Cassiopeia hung suspended in the blown out window as the bodies she control spread over the walls and down toward the floor. The area below where Peter had suspended the rock with his webs had emptied out. All of the civil servants were already at the door to the throne room trying to get out into the hall to safety.

Reinhard looked to Peter as the Inquisitor hung in front of them several feet away. "Do you think you can get her away from those people she's controlling?" He asked.

"I can try," Peter said.

"Do it then, I don't want to risk killing all of them when I attack."

Peter flipped up onto the ceiling, sticking himself there and taking aim to fire twin jets of web at her body. If he could hit her he could snatch her out of their grasp—that might be enough.

Before the webs could find purchase on her, the hands from the people she controlled slapped out to block them. They were caught by him and stuck, maybe this was something else he could do, Peter would just pull them free and rescue them. Even if they were controlled it seemed that she needed them around her.

He yanked the pair back so that they sailed through the air, their eyes were dark and the expression on their faces vacant. One of them couldn't have been older than twelve if that—and she just had them like this?

Then his tingle flared to life, Peter dropped from the ceiling and webbed himself backward out of their range just in time for them to explode like missiles when they neared him. The ceiling where he had been was scorched black and he eyed Cassiopeia and then looked to Reinhard.

"Th-the people are bombs somehow, she's made them into bombs!" Peter shouted.

"I fear it may be too late for them. It seems that whatever she's done, she had to kill them or find them dead first to do it," Reinhard said. He touched his blade, only for a second as if asking permission and then he released the hilt of it.

"Not yet," the young knight said. "We have a few other choices."

A moment later Cassiopeia fired another couple of people at the rock suspended above the ground and they exploded, severing the webs and sending the rock plummeting to the floor with Reinhard on it.

He probably could have survived the fall, he made the jump up there with enough ease. Peter wasn't willing to risk it, he webbed the rock from his spot on the ceiling and held it up. As he brought it up he pulled it back to steady its swinging.

"You got this you got this you got this you got this you got this…" Peter drew Reinhard and the boulder back just as ice spikes formed on all sides of Peter, these weren't the usual rounded ones that he had seen in the past they were razor sharp and meant to do the maximum damage possible.

Left to their own devices the candidates for ruler had mostly stayed frozen at the front of the room with their knights to protect them. Though the immediate threat was no where near here and their numbers consisted of three of the most capable combatants in the room.

Priscilla pressed her fan to her lips, watching the mass of people gathering at the door as the controlled mass of bodies crept down the wall toward them. She glanced to the other women around her and to Al. "Are you going to run for that door?" She asked.

"We could be caught by those things and trampled," Anastasia said.

"We can hold a number of them off of the civil servants and the others in the room, see if we can clear a path," Crusch said.

"Then we follow my plan of stay back and attack from a distance—it will work out for me as all things do," Priscilla said.

Felt yelled in Priscilla's face. "What makes you think you can boss me around?"

"Princess, we need to cut all that out. It looks like Night of the Living Dead in here and you're picking fights," Al said.

"I'm going to help Peter," Emilia said darting off with her arms back as she ran. Peter had just caught Reinhard and the boulder and was fighting to keep it all from swinging too hard. If that woman attacked him now he could lose control and crush people under the rock. She ran as fast as she could toward that side of the room with Puck zipping along beside her.

"Puck, now!"

"I see it, I see it," he said.

Spikes of ice appeared around Peter to both guard him and be the next barrage of attacks. She fired a volley of the ice spikes, and another, and another. The woman used the bodies of those she had control of to cocoon herself off, it didn't seem like she even needed her own face to see as that was constantly covered.

As Emilia fired and fired different sizes of spikes from varying angles, the bodies moved in for cover. Some became so torn up that they fell lifeless to the floor and a few of those exploded in mid air causing the whole room the shake and rumble.

Still, Cassiopeia would fling one of her puppets out toward the people on the ground here and there and the first several were skewed by ice. Emilia had to fire a cluster of ice shards to make sure she got them.

Then one slipped through, Peter dove for the people near where it was going to hit and landed in a crouch on the floor near them. He shoved them back and then moved to jump away, but the body exploded and threw him back into the wall hard.

Reinhard had dropped to the ground and was holding the creatures off with his seemingly impervious fighting style using…various sticks and bits of furniture, but he hadn't seen Peter go down.

When Peter fell to the floor, something snapped in Emilia. Her arms tightened as she made fists with her hands. It was as if the very blood running beneath her skin turned ice cold and snaked through her veins.

"Al Huma!"

In a flash, the air at the top of the room coalesced and froze into a massive ice crystal that was sever meters long and pointed right at the window where the Inquisitor was. Some of those at the door felt the chill in the air and glanced back to see what had caused it. They gasped at the sight and most of them looked just in time to see Emilia fling her arm forward and fire the thing right for the window.

It moved fast enough past the boulder that it caused the whole thing to rock back and forth. With a dull wet thud it buried itself in the mass of bodies clustered at the window.

Steve had gone to defend Peter and hold the creatures away from him, though Peter was fighting to get back on his feet by now.

The bodies that were left in the room crumpled to the floor, falling silent. Emilia, seeing that the immediate danger had passed sank to her knees where she stood.

Peter rushed over to her, asking the people that he passed if they were okay. When he reached her, she noticed a red bloody mark on his forehead. Still, it was him that took her face in his hands and asked. "Are you alright?"

Emilia nodded. "Your face." As she spoke she reached up and touched the side of his head where the laceration had occurred and sealed it up in a few seconds.

"Thanks, Emilia—but I need you to stay here, I am going to check to make sure she's gone," Peter said.

Emilia leaned in for him, not sure what she wanted. For him to touch her, or hold her, or just let her lay against him. She stopped herself though as Peter pounced into the air and webbed to the ceiling to make his way over to the hole where the window had been.

Reinhard jumped off of the ground, kicked the wall and propelled himself back up to the boulder that was still hanging from the ceiling just in time for Peter to swing onto it and land. He looked at Peter. "I would suggest it is better if we both go," Reinhard said.

He and Peter made the jump to the window's edge and looked down the outside wall of the castle to the hedges below. Some of the bodies had exploded on impact putting divots in the ground while others were sprawled out with their tattered clothes barely covering their graying forms.

It was more apparent now that these people were dead, some of them had been dead for a pretty long time judging by the color of their skin. Without them writing and crawling all over one another Reinhard could see the individual faces broken and crushed from the fall and smashed in by the massive ice crystal. He tried to fight back the thoughts that this could have been shortened, less people could have been hurt if he had just been more diligent and quick to act.

When he and Peter dropped to the ground there was no sign of the woman in the immediate area.

The Dragon Sword Reid still would not permit itself to be used for this conflict, it seemed as if this opponent wasn't worthy of his family's blade. It was luck then that one of the dead bodies had a simple sword sheathed at its side. He bent down to retrieve it and checked its blade for wear.

Even a pristine blade of this make wouldn't survive him as a wielder for long.

"Don't you have a sword right there?" Asked Peter pointing at his side.

Reinhard smiled. "This sword will only allow itself to be used with the opponent is truly worthy."

"Oh," Peter said. "Is this like a Samurai thing?" Peter asked.

"A Sam OO Ray?" Reinhard repeated.

"Oh right, you guys probably don't have that here. I guess it would be more like an honored knight sort of thing?" Peter asked as they stalked around the grounds together looking for where the assailant had gone.

"Peter Parker, as anyone ever told you that you're insanely calm around this much death," Reinhard said as they passed another grizzly, exploded corpse.

Peter grew quiet for a moment. "You try not to think about it, but, like, when I was a kid the city I grew up in was attacked by…people from somewhere else. There was a lot of death," he explained.

"I see. I do apologize for that, perhaps were we who we are now and in that city we could have saved the people who were lost?" Reinhard said.

Peter nodded. "Right, and that's why we have to do something now so no one else has to get hurt."

This side of the castle grounds was a lush garden nestled in between the training grounds and the walls themselves. There weren't many places to go to hide and the guard towers up above wouldn't allow for much movement to go on without the guards seeing things.

A massive explosion rocked the ground and debris and bricks were kicked into the air from the base of a nearby guard tower that was standing in the center of the grounds. Peter lunged off of the ground, sprinting the distance toward the crumbling tower. He aimed his hands out, firing several tight balls of the webbing at the base of the structure where it seemed to be breaking apart the most.

The web spread, holding the debris together and when Peter reached the tower itself he was able to brace it against his back and keep it from smashing against the ground. His strength was truly astounding and what was more Reinhard didn't pick up any magic or Divine Blessings aiding him, this was all him.

Then the woman Cassiopeia appeared again, moving at the front of a group of her puppet-corpses she dashed in to last at Peter. Reinhard was fast enough to reach the young man's side and kick. His foot connecting with her swarm was enough to throw off her assault. She pulled the bodies in to cover herself and some of them hurtling over her head and skidding to a stop in the grass.

"Peter, are you well?" Reinhard asked.

"Um yeah, I'm okay. Just holding up this whole tower," Peter said, each word was a struggle to get out.

Right, he needed to finish this fast. There were too many unknowns and with this kind of threat in the capital it was unclear they couldn't afford to let it go on for much longer. Reinhard moved in a zig-zag, side to side at a speed that would have meant even the Inquisitor couldn't cover herself when he chose where his next strike would be.

It looked like that she knew this, because she enveloped her whole body sinking back into the crowd of puppets to escape his attack. Reinhard circled around her, his feet pounding at the grass with incredible speed. When he finally took to the air with a powerful leap it seemed that even Peter had lost sight of him for a second.

The sword that he had taken from the body was drawn and held up high beside his face. Mana was pulled in around him as it was sucked out of the air. There was a darkness that seemed to overtake the grounds outside of the castle as he did this. Chilled air washed over everything as the sword in Reinhard's hands became blue with a faint light.

He hung in the air, ready for the attack with the sword as the light being emitted from the weapon became so bright that it was hard to see anything else. In a calm voice, Reinhard spoke to the weapon in his hands, the one that he knew was not ready for the full force of what he was about to unleash through it.

"Endure with me just a bit long, friend."

His cloak and coat fluttered around him, the wind whipped past his red hair in a frenzy as all at once he crashed down into the mass of bodies writhing up on each other to form a tower up to meet him head on. The force blew the first of them apart, scattered them and allowed him to burrow in with the attack. He sliced through the air and anything that was near that air, igniting it so that the poor pawns burned away from just being too near the wind kicked up by his attack.

His feet hit the ground and dust was kicked up around him to such an extent that he couldn't even see the castle or Peter or even the tower any longer. He also saw no sign of the Inquisitor.

With Cassiopeia gone through the window and Peter and that knight chasing after her, Steve figured that they should be in a position to get everyone out of immediate danger by just forcing his way through the door. The corpses that had been fighting with them and, in some cases, getting back up after they were knocked down had all fallen when the Inquisitor dropped out of sight from Emilia's attack.

Steve searched the room just to make sure that she was okay, he found her watching the upper rear window where Peter had dropped through to check on what had happened outside after her attack. Pete would be okay, he thought. The kid was as capable as anyone on the Avengers. Sure, he was less experienced, but when pushed there was going to be something great there. Steve just knew.

"Miss Emilia," Steve called to her, waving his hand up above his head. "I'm going to try and get the door open."

Between them there was a huddled mass of the civil servants and others who had piled in by the door. Still she was able to hear him and replied be cupping her hands around her mouth to shout her reply back.

Roswaal interrupted him. "It's odd that we have to try and get the door open," he said.

"You and I are going to have to have a little talk," Steve said.

"The doors in here are designed to be bolted from the inside and the mechanisms are not engaged as were they we would be able to easily tell," Roswaal said pointing at the sides of the doors where there were huge hooks where the door could be blocked.

Steve looked at them, taking note of that. He could deal with Roswaal later.

Roswaal glanced around, taking note of where some of the others were and then he looked back at Steve. "We bust it down, on three," Roswaal said.

With a nod got into position and the two of them charged the door, with an almost perfectly in sync flying kick the blasted the doors open and nearly knocked them from their hinges. The doors slammed against the walls and when the two men landed in the hallway they found themselves surrounded by a small group of the corpse puppets.

They were still here in the building.

"Behind you!" Steve shouted and whirled around, pulling the shield off of his back as he did. He squatted low and threw the shield against the wall hard so that it passed Roswaal and bounced to hit one of the puppets behind Roswaal.

To his credit, Roswaal kicked another of them. The moment that he landed, the Margrave stretched his hands out at his sides and eight orbs of magical energy appears floating in the air above his hands with four over each hand.

He glanced to Steve. "If you can hold them off, Captain Rogers, I will clear a path this way," Roswaal said.

Steve had just caught the shield and used it to bash one of the puppets away. He didn't think these things alone could pose much of a threat to him, but as he fought more of them he was noticing that the less of them that there were standing the more coordinated that their attacks became. When they had been in the room they had moved like a mass more than individual people.

He didn't even want to think about where Cassiopeia got all of these people from. At best it could be hoped that she had found them dead and not actually murdered them to use their forms like this.

Steve doubted that.

One of them kicked at him and he blocked it with the shield. There was a loud metallic clang as their attack thudded off. Steve kicked them back into some of their companions.

"Everyone, follow the Margrave!" Steve shouted.

Roswaal was levitating in the air behind Steve, moving backward and blasting the puppeted-corpses with magic that blew their chests through and sent them flying into the walls and doors of the hall. The vast majority of the crowd followed behind Roswaal with a few of the knights and all of the wisemen council and civil servants making for the right side of the hals. Though a few knights took up positions to fight along with two of the candidates for the throne.

Steve saw the lavender haired knight, the one who had declared for Anastasia using his sword to rip into a group of the puppet people. He turned to Steve as he did this and remarked with a solemn tone.

"Many of these people are wearing servants clothes and guardsmen outfits—they were alive here in the castle not too long ago," he said.

"Who would do something like this?" Asked Steve, though he doubted that anyone would really bother to answer that one.

A wave of ice bolts slammed into the front line of the corpses and Emilia was at Steve's side. "I'm not leaving your side. We just need to move toward Peter," she said.

"We're supposed to be protecting you, ma'am," Steve said.

As if on cue, one of the attackers strayed too close to her and before the knights or Steve could do anything, Emilia jump kicked it with both legs and sent it clattering back to the floor.

"I assure you that I will be fine," Emilia said. "Just help me get to Peter."

Steve smirked. "Peter is going to be okay, we'll make it to him."

The green haired woman, Crusch, got at an angle in the hallway where she could see a clear line down to the next bend in their corridor and sliced with her sword out that way rending all of the corpses between her and wall in half. By this time, Roswaal and the others had made it a good ways down the hall.

And then there was someone shouting from the opposite direction.

"Is someone down there!" Came a voice that Steve wasn't sure he was hearing right. It couldn't be, right?

Outside there was a massive explosion that rocked the entire building. So far, none of the corpses that they had destroyed in here had exploded. There must have been a limited quantity of those in the Inquisitor's arsenal. For a moment, Steve waited to make sure that the explosion hadn't come from inside. Maybe he was waiting for confirmation that there was someone else yelling.

"There was a voice down that way," Crusch said as she cut down another swath of the creatures.

"I hear it." Steve didn't want to think it. How could they be here?

"I think they need help," Emilia said. "Who's there, hold on we're on the way to help!" She and Puck blanketed this part of the hallway with spikes of ice in a single gesture and for a moment Steve did have to wonder why she needed their protection at all.

At the bend in the hall he saw some of the puppet corpses being kicked back this way and battered down by some unseen force around the corner. One of them stumbled backward form a punch of kick and was peppered with crossbow bolts. Then a figure stepped into view with long, dark brown hair that ran down to the middle of his back. In one hand he held a combat knife, American-made with a serrated edge. And in the other, Vibranium hand he held a chunky crossbow that he used to fire into the skull of another one of the corpses.

James Buchanan Barnes seemingly hadn't noticed Steve just yet, he was fending off the last of the things that had inundated the hall. That was when a gust of wind ripped through the hallway and a winged figure tore through the air above them and kicked one of the things back into the wall.

He landed with a thud and the wings folded in on themselves into a pack. Sam Wilson looked much the same as he had on Earth, though he and Bucky had adopted some local assets to help them not stand out as much. They wore cloaks that covered most of their clothing.

Almost as soon as Sam landed there was a quick chill in the air that seemed to pull the light from the room. An instant later there was another explosion outside, this one more massive.

All of the puppets in the hallway that were still active dropped immediately as if they had their strings cut.

"What was that?" Asked Bucky.

"Buck! Sam!" Steve yelled.

Sam was the first to spot him, he hit Bucky in the arm and pointed. "Are you seeing this?"

"Steve!" Bucky walked toward him, Sam was close at his side. When Steve reached out to shake his hand, Bucky grabbed him and hugged him close.

"Friend of yours?" Asked Crusch.

"Lady Crusch, we had come to make sure that you were okay—our investigation led us to—" Sam started.

Crusch held a hand up cutting him off. "Not here, we can save that kind of talk for after everything handled with the current situation."

"This is Steve Rogers," Bucky said. "He's a friend from back home, you know."

"I assure you that I understand," Crusch said.

"Of course you do meow, I told you about all this," came Ferris's voice from nearby. Then he gave Crusch a little salute. "All of the wounded are tended to and accounted for."

"Wait, you knew Steve was out there and you didn't tell us?" Sam asked.

"You didn't ask me if I knew any other Earthians," Ferris said. "I know people from lots of places!"

"That's bullshit, Ferris and you know it!" Sam said.

"I ordered him to keep it close, we weren't sure if we could really just trust any old person who came from that other places or what a large group of you might do if you were able to group up," Crusch said.

Steve went to hug Sam now too, he had been told they were here more than a day ago and at the time it had taken him some effort to digest and process. It was even more strange seeing them in person now and hearing them talk. Whatever had brought them here, the stones or some other force—it had seen to send an array of them. He had thought it was just Peter and himself and now there was May, Sam, and Buck.

"May told us you two were here and I almost didn't believe it," Steve said. It was just then that he noticed Emilia standing behind Sam staring very intently at him with a finger pressed to her lips.

"Everything okay, Emilia?" asked Steve.

"Hmm, yes," she said nodding.

"Hello?" Sam said glancing back at her.

"Hi, I'm Emilia," she said offering out her hand.

Sam looked to Steve and then turned to accept her hand. "Sergeant Sam Wilson," he said.

"Oh, I was wondering about the wings—" Emilia said.

"They're a kind Metia that helps me to fly," he answered s quickly that Steve could tell he had done this before.

The lavender haired knight walked over toward their group. "This is heartwarming, really, but is anyone the least bit curious about why all these creatures fell over at the same time?"

Ferris wiggled his ears. "It felt like someone drained all of the mana out of the air, like when Reinhard attacks."

Crusch stowed her sword away. "Ah, yes. Perhaps our Sword Saint has vanquished the problem.

Peter used his webs to pull the tower up right bit by bit and then used more web to suspend it at an angle to keep it from falling over. He worked as fast as he could to get the weight up away from the ground, but the moment that Reinhard began his attack the world became cold.

He had seen the knight at work inside, impeccable hand to hand, dodging and speed that rivaled anything that Peter had seen back on Earth. But this was on another level. The knight seemed to pull the very warmth and light from the air. By the time Peter looked up he couldn't see exactly where Reinhard was, but he could tell by the intensity of the light where the sword glowed up in the sky.

When Reinhard crashed down into the wave upon wave of puppets most of them were vaporized. The direction that he had slashed through left a line of glass burned nearby with smoke rising from it, the sword itself vanished as if spent by the power of the attack with the hilt and all gone. Dirt, dust, and bodies were ejected from the site that Reinhard landed in and Peter could no longer even see where he actually was.

Seeing that the tower would hold like it was for now, Peter rushed off to find the knight through the smoke and debris. "Reinhard!" Peter called.

Clouds of dust wafted past him, the sun was blotted completely out now so that even when most of the light returned from the attack being over it was still hazy. Dirty, dry air filled Peter's lungs as he called again.

"Reinhard!"

"I'm here," came a flat voice a second before Reinhard emerged from the thickest part of the cloud with his cloak flapping open behind him. The look on his face was not one of triumph or overcoming a great foe.

"It would seem she got away," he said. "Escaped somewhere as I was winding up the attack."

Peter glanced around at the destruction, the puppets that had once bene bodies were strewn all over the yard out here. In some cases only a detached hand or severed leg remained Cassiopeia's horde.

"You did all of this with one attack?" Peter asked.

Reinhard dusted his hands off, there seemed to be something that had been utterly decimated imbedded in the sleeves of his shirt. Whatever it was had been silvery, metallic. Then Peter realized what he was seeing: the sword that the knight had gone on the attack with. The sword that he wore on his side was still there, in its sheath.

"There wasn't a lot of good that it did," Reinhard said. "She escaped."

Peter scanned the grounds of the inside of the castle looking for any sign that the woman they were speaking of had run off. He really couldn't be sure if she was gone or not, but he figured that he could take Reinhard's word for it.

When Emilia had claimed him to be the best of the best and a real knight's knight, this must have been what she referred to. There was this sense of duty about him, Peter had felt the same thing before when he failed to do something that he had needed to do.

"What was all of that?" Asked Peter.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, is that someone that you've seen or heard of before?"

Reinhard sighed. "Not them by name in particular, but the Witch's Cult is a well known group here," he explained.

As with before, Peter still wasn't sure what the deal with this Witch's Cult was or what their goals were and he was pretty sure that most people had the same issue with them. Instead of dwelling on it or worrying over it right now he felt that hey should get back to the others.

"Maybe we should go around in front of the building and make sure that people trying to get out of the throne room aren't ambushed," he suggested.

"Right," Reinhard said.

The two of them moved around the building's perimeter, jogging along while making sure that there was no threat of attack. Peter fired a web to the keep and pulled himself up to swing and look over a small shed they passed. No sign of the Inquisitor or any of her minions.

This whole thing had been some kind of test, at least that was what she had claimed when she showed up. A test of what though? It really made no sense and Peter wasn't in a mindset where he could evaluate the cryptic ravings of a mad woman.