow these situations to upset him, "Do not let this deter you from our goal. Ending evil here and now is what is important. We will find the King and our Arcane Knight in time." The Knight of Black Iron leveled his sword, his enchanted chains at the ready to set upon his mother and turn her vaunted Fae heritage to their advantage.

The three of them had their back to one another, while the Orkney siblings had done the same. Gareth nodded as Gaheris brought his shield up with the former loading Ira Lupus, "Sir Lancelot is right…" Gareth spoke up in defense of the knight she admired most, "…Mot—Morgan…" she quickly corrected herself, "…was never a woman to talk much."

"It would make little sense for her to even speak of her domain among the masses…" Gaheris replied as he recalled how little stood out in his memories of the woman who birthed them into the world, "…I doubt she would do so and risk her schemes along with—" Gaheris was cut off as the stone that was set beneath their feet rose up without warning and shot the siblings up into a new opening that appeared in the roof, isolating the company even further.

"Gawain, Gareth, Geheris!" Lancelot shouted in alarm, rushing into action the moment the pillar of black marble had begun to move, he hefted Arondight delivering a slash that cut the pillar clean in two in the hopes that he could halt the assent. Sadly, by the time that the great slab of black marble had crashed back down to the floor all that was left was the closing of another Flash Air gate having spirited the trio off to parts unknown. For a moment the Knight of the Lake considered the possibility that they could have been smashed to pulp by the ceiling, but a reassuring hand on the shoulder from Tristan kept his mind from becoming distraught.

"Calm yourself, my friend. Had the siblings perished then their entrails would now paint the ceiling and as sad an image as that is, be glad that it has not come to pass." Tristan impressed upon the white and blue armored knight, pointing out that the ceiling bore no red smears or remnants of the absent knights, "They have likely been spirited away to some other place in the castle, perhaps to the source of the dreadful music." Tristan's nose wrinkled at having to call that eerie droning anything close to music.

Agravain scoffed at the notion that Gawain could be felled so easily, "Knowing that Sun-loving gorilla, he would simply have collided with the ceiling and stuck there without so much as a scratch." He knew that even without his power gained from the Sun that Gawain was perhaps the sturdiest member of the Round Table after the King and Naruto, even Lancelot had been forced to wait until nightfall to be able to win a spar against him, any other time would result in a stalemate.

With the Orkney siblings now separated, the rest of the dwindling cohort were left alone in the entrance hall as the atmosphere became tense with Tristan now seeing the strategy, "Morgan is separating us, one at a time or in groups. She will send more abominations to deter us from reaching our goal."

Nodding in agreement, Lancelot removed his helm to allow him a greater field of vision in the purposefully dark antechamber, his now shoulder-length curtain of deep purple hair framing his face as he focused on the obsidian construct that had sealed off the path forwards. "Best we push on then before our enemy gets more blatant in her assaults," Lancelot commented, assuming command of their little group, approaching the obsidian and allowing Arondight to become flush with mana once again. Glowing brightly, the Knight of the Lake plunged the gold and white greatsword into the heart of the malefic glass with great force, letting out a roar as he wrenched the blade upwards and the black glassy surface shattered into thick chunks that clattered to the floor around them.

"Subtlety is out of the window then." Tristan trilled in mock amusement, a single eye opening to survey what lay beyond the now cleared doorway, seeing that as opposed to the hallway of arches that they had seen the King and Arcane Knight vanish into they instead faced an ascending staircase illuminated by flickering green torches. "How in the blazes?"

"Flash Air…" Agravain answered the redhead's unsaid question in a clipped voice that was the epitome of businesslike, "…or the Fae equivalent, it lets the user displace and duplicate space, Morgan tends to use it to string together labyrinths for her amusement." He explained in a detached and almost bored voice, Naruto's enchantment had reassigned the parts of his mind associated with loyalty away from Morgan and towards Arturia, so he was all too willing to spill the beans on most of Morgan's pastimes and eccentricities.

It didn't change the fact that he was a borderline insufferable asshole with all the charisma of a brick wall.

Lancelot spat in distaste, raising Arondight as a light source, leading the trio beyond the threshold and up the stairs. "Charming woman, your mother, any clue what else she has locked up in here? Perhaps a litany of children that she passes the time torturing or maybe instruments of torture, is that where you picked up the habit?" Lancelot replied coolly. He and Agravain had never been on the best of terms, and the revelation of his true colors before Naruto's borderline enslavement of him had only gone a step further to condemn the Black Iron of having a blacker heart.

"Tch, keep focused on the mission, du Lac, if I have more important information then I will tell you when it becomes important, I have already told the King all I know." Agravain hissed through gritted teeth, the dislike was entirely mutual.

-Naruto-

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Naruto found himself flashing back to one of the many hideouts of a snake faced Sannin as he tumbled down the seemingly frictionless shaft that the Flash Air gate had dragged him. He berated himself for falling for something as simple as Flash Air, but more importantly, his adrenaline-soaked brain and tactile mind assessed the situation. The most detrimental thing he was able to perceive was, oxymoronically, his lack of perception, the walls of the shaft having been sanctified with some form of Magecraft that dampened his five senses and somehow prevented his arcane senses from looking beyond his immediate position. He could not sense Arturia, nor any of the other Knights, nor did he know quite how long or far he had been falling as every dozen or so feet a new Flash Air gate opened sending him to another equally black hole.

Falling down the shaft, Naruto attempted to try and halt his fall with Marmyadose by holding it up above his head to catch the wall, but it did little more cut into the stone on one side of the cavern as he continued to fall, feeling some force pulling him down deliberately, deeper into the domain than he liked, "Fucking hell!" Seeing no other option before him, Naruto oriented himself until he was falling in a straight pencil drop before sending a mental prompt to the four crystalline spears floating behind him. They responded instantly to their master's thoughts and arranged themselves beneath his feet into a cross that dug into the walls of the never ending pitfall, grinding his downward momentum to ever lower speeds when he noticed that an end to the fall was fast approaching.

Bracing himself for impact, Naruto thrust the spears further into the walls bringing him to an abrupt halt at the mouth of this apparent pathway to hell. Peering down into the massive barren area splayed out before him, the blonde rationalized that it must have been at one point some great underground lake that had since been drained, perhaps twenty-five kilometers across and two miles from his current position to the ground. Owing to the fact that he would have smashed into that ground at several times terminal velocity had he not arrested his momentum, Naruto winced, "That would've hurt like hell." The blonde muttered a short aria to initiate a basic wind mystery to increase the effect of wind resistance acting upon him before letting himself drop between the spears into the cavern below. Gliding down the two miles to ground gracefully as the spears emerged from the hole in the cavern's ceiling and returned to their sentinel post at his back, Naruto's feet touched the ground lightly.

'As much as I'd make a comment about that, we've got worse things to worry about right now.' Kurama chided his partner. Indeed, he had not simply fallen down here but instead been pulled by something and whatever it was powerful and old. Yet, despite how dark it felt, it didn't feel like Morgan's doing. The trap of Flash Air sure, but the force that kept pulling him down into the depths of this place? No… that was something else entirely… 'It feels like we're being watched, but from where though…?' Tightening his grip on Marmyadose, Naruto found himself silently nodding in agreement with the fox.

Peering around the massive room with his reinforced vampiric eyes, he saw that the cavernous space was not as natural as he had first assumed, Naruto saw massive circular stone pillars of a design he had never seen before. Each one was formed of three ovaloid shapes intersecting with one another in a triangular fashion and pierced a perfect circle, their outer surface was fluted with geometric insets that ran the length of the pillars. Stranger still was the veins of light that ran through each and every one of them in patterns of shimmering greens and silvers that illuminated the otherwise dark hole. They proliferated throughout the entirety of the cavern with many being broken but a few reaching the entire two miles to the ceiling, "These pillars don't match the architecture of Morgan's castle. What is this place?" He had never heard of anything else other than perhaps leftovers from the Roman occupation of Britain that had come to an end nearly a century ago. "But nothing on this scale," Naruto affirmed, cautious of this discovery.

Kurama nodded in silent affirmation of Naruto's thoughts, something about this place was rankling inside his mind, it held a damning freedom to it that was just alien compared to the rest of the world above. 'Wait…' Kurama said, stopping Naruto in his tracks as the fox extended his senses to the limits of this strange cavern of other space, 'How well do you think you can call on my power?' The fox's words drew a mental pause from the apostle who did not know what to think of such an arbitrary and random question.

"Kurama, what are you talking about?" Naruto asked, receiving no reply beyond the distinct impression that the Tailed Beast was deep in concentration about something, so after checking his surroundings for any hidden foes or other traps, he allowed his mind to be dragged into Kurama's space in his mindscape. Feeling the familiar tug at the back of his consciousness heralding his arrival, the blonde was once again happy that his work to construct a Reality Marble had done away with the sewer of a mind he had been stuck with before, eyes opening to look at Kurama in his usual meadow of grass before the still under construction castle.

Atypical from his usual position sprawled out half asleep in the warmth generated by the bands of light that served as a sun in the sky of his mindscape, Kurama was instead sat up on his haunches legs crossed in Lotus style. Nine long russet orange tails curled up behind him like a halo of for or a bestial Kan'on with his two humanlike hands clasped in the Snake Hand Seal. "Kurama?" he asked before finally realizing that something was off.

Chakra, blinding and fathomless chakra practically wafted off of the Tailed Beast in a vapor of golden light into the sky far above them in ways that he had not seen in nearly a century. In the ground around the Nine Tails, sprouted numerous plants of great diversity and virility, the meadow came alive with a veritable tide of Lavenders, gilded Chrysanthemums, platinum Lily's and many thousands of wildflowers that Naruto could not name. With a rumbling of the earth did great trees burst from the soil developing to full growth in a matter of seconds and standing as tall as any grove from around the walls of Konoha, great Oaks, and Maples made up the majority of the new first. At the same time, the bamboo forest he had mentally cultivated before grew to scrape the imaginary sky while veins of silver birches ran through the new heartland like a cardiovascular system.

The blonde looked around in shock mixed with fond remembrance for there was only one time when he had witnessed this kind of reaction from plant life even if mental. "Your chakra… it's been unleashed! Unrestricted!" Naruto exclaimed with shocked joy, Kurama opening a single giant red eye and giving his partner a vulpine grin.

"Exactly! Wherever this cavern is, no Counter Force is acting on it to limit how my power flows into you and around your body, at least no Alaya or so little of it that it is's been reduced to being a non-factor." Kurama explained, slouching back into his usual sitting position close to Naruto.

The Uzumaki pondered what the cause of this could be, although he, like Kurama, was jubilant that at least for the time being a fair percentage of Kurama's power had been returned to him by coming to this place.

Allowing himself to fade back to consciousness, Naruto began to trek through the cavern while continuing his mental conversation with Kurama. "This can't be anywhere on the surface texture of the World, or else Alaya's presence would be known, but Flash Air can't displace space at a distance beyond a few kilometers under ideal conditions, so geographically we must still be in Britain."

He briefly considered that they were perhaps standing on the Reverse Side before casting such an idea aside going by the fact that there were still some trace elements of Alaya present, even if extremely weak. This location must have been some kind of interstice where the physical characteristics of the surface texture above them, joined with the magical and conceptual attributes of lower textures. Crossing the distance to one of the pillars, Naruto realized that he misjudged just how massive the pillars were as just one was perhaps ten feet in diameter, yet upon closer inspection, the architecture felt… dark… foul… perverted. The pillars had their veinlike trails of light had been tampered with seeing some jagged chisel marks with what appeared to be inscriptions of… Black Speech? This cavern had to be tens of thousands of years old, so who the hell built it?

He set his features in a contemplative frown as he tried to understand the mechanics of the inscriptions, the Black Speech was the most challenging part of decoding as its intricacies were designed to befuddle all but the one that had written it. However, after ten minutes of study he was able to pick out a few of the outlying matrices and hazard an educated guess at what would fit into the gaps between, "To beckon Divinity and flow the planet's might into it." Naruto concluded eventually, still feeling like he was missing something important here.

Kurama took this moment to voice his own theory, 'Maybe it was a trap for you? Take your Divinity off the board to weaken the siege?'

Naruto shook his head, "No, one thing that I can say for sure is that we caught Morgan off guard with this attack, she wouldn't have had the time to set this up without YEARS of prior knowledge." Taking a step back from the pillar, he traced the veins of Mana all the way to the ceiling above and the pinprick of darkness that was the hole he had been dragged in through. "If the castle's defenses are automated, then it's more likely that this Magecraft latched onto me because of my Divinity. I was dragged down here by accident, not by design."

But even as Naruto felt some relief that he had begun to understand what had brought him here, a plethora of ever more confusing questions took their place in his mind. The flow of Mana through this place seemed to go nowhere beyond the length of the pillars that still lacked an origin. Was Morgan pumping up more potent Mana from down here to power her monstrosity of a fortress? If so then what was the need to beckon Divinity, the only vestiges of the Gods of Britain had faded before Naruto had even arrived in this world with them either shifting to higher dimensions or disseminating back into the thoughts and beliefs that had given them form.

"This makes no sense…" Naruto spoke aloud to himself. Shaking his head at this discovery knowing that he didn't have the time to dawdle at this, he made his way through the massive cavern for several minutes until he saw a deep red light reflected off the walls, coupled with what sounded like chanting, "…that doesn't sound good." His tone was one of worry and rightfully so as the closer he drew to the chanting.

Turning the corner, Naruto's eyes widened in slight shock, yet also astonishment with what he was seeing.

A massive chamber with many figures all garbed in black robes and hoods, each one holding a gnarled staff whittled from some oily looking black wood that practically stank of twisted emotions and suffering. Enhancer-type Mystic Codes he realized. They all encircled what appeared to be a large pit of fire, stone and… magma? Their robes seemed to be sewn with some circuit-esque pattern that held an almost imperceptible light, likely some form of minor mystic code to protect them from the hazardous environment. As the chanting's volume and speed picked up, an armored Mage-Uruk, likely a Necromancer specialist, in black robes stepped out among them as he began speaking amongst the chanting of the Magi, "Great progenitor! We call you to the shallows of the World! Your domain is under assault by infidels and retches!"

At the edges of Naruto's senses, he could feel it, a stirring that he had been feeling ever since the shadow fortress had been shown off to the world, a half-remembered memory from lifetimes prior. A charge in the air of some great storm slowly approaching that would soon break upon him with its unspeakable power that sent shivers down his spine. 'This feeling… it's like Kaguya all over again!'

As he began shouting, Naruto took notice of what appeared to be a pulley system hauling a massive body, wrapped up in bindings each one lovingly detailed with cursive Black Speech and other schools of Magecraft's symbols of power. Runes of the Norse, Glyphs of the Egyptian school of Magecraft, Alchemical syntax and many more he could not place at this distance. Hoisting the mummified figure up into the air, four Olog's working the cranks to drag the colossal body in front of the ramshackle alter before pulling a lever letting the body drop into the fiery pit. The Magi channeled indigo mana down into the pit, where the flames turned darker with the ritual.

Getting a better look at the corpse, he saw part of it was exposed with some unruly hair showcasing itself, and judging by the size and frame of it, it was… the corpse of Escanor!

The lead Magus began to channel his own Mana into the pit as he continued shouting with the ritual, "Forgotten giant of the time before man, we offer you the body of your kin, one blessed in life with the Numeral of the Burning One, come back from the Sea of Imaginary Numbers where you have slept!" The chanting grew louder, and pulses of the oncoming Divinity grew in intensity as the corpse of the proud giant was dragged beneath the surface of the magma.

Naruto was shocked at this declaration. Morgan intended to revive a faded god as a power source! "Son of a bitch…" Gritting his teeth at the revelation, Naruto could see that this plan had been in the works for some time, "…I need to stop this now." He needed to act fast to prevent this profane, yet profound earthen apotheosis from reaching its completion lest a God falls into the hands of their enemy. Going by the chain of Mana connecting all the hooded Magi and coursing into the leader of their little coven before traveling into the pool, it seemed that the leader was the bottleneck in the ritual. Taking him out of the picture should disrupt it just enough for whatever was being called to fall back into slumber.

Ergo, kill the leader, let the lackeys scatter.

Willing the four pale green spears away while extracting Carnnewan from the storage compartment within the main 'blade' of Marmyadose, Naruto crouched low before using a trigger image to activate his first Mystic Code's power. The shadow of the pillar that the blonde hid behind grew darker and deeper until the path was opened and he slipped into the realm of shadows without a sound. 'Swimming' from shadow to shadow was achieved less through physical movement and more willing yourself to move to the desired location amidst tides of nothingness. The long shadows cast by the pillars made ample swimming lanes to not be spotted, and the 'surface' of the black sea opened out above him in great swaths.

The sea of shadows was a remarkably tricky place to navigate the deeper that you delved into its depths, the only reference point were the openings on the surface where shadows touched surfaces, entry and exit only being afforded through shadows that were large and dark enough for Naruto's body to fit through. Straying outside of these shadow lanes made Naruto's own shadow appear on the surface world above so he continued to pass from one lane to the other the closer he drew to the congregation. Passing out of the last long shadow of the pillars, Naruto shifted between the shadows of the Magi who were all so wrapped up in their chanting and making sure to pass their Mana to the chief amongst them that they never noticed their own shadows briefly growing darker as he drew closer to the stage.

Waiting until there was no margin for error, Naruto lunged up from the chief magus shadow like a great white breaching the surface of the water, burying Carnwennan so deeply into his back that the tip of the blade poked from the front of his chest. The nameless Mage-Uruk let out a startled gasp as the Apostle severed his Aorta and Pulmonary vein in one deft thrust, arms falling to his sides limply. Cries of shock and anger rippled outwards from the coven seeing their leader so mercilessly cut down from behind, the blonde pulling his knife from his back and letting the Magus crumple to the ground without so much as a gurgle of protest from his blood-soaked lips.

Planting Marmyadose into the stage Naruto turned to face the cohort of Morgan's followers ready for a fight, but instead of anger or fear in their eyes, Naruto saw a manic glee take hold on their shadowed faces. Before he could give voice to either a proclamation of death or a demand to surrender the group all called out in a single voice, "For our Mistress, we give our lives to give rise to the great progenitor!" Each and every one of the forty or so followers withdrew a long and thin dagger from their robes before unceremoniously drawing them over their own throats. Fountains of blood rushed out from the open throats of several dozen Magi in squalls of sanguine viscera, painting the floor as they crumpled to the ground like their deceased leader, sickening smiles on their faces.

For a moment an eerie silence fell over the cavern before the ground started to shake, the spilt blood beginning to glow before morphing into motes of red Mana that sank into the magma and turned its fire a horrid shade of red.

"Dammit!" Naruto shouted before jumping backwards off of the stage when a crack formed down its center, 'Greater Rituals can be expedited by ritualistic sacrifice!' he remembered as the fire exploded upwards in a pillar of flame that scraped the ceiling of the massive chamber.

'Naruto, it's started, whatever it is, it's rising.' While his partner had been dealing with the Magi leader, the Tailed Beast had been trying to sense what it was they were about to deal with only to be met with a mental apparition of a tremendous earthen fire rising to the surface like an oncoming volcanic eruption. Calling forth the crystalline spears after returning Carnwennan to its compartment, Naruto turned towards the open pit and gazed down into fire to make out that there were three thick troughs dug into the ground around the pit in a helical pattern. Within them bubbled a viscous black liquid that practically writhed with a miasma of negative emotions given physical form.

A deep chime of infrasound prickled the hairs at the nape of Naruto's neck seconds later, all around him the pillars that spanned the expanse of the hall began to shift in color from silvery green to brilliant red. The ground around them turned putrid and boggy as cracks of this malefic power ran down from the ceiling towards the noxious gunk that surrounded the thermal gateway. "She wasn't drawing power up to her castle, Morgan was sending the Primordial Curse down into here!" Naruto realized too late, the pillar of flame shifting from blood red to umbral black edged by brilliant red. "Kurama!"

'I know! I'm thinking!' Kurama barked in response, seeing the dire nature of the situation playing out before them.

His thoughts were cut short by his partner, directing his eyes to the blackened mana pillar. Taking a few steps closer to it, Naruto could make out a massive creature rising up from the magma, yet it was shrouded in fire entirely, with a large body that could've likely have brought down the walls of Camelot with a single blow. As it continued rising, it stretched forth a hand to grip the top of the metaphorical surface as it showcased its might without even attacking, just by its appearance alone. It had a large tail like that of a dragon's and armor to protect its hide, a thick Divine aura mixing disgustingly with the muck of the primordial curse. A craven idle of stone and flame approaching the shape of a man yet twisted by hate and malice, almost like a demon, it was without a doubt a God and vibrated the earth with every step it took beyond its emergence.

"Before civilization came to the isles of Britain, in the fires of ancient man did a deity take shape"

Naruto quoted from a text even Merlin had considered ancient. Then he soon saw the head of the being; a massive, inhuman head with a pair of horns like a demon curving out from the rear before turning to the front.

"Before the Allfather pierced the hide of Ymir, before great Lugh struck down Balor, on the Isle of Britain, one stood, and man named it… Gogmagog!" His eyes widened in shock at the revelation.

It was Gogmagog. The fiery giant that Brutus of Troy had fought tooth and nail with the blessings of the Fae and Apollo to strike down to allow humans to settle in Britain and push back against the darkness of the land. The fiery giant turned its attention directly to Naruto as it conjured flaming wings where it soon gave a loud, blazing hiss before it spoke with a voice that boomed with power, "Kayân bugan!"(6) Gogmagog stepped out of the pillar of fire fully to stand in at a terrifying one hundred and fifty meters, he conjured up a flaming whip that he pulled back before shooting it straight at the arcane warrior who had dodged the whip's flames, though his ears took one hell of a hit from the shockwave. It was like a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning that came from his peripheral vision.

The muddy bog that had become the floor of the cavern was instantaneously rendered solid by the mere presence of Britain's flaming Divinity, its form clad head to toe in a scorching heat haze that warped the air around it. Naruto was immediately aware of the sweat that had begun to bead at his brow from this thing's presence alone, and he was once more witness to the tremendous power of a God's authority.

Gogmagog's hateful flaming eyes tracked Naruto as a man would a fly that he was intent to squash, a glitter of something behind the fire was Naruto's only warning. Jumping backwards, Naruto's advanced senses were able to watch in morbid fascination as the area on which he had been standing was consumed in a conflagration of black fire that made no sound, the air around it exploding at its presence and unleashing a shockwave that he miraculously managed to avoid.

Setting off into a sprint between the pillars he did not need to see Gogmagog to know that the God was now in pursuit, the ground rumbling under each footfall, "Some of that thinking would be nice about now!" Naruto shouted at Kurama, dodging out of the way of another black fire projectile that consumed the bottom of a pillar. Kurama's negative emotion sensing was giving him a heads up every time the flaming giant's gaze locked on to him, giving him just enough time to dodge the eye-based explosion attack Gogmagog was using. "Fuck it! While you ponder the greater mysteries of life, I'm going to fight back!"

Crossing his fingers in a familiar hand sign, three more Naruto's appeared in puffs of smoke before spitting off in separate directions. Gogmagog gave a guttural roar of angered confusion at seeing the blonde Divinity apparently split into four parts, extending its flaming wings and beating them twice to send waves of superheated air to swat away the annoyances. Naruto and the clones responded by taking refuge behind four respective pillars standing at the cardinal directions around Gogmagog and springing up them at blistering speeds. 'I have a plan, but we haven't done it in 100 years, so I don't know how it's going to affect your current body, remember how we had a time limit the first time? Don't exactly want it to time out on us with an angry god bearing down on us.' Kurama said, sensing his partner forming Memory Partitions and accelerating his thoughts.

Naruto's eyes widened slightly but did not take them away from the fiery Gogmagog, a Rasengan swirling into existence in his right hand before taking on a deep blue hew when he added in water natured Mana with the Chakra. "How long do you need to get it running?" he asked, the Rasengan expanding in size to that of a basketball before a familiar bell-like screech began to permeate the air as four white shuriken blades of energy expanded from the ever larger growing attack.

'Thirty seconds! Hold him off till then and don't get cocky, Counter Force or no, a God is a hard opponent to fight!' Kurama replied, assuming the Lotus position in Naruto's Mindscape and beginning to gather his Chakra. Naruto smiled in fond remembrance of days gone past as he continued to let his attack grow in size and power while Gogmagog dealt with his clones below.

The ancient god of the Britons moved with speed unfitting of its size, using its stony arms to block the deluge of spells and mysteries that Naruto's clone had been pelting it with, most of them had little effect on his body, but one clone had been able to land a lucky lance of lightning into his eye, so it made sure not to take the blonde lightly.

One clone's Marmyadose opened its blade and began to radiate a blinding light of Hope that drew Gogmagog's attention, unleashing a beam of destructive energy much like Excalibur with a swing that caught the giant in the chest, drawing a shriek of pain from the beast as well as partially dissipating its fiery armor. Understanding that the clones posed more threat then it had initially anticipated was the impetus for the festering ball of fire to change tact, its flaming whip condensing in on itself to form a demonic looking spear that it swung laterally at the three clones. The first clone on one of the pillars was caught dead on by the conflagration and popped without so much as a word, the second attempted to dodge but was caught up in the rubble of the pillars being launched at it at relativistic speed. The last clone had proved agile enough to avoid the spear but was quickly incinerated when Gogmagog's black fire exploded into existence on his form.

Letting out a raptus below, Gogmagog thumped his stony chest in victory over the clones as the fire like armor began to reform over him, but he turned to look heavenward upon seeing the buildup of magical power. Naruto hovered several hundred feet above him with a truly massive Rasenshuriken held aloft over his head, its bell-like wail drawing out the sound of the giant ever-present conflagration.

Recognizing the power of the technique and not exactly wanting to be hit by it, Gogmagog prepared a counter of his own. Chanting in eldritch Black Speech that reverberated off the grand cavern's walls, the flaming spear collapsed in on itself to a single ball of fire resting in the god's right hand before beginning to grow in both size and candescence. In a matter of seconds, Gogmagog held what appeared to be a small sun some eighty feet in diameter with a visible heart of black fire.

Shockwaves began to form in the air between Naruto and Gogmagog from the two extreme air temperatures clashing like the advent of a storm, the beginnings of a hurricane taking form around them. Naruto grit his teeth before raising Marmyadose above his head and into the bottom of the hybrid of Jutsu and Magecraft, "Go back to the shadows! There is no force on this Earth that I will not slay to see her smile again! Sing, Marmyadose!"The staff glowed with brilliant golden light that shrouded Naruto and forced Gogmagog to squint, traveling upwards into the Rasenshuriken and doubling its size, the symbol of the Avalon Fae bursting to life as a golden sigil deep within its Nucleus. Around each hemisphere of the Rasenshuriken formed six additional smaller Rasenshuriken made of golden mana, 'Water Style: Planetary Archmagus Rasenshuriken'.

"Eat it!" Naruto cried, swinging the staff down and sending the country destroying attack at Gogmagog with godspeed.

Gogmagog did not take this lying down and launched his own black sun in response, the manifestation of its authority over fire turning pillars to glass as it rocketed passed. As the two attacks collided there was no explosion or thunderclap of sound, sound itself fell away from the world as the two forces of nature ground against one another each hoping to consume the other before finally, the Rasenshuriken won out by a hair's breadth. Upon detonation, the hybrid attack expanded into a spiraling vortex of unfathomable water currents and steam that quickly quenched what was left of the black sun before catching Gogmagog full in the face.

Sound crashed back into the world as hundreds of billions of nano-thin blades of water crashed into the giant's upper body grinding away at it painfully. Even amidst the deafening cacophony of the chamber now full of thick steam, the god's cry of pain rang true, screeching in agony as it attempted to endure the attack that sat in the petaton range.

Eventually, his clawed feet came loose, and the smoldering giant was launched across the steam-filled chamber and into the wall at massively hypersonic speeds, tons of dust and debris brink kicked up by its arrival there. Gods, however, are not beings that one can simply put down with a single attack.

A roar of righteous fury emerged from the hole in the wall as the debris was reduced to molten slag by the sudden step up in heat, Gogmagog bursting from the wall accompanied by a mushroom cloud of flame. Clearing up, the ancient God of the Britain was in a poor state but still very much alive, its fiery armor had been dreaded down to black vapor that attempted to reignite as its draconic tail beat angrily against the molten floor. Gogmagog's left arm was mangled with numerous cracks marring its oily stone surface, fire moving to heal the damage slowly. Its head though had borne the brunt of the Rasenshuriken's bite with a horn being sheared off and the left orbit of its eye lacerated with deep fissures from which magma-like ichor flowed. Fists shaking for a few seconds, two weapons formed in each hand as the flaming wings intensified their fire, the return of the whip in its left hand and a thick claymore made of magma and black fire in its right.

But Gogmagog was not the only one to step up his game.

Out of the fog stepped a great golden figure as tall as the ancient god made of flaming golden power and marked with black markings from head to toe, a swirling spiral on its stomach and Avalon's brand across its chest. Nine long tails and a snarling vulpine head met the fiery gaze of Gogmagog and within its eyes glowed the light of the Crimson Moon. "Well, that was certainly smoother than last time, how does it feel to be out in the open for the first time in a century?" Naruto asked with a grin, his form swathed in golden Chakra deep in Kurama's energy-based head.

"Like taking my first breath in an aeon, liberating!" Kurama replied happily as it continued to stare down Gogmagog, "I feel like I'm stronger than our battle with Brunestud so long ago, let's tear this slag heap limb from limb!" The fox's battle lust had not dulled from another hundred years of peaceful cooperation with his partner if anything it had grown the new heights. "Look at me now Shukaku you little shit! I am, without a doubt, the strongest Tailed Beast on this planet!"

Gogmagog watched the fox wearily before its flaming eyes zeroed in on the energy fox's new red orbs, "Bruuuuuunnnnneeeeeessssstttttuuuuuuddddddd." it ground out, voice sounding like tectonic plates grinding against one another. "Urush rogurrun nan! Pûr'muk ungur nash!"(7) His voice boomed once more with evil intent, as the giant and fox stared down one another. Eventually, the God cracked its whip in challenge before falling into what might have been called a stance.

"I don't know what the hell you just said, but if you think you're going to kill us, you'll have to try harder than that." Kurama taunted the giant as the two soon charged at one another. It seemed that finally after a whole century or so, Naruto would finally be able to battle with nothing held back against a god. And just like before, he had someone he loved he was willing to fight for.

Musings of a Wizard Marshall

By K.Z.S.

Fuck the Fae II: Non-Euclidean Boogaloo

Now, some of you reading this may be wondering, 'Kischer you handsome grandpa you, did we not already fuck the Fae?' to which I would reply that who are you and how did you get in to reading my memoirs... unless this has been put on sale on some kind of multiversal craigslist. Not the first time that has happened. But I digress, the reason for my return to talking about the knife eared tricksters is due to a recent event involving a particular heartless doctor having an altercation with one in the common era that has Policies up in arms, and anything that makes Policies pull their hair out is enough to rekindle my muse.

'The Fae' in actuality is not a specific term as opposed to a branching term used to describe a litany of species that fall under their banner. Fairies, pixies, gnomes, some wood and water nymphs, as well as true High Fae which have their own seemingly endless list of variations that would take far too long to describe and detail.

During the Age of Fae and far further back they could be found all over Europe, Asia, the Orient, Australia, Africa and even in North America… not south though considering not one but TWO Ultimate Ones living there scared them enough to leave the continent be.

When speaking of the Fae's organizational structure, they tend to form up into 'courts' in specialized textures located close to the surface of the planet and in turn ply their trade as tricksters, illusionists and occasionally making items that surpass even the Gods in terms of power. The British Isles had three such courts with scattered courts of Fae affiliated with each of the big three.

The Avalon Fae hold court in the lost Avalon and are venerated for their geniality and beingness relative to their Gaelic brethren, they would still get you drunk and strap you to a tree covered in honey, but they would let you down... eventually... probably. They are led by King Oberon and Queen Titania with their court being regarded as the 'strongest' and most tolerant of humans.

The Gaelic Fae are split into two courts, Seelie (Summer) and Unseelie (Winter), the former being loveable tricksters who enjoy squirrelling children and other people off to their timeless land in Tir na Nog to play forever.

The latter are the kind to set your house of fire with you inside and bewitch your senses to not see, hear, smell or feel it. Cackling and shitting themselves as you burn. The only thing that prevented truly massive clashes was the prior mediation by the now faded gods of the Tuatha de Danan, needless to say when they faded that the two courts were a bit more liberal in their messing with humans after they left. It was not until Avalon united that they considered stopping for fear of Titania and Oberon's might.

But it is said, that on the Isle of Mann, on the night of Samhain and if the conditions are just right that one lucky enough may be able to gaze in upon the meeting between Titania and Oberon of Avalon, Queen Mab of the Seelie and King Arawn of the Unseelie. Who is to say what those meetings consist of today? How they must have argued upon the fall of the gleaming silver city and maybe, just maybe, what if their Lynchpin returned?

Done, and damn, this took a while as I was running into a few issues of how the fights would go down and be broken up into who vs who. Originally this chapter was double the length, but my beta pointed out that the back half of the chapter was suffering from a few inconsistencies, so I decided to break it in two as to not deprive you guys of a chapter while I worked on it. I do hope that everyone enjoyed the Tolkien elements in this chapter as a means to also expand on what was in the TYPE-MOON Arthurian Legend, and I do hope that we get the English Lostbelt soon to see what's going on in it as it may prove useful in some manner.

Anyways, here's a list of the translations of the non-English lines of the chapter though the first line is not Black Speech, but Quenya instead –

(1) No evil can hide here... I command you to go away! I order you to reveal yourself!

(2) May the soul of thine sibling endow you with life in time.

(3) Come forth my lovers, my wraiths. Stamp out those who would do me harm.

(4) Bone of the father, unwillingly given. Blood of thyself, willingly sacrificed. Flesh of the sibling, forcibly taken. Let time bring you forth, and take form thine puppet.

(5) Retreat!

(6) I am woken!

(7) I am the flame imperishable! Your escape is death!

I hope that this chapter was enjoyable to everyone, as I tried to get it out before Halloween, but sad to say nothing ever goes as planned.

Most likely my next chapter update after the second part to this chapter, will either be the Marvel story, or my Bleach story. With my Marvel story, it seems to be getting a lot of unnecessary dislikes due to the angle I am choosing to start from. Anyways, the first arc of the Bleach story though has been finished and looking more promising with that fanbase being more positively receptive with what the story will likely grow into.

The next chapter will cover the rest of the Siege as well as Mordred and Ywain's suppression of the Rebellion which should bring an end to this Arc (Glory) of the story.

The next Arc of the Camelot act is Fall followed by its aftermath, Ashes, and likely going to be the most emotional chapters that I've ever written.

So, please continue to read, review, favorite and follow this story as well the others on my profile, and be sure to let me know what you guys liked and/or disliked about the new chapter.

Until next time ;) !