AN~ And we have reached the CLIMAX! Isn't this exciting? I'm not sure what I'll do when this is over.

QotU: Pick a number between one and ten. Pick a mammal. Pick a food. Pick a place. Name someone Freida. Make a story using all those things. Most creative one wins.

Previous QotD winner: jdr ride and Kida because Kida.

Review Replies:

juliet: Why does Daphne disappoint you?

puckabrinaluva: I can't, either. It's so sudden! I thought I had more left!

The kids had been back at the Fort for a while, and now the Hand was finally coming.

Sabrina was standing on the wall of the fort, watching them appear out of the trees that surrounded the wide clear space around the fort, Puck on one side, her mother on the other. Most of the soldiers were lined up on the wall, waiting.

It wasn't until the first dragon showed up that Sabrina started to get a little worried.

And it wasn't until the third dragon, carrying a troll, showed up, that she started to get really worried.

She must have showed her feelings somehow, because Puck looked at her slantwise, squeezed her hand, and said softly, "We can do it."

"I know," Sabrina whispered, "but how much will it cost?"

"We'll be all right," Veronica said, smiling at Sabrina. "We always are."

Veronica had taken the news of Sabrina and Puck's relationship best out of the family, even better than Granny, in that she'd just acted like it was a matter-of-fact occurrence instead of making a fuss like everyone else. But they'd all settled down about it eventually.

Sabrina was saved from answering her mom by a shout from someone on the empty space below the fort.

"Charge!" it rang out, echoing off everything into a second of silence.

The silence ended in a roar from all the Scarlet Hand, and they poured forward, more and more coming out of the trees and toward the fort.

Snow's voice called over the roar of the Hand, saying, "Airborne, take off!"

The Airborne group was anyone with wings, most of them mounted on pegasi, some flying on their own. Nobody without wings was allowed a pegasus, because flight fighting was hard enough without worrying that you'd slip and fall off your horse. Sabrina and Puck were part of the Airborne unit, though they didn't have horses.

They took off, a cloud of fairies and birds and pixies and things, some on pegasi, some on their own. From far away, they probably looked like a swarm of bugs. Very large bugs.

As soon as the Airborne took off, the dragons went after them, which was largely the point. The Airborne's job was to keep anything from making it over the fort's walls and into the town inside.

Sabrina and Puck, along with several others, started going after a yellow dragon with green racing stripes running lengthwise down its fifty-foot-long body, attacking the eyes and the underbelly, where they could actually do damage.

Sabrina's ears heard Snow calling for the long-range defense to pick up, though she didn't pay much attention to it, as she was too busy trying to stab a dragon in the eye and avoid its teeth.

She did start to pay attention when she was almost hit by a fast-moving jet of water that sprayed into the dragon's mouth, putting out the flickers of flame that were appearing between its teeth and sending forth a thick, burining, blinding spray of steam.

The dragon fell to the ground, crushing some members of the Hand as it landed, and Sabrina backpedaled quickly to avoid the steam, wary of burns.

"Watch it, will ya?" She called to the person manning the water tower- Red. "That stuff is dangerous!"

She could see Red's blush even from thirty yards away as she called, almost loud enough to be heard, "Sorry!"

Sabrina just turned back and looked for another opponent to fight.

There was another dragon nearby, a purple one whose scales faded into deep dark black at the edges, being fought and winning against Mustardseed and his pegasus. She sped over to help them.

She slashed and stabbed and dodged and ducked and kicked and punched at the purple dragon's neck for what felt like forever, and she had a thought that it was probably a bad idea for dragons' underbellies to be so soft, because it was easier for archers to get at them from the ground that way. Even if an arrow was about as painful as a splinter to a dragon.

That dragon, too, fell eventually, but it was much harder because Red and her water tower never hit it, so it had its flame until it died.

She and Puck flew together for a second, staring at the battle around them, and Puck said, "It's a shame."

"What is?" Sabrina asked.

"That all the dragons are on their side," Puck elaborated. "We're going to have to kill them all. And I just hate to see that. I mean, dragons are awesome!"

"Yeah, I guess it is kind of sad," Sabrina agreed, pulling Puck down fast, "but let's worry about it later, okay? Maybe there'll be some eggs left after, and you can have a pet or something."

"That would be so awesome!" Puck raved.

Sabrina rolled her eyes, because he hadn't even noticed her pulling him out of the way of a fireball. "Don't get too excited, we're in the middle of something."

He nodded, and dodged another fireball, going up while Sabrina went left.

She lost track of him in the chaos, and glanced down at the ground. About a quarter of the Emerald Foot soldiers had left the fort and were fighting on the ground- it looked messy and dangerous. Her parents were down there. She knew because she saw them fighting back to back against something enormous, green, and slimy. She wished she could go down to help them, but her job was to stay in the air. And Basil was in the fort. If she ran away from her post, it could mean that she helped her parents (who were perfectly able to take care of themselves, even if she didn't want to admit it) and lost her brother in the process.

She returned to fighting, this time going up against a cloud of pixies that were beelining their way to the fort unnoticed by the Emerald Foot Airborne, who were more concerned with dragons than pixies.

She discovered that, while pixies were smaller than dragons, they were no less dangerous. She'd already known that they had painful bites, but she'd never gone up against a swarm of them trying to fight before, and none of her training had prepared her for it. A few got past her and began boring away at the wood of the Fort's walls before she smashed them with a wave of gravity so strong they were no more than little blots on the damaged wall. She was more careful after that.

It was impossible to fight these nasty pixies without magic. There were too many of them, and they were too small. One would make it past her while she was pinching another, and three more would zoom attack her while she was catching that one. There were too many for her to control all their gravities at once, and none of her other abilities would be much use against them.

She held her ground against them for a while, feeling like she was draining a boat with a sieve the whole time, until Tinker Bell appeared, backed up by about fifty Sprites, who began battling the pixies one-on-one.

After the sprites worked the pixies off of Sabrina, she flew off, wishing she had time to massage the hundreds of red welts forming on her body. She was almost burned, because she lost track of where she was going and a jet of flame shot past her towards the fort, met in midair by Red's water tower- or the second tower, she wasn't sure.

"Careful!" Ariel called to her, grinning as he stabbed the dragon who'd almost torched her in the throat and dragged down, towards its stomach. A rain of acidic blood fell on those fighting below.

Sabrina winced and turned away from the dying dragon, hoping no one she liked got crushed when it fell.

Around then, she went into what Bella had dubbed her 'battle mode,' where she lost track of who she was fighting or what she did, attacking and defending and dodging mechanically, faster than she'd have been able to otherwise, probably, if she'd been actually thinking. She probably killed several things, and she definitely injured a lot. She was hurt herself a few times, though nothing major- a burn on her left foot, incinerating one of her favorite shoes and the bottom of her leggings but leaving her foot intact; a gash on her ribcage that hit the bone but didn't break it; a chunk of hair and feathers missing on her right side; several small cuts and bruises and scrapes and burns.

Puck guided her back to the fort during a lull in the battle to eat a hoagie; she didn't realize how hungry she was, or even where she was, until the sandwich was in her hands. She scarfed it down, chugged a bottle of water, and then went back to the battle.

At one point in time, she noticed Puck flying off in pursuit of a group of three dragons who were wounded but not dead, and she spared a moment's thought to hope he didn't get himself killed before she went back to fighting a demonic-looking gray pegasus with black eyes.

It grew dark, and the fighting continued, the battle lit by pixies and dragon fire, for the most part. People disappeared and reappeared, and the jets of water stopped for a while- the dragon fire grew stronger. Sabrina went back to the fort and fell asleep for a few hours, after she almost fell out of the sky when she dozed off suddenly.

Nurse Spratt had bandaged her worst injuries while she slept, and when she woke, she was deemed fit to fight more. It was still dark. She ate another sandwich and drank a cup of disgusting, bitter coffee full of grounds before going back to fight again.

It went on like that for another day. Neither side made much headway. Sabrina felt like her whole life was this battle; like there was nothing more than fight, win, look for another enemy, fight again, and hope you didn't get killed.

Puck reappeared, a number of lumps in his sweatshirt pockets. Sabrina hoped they weren't what she thought they were, gave him a quick kiss, and dashed off after a fairy that was speeding for Red on her water tower- refilled and wet, ready to take down dragons again.

She was fighting yet another dragon- where did they keep coming from?- when Daphne's shriek, louder than anything she'd ever heard before, rang through the clearing. Everyone froze and turned to stare. There was quiet for the first time in forever, it felt like, and Sabrina could hear the beating of wings, the rustling of people moving, against the roar in her ears and the echo of the battle.

Daphne stood on a tall tree branch on the edge of the clearing, her bare feet, more bird than human, clinging to the branch. Tears ran down her face, and she held a sparking wand in her right hand, raised to the lightening sky as the sun broke through the trees across the clearing from her.

"Stop!" she said again, less of a shout but still loud enough that everyone could hear her. A sob caught in her throat. "Don't you see what you're doing to each other?" She paused, then said, "You're killing your families! Your friends! Beast, that's you wife! You almost killed her! Mr. and Mrs. Amphibian, your daughter is in that fort you're trying to destroy, and she's trying to save people you've just hurt! Cricket, that's your mom! All of you, you're attacking people you've known for hundreds of years! A lot of them used to be your friends! How can you... How can you do that?"

There was a roar from the ground, a response, probably.

"I. Don't. Care!" Daphne screeched over them. "I don't care anymore! I'm tired of this! Tired of fighting! Tired of killing! It's not worth it! Nothing's worth it anymore! I can't... I can't! And I can't stand by and watch you, either!"

There was another roar, this one quieter, and one voice shouted over the rest, loud enough that Sabrina could make it out, "But I want to be free! I've been trapped here for centuries! I want out!"

"Fine!" Sabrina shouted back, surprising herself. Everyone looked at her, now, and she flushed, but repeated, "Fine! You can get out! I can control the barrier. I can let you out." She flew over to her sister and said, putting a hand on her shoulder, "But Daphne's right. This has to stop."

Granny Relda, on the ground, was saying suddenly, "The girls have a point. Perhaps if your leaders and ours could meet in the Fort, we could reach a treaty?"

There was a disapproving roar, and Heart's voice called out, "Not in your territory! You could kill us!"

Sabrina refrained from pointing out that that's what everyone had been doing for the past two days.

"Here, then," Snow suggested. "We'll meet here, and discuss."

This time the response was a mutter, and Sabrina assumed it was an acceptance, because she saw people laying down their weapons.

And that was the end of the Everafter War.