I can't draw boobies, nor am I a somewhat foolish British Lady.

As mentioned on my profile (I promise to get better at posting this, folks) FILFy Teacher won the Large Story poll. The Small Story winner was Stallion of the Line, but given work on the Patty-On latest chapter of Sword, Bow, and Horse, I only finished the chapter this past weekend. Given the importance of a particular conversation that occurs within the chapter, I have decided to wait on posting it until Tomon and Hiryo, my two beta-readers for that story, are able to give it a look over. I had hoped Tomon at least would be able to, but RL interferes with beta-readers just as much as writers LOL. Then too, I only got this story back late last night, and given the migraine working with Grammarly has given me, I don't know if I could have gone over Stallion in any event.

Two warnings, guys and girls: one, this is a huge chapter. Two, it is a very combat-intensive chapter. The Unseelie do not take kindly to Harry and Co.'s arrival and make no effort whatsoever to try to talk.

This chapter has been edited by me using Grammarly – in parts. It is giving me issues again for some reason every time I try to use it, my word doc crashes and when i use the online version it keeps on giving me wrong suggestion (wanting me to add 'the' when it's already there and other such outright mistakes). And it's not caused by the size of the chapter. I copied the chapter into fanfic in small chunks of five thousand words or so and it still is giving me headaches. Frankly this, and the issues I've had with Grammarly in the past, is so bad at this point that I think my purchasing the premium service was a waste of time.

Nad Destroyer has also seen it, but he is more a big mistake flow guy than small mistakes. He helped big time, but there will no doubt be mistakes in this chapter. Hopefully not enough to take away from your enjoyment of it, however.

Chapter 20: Fae War

When the flash of light faded, Harry found himself elsewhere, very much elsewhere. Instead of the small valley that surrounded them before, and the giant tree with the burial tomb underneath it; Harry and his companions found themselves in another forest, which sort of gave off the feeling of being a very, very vast forest indeed. The trees around them crowded in, so much so they had scattered Harry's companions out of his view and obscured the sky, blocking out the sun, although Harry judged that it was just afternoon here rather than the late evening it had been back in Ireland.

The only ones he could see were Yubelluna, who was even now getting to her feet, her violet eyes glowing with a light that seemed to be slightly tinged with green as she stared out around them, her bandrui powers almost going into overdrive, and Tonks, who was grumbling and pushing herself to her feet. "Why is it always me, huh?"

The trees separating them looked to Harry's admittedly inexpert eyes as a mixture of pine, oak, spruce, and others. They were mostly normal looking, but a few stood out as having been either enhanced magically, changing their sizes or the color of their bark. Others were much more obviously magical, trees twisted into different shapes, with hollows here and there in their form, silver in color. So it might be the same time here as it was back in our own dimension.

Beyond that, Harry could tell they were on a slope of some kind, the ground beneath them having a slight but noticeable gradient to it heading down behind the direction Harry was facing upon arrival.

He smiled briefly as Lily came through the woods, having changed into her werewolf form, much like Harry had the instant the light had faded. She was sniffing the air excitedly, bouncing on all four feet with a puppy's eagerness to explore, while nearby Koneko kept a close eye on the younger girl, keeping to her self-chosen duty even as her own tail lashed, and her eyes flicked around in interest. Asia was next, shepherded along with Le Fay by Loup, who had also turned into a werewolf. Then came the wizard couple, a relieved Arthur who moved instantly to his sister's side, and then Mittelt, led by Rias.

But even as they gathered, Harry did not turn away from what was in front of him. For in front of Harry stood a stone. It was of similar make to several of the fal stones they had found on the other side, but this one looked somewhat less careworn. The underlying enchantment was also there, glowing with power from within the stone.

But beyond many of the runes being visible on this stone, Harry's Manannán-given sight could see more. He could see the teleportation spell which had brought them here feeding down into a vast network of magic in the ground, one which in turn fed power up into the enchantment. Harry's ability to discern this network faded quickly away from the stone, but he could tell it was both huge and Powerful with a capital P just from just that small glimpse. Good gods, this is truly a land of magic. Magic is woven into the very fabric of the land, like a massive web underlying everything!

And above the fal stone to one side of it was the other reason why Harry hadn't turned to look at his fellows. A woman hovered there, standing midair to one side of the stone, seeming to lean lightly on it, her form moving from nearly transparent like a ghost and then almost back to a solid-state. Even setting that aside she was a very odd sight indeed, for she was a tri-faced woman, a woman with one body, but three faces, each with different hair colors, red, brown, and a lighter brown.

As Harry looked at her, he could tell that each face was slightly different. A burn scar here, laugh lines there, while still being the same face. Two of those faces never became solid but were still there like ephemeral after-images connected to the slightly more solid central face, and the eyes of all three were closed, so Harry couldn't say anything about them.

Beyond that, the ghost woman's body was such that she could be a matron, something like Molly Weasley in body type, dressed in an old-style dress down to her ankles with a heavy leather apron draped over it. Or a blacksmith. The woman's arms, of which she only had one set unlike the heads, were powerfully muscled. In contrast, her fingers were thin and dexterous, the kind you could find on a violinist like Yubelluna.

As the rest of his party came together, whatever was going on within the woman seemed to finish. The two faces remained ghostlike additions to her face, and her arms and legs faded out too. But the main face solidified almost to the point where Harry could have called it solid, like water rather than flesh but still something that could be touched. The eyes of that main face opened, glowing like embers as she opened her mouth to speak.

But Harry beat her to it. "The goddess Brigid I believe?" He bowed to her slightly, then looked around them once more. "Exactly where are we?"

The woman pouted. "Tsk, I thought your little makeshift festival was a bit too pointed to be a coincidence. How did you figure it out?" the goddess Brigid's voice was ethereal, lilting yet deep, a whisper, yet everyone there heard it clearly. She spoke with a tiny bit of an Irish brogue, but that was all.

What struck Harry though, was that there was little to no power to the voice as there should have been from a living god. The faces, they must be other aspects of her power and personality as a tripartite goddess.

"It wasn't very hard once we got a hint from Tiamat saying that that Fawkes was actually a 'she'," Rias drawled as she moved to Harry's side, looking at the woman and the stone in interest. Her senses couldn't tell her about the kind of magic in the stone, but she didn't need to see the enchantment within the stone to know that they were in an area with an intensely powerful magi-sphere. One that might be more powerful than even the Underworld. Amazing!

"Poo, that ruins a bit of my fun," Brigid, daughter of Dagda the chieftain of the Tuatha de Danan and goddess of fertility, healing, poetry, and smithcraft complained. Then Brigid shook her head as her body shifted once more to being nearly ghostlike. "Tsk, this is most annoying."

"This isn't the same place that Asia, Lily, and I were transported to," Yubelluna interrupted, looking at the goddess in question. "Is it the, the same locus in Tir Na Nog as the Fae tree was on the other side?"

Brigid shrugged. "Somewhat, yes, but then again, no. Every seven jump-off points on Earth were tied to one of five stones on this side."

"There is a feeling in the air of this place," Arthur interjected, sword raised as he stared around them, trying to make out any dangers through the dense forest all around them. This forest was thick and ancient. It had never been objected to forestry or anything similar. If Arthur was honest, it unnerved him quite a bit.

Next to him, Le Fay also looked a little worried, while Asia simply gripped her rosary and began a prayer underneath her breath, careful to use the term Holy Father rather than 'god'. Rolf too looked concerned, as did Mittelt, but the others were handling their surroundings with much more aplomb, even interest in the case of Luna, Koneko, and Lily.

"So, are you alive or dead?" Mittelt asked bluntly, cocking her head in confusion. "I can sense something from you. You're no ghost, but…"

"Oh, I died," Brigid laughed lightly, shaking her head as she set her prepared spiel aside. Evidently, it wasn't going to be needed. She gestured to the two even more ghostlike heads to either side of the main face. "My 'self' was slain twice over. But death is not nearly so cut and dried for most deities, especially for someone like me, who has more than one face to her."

"You mean your areas of control?" Rias asked. "Like Shiva, you have different personalities, or had rather, which handled each aspect of your portfolio?"

Brigid laughed lightly, putting Rias in mind of her mother laughing for some reason. "Exactly, precisely like Shiva in point of fact. I lost two of my call them areas of control rather than portfolios, far too businesslike that term, and the powers that came with them. The personality that was the patron of healing died first, and then my 'self' as a goddess of smithing was slain at the same time as Nuada, during the Undertaking. It is the power from that aspect I am reclaiming at present. Alas, it is unformed magical power, and I cannot grasp much of it at present. My 'self' as a smith no longer exists within it." At that, Brigid grew sorrowful, reaching up an ethereal hand to try to touch one of her other faces, only for her fingers to pass through it, like water through a gas.

Rias frowned. "You mean you are an enneagram then, a memory of a soul? Or are you an actual goddess still, just one with only one area of control remaining?" It had not escaped her notice that said area of control was fertility (and poetry) and the spring, the season most associated with it, but that was unimportant at this time. And I very much doubt that Harry and I will need much help in that area when it comes time to think about such things anyway, despite the normal trouble Devils have in that area, she thought with both a frisson of anticipation and rueful good humor.

"Not quite in how you use the word. Normally the personality of an enneagram is not formed enough to take action on their own without direction. No, I was the soul without the power of a goddess before this, now I am slowly reclaiming enough power to perhaps be called a goddess again." Once more, Brigid's body seemed to fade out, and she scowled. "Eventually anyway. It isn't as if I've ever done something like this before, after all, reclaiming my power like this. And the magi-sphere of Tir Na Nog is fighting me for it too. Hmmm…"

"So a regular enneagram, as Rias uses the term, would be much like the memory of Manannán Mac Lir, which was created when I took control of the Three Hallows," Harry guessed.

"Exactly. I have no such issue. I am, for all intents and purposes, half-alive, half-dead now that I have begun to reclaim the power I had poured into the Undertaking. Although I fear I will never regain full corporeality." Brigid shook her head, then the glow in her eyes dimmed for a moment. "But I digress. You should concentrate on the far more serious things you have to worry about right now."

"All right." Harry nodded agreeably before gesturing around them and to the stone beside the ghostly goddess. "Where are we, what happened, what is happening, and what can we do about it?"

"What is happening, you already know. The magically infused fog you chased here is a sign of the magical potential that was gathered as part of the Undertaking. It will always respond, because, despite Manannán's personal opinions about the Undertaking, he was hip-deep in this, our greatest project. Manannán never wanted to leave. He had lost his daughters and had blood in his eyes. But he did help to give everyone else who thought we should simply retreat to another dimension the means to do so."

Brigid sighed. "We could feel Manannán fighting on his island, fighting to the end. And the rest of us were thankful for his stubbornness then, as he drew off much of the legions of Heaven from their final assaults on our few remaining holdouts."

"So it's true then," Asia said sadly. "the Legions of Light truly did lead this, this…"

"I've heard the phrase hostile takeover, it's a business phrase, but it works well enough for this. Yes, Asia dear, the so-called One True Power did at times order these takeovers. Don't blame him. I certainly don't." Brigid laughed, the tone ripe with humor and self-knowledge both.

"Why not?" Loup asked with a grunt, turning his attention from all the smells and sounds reaching his werewolf form's ears from the massive forest surrounding them. There was something odd about it that was making his hackles rise. "You lost the war, and unless there are other Tuathans still alive here, most of your pantheon died with it."

"We did. But do not make the mistake of thinking that all of us were good or that we were somehow more moral than the Holy Father, as Asia calls him. We Tuathans were in the main just like people everywhere despite our godly powers. Less changeable and violent than the Fomorians, but even more prone to in-fighting and backstabbing. More to the point, we started off as a simple Irish pantheon, tied to this island. But we spread beyond it, taking on the names and forms of other gods, spreading our influence thusly and absorbing their portfolios as our religion spread."

Brigid shrugged. She'd had several hundred years stuck in a phoenix form to think about these things and had eventually been able to see herself and her fellows truly, warts and all. "Such is always the way with deities, regardless of their personal creed once we grow to need the Faith of our followers to retain our power. The deity of Canaan was simply better at it, and stronger too, stronger than whole pantheons at the time. Monotheism was a powerful force, one none of the rest of us could really grasp, limited as we were."

Although she still looked sad, Asia said nothing. The idea that her religion had spread so widely through conquest rather than simple conversion was a hard truth to set against the innate goodness and understanding that she felt was at the heart of God's message to the world. Still, it was a dichotomy that Asia had dealt with before many times when studying history, and Asia knew she would get through it this time too. Indeed, it makes the fallibilities of men even more understandable, when built on such flawed foundations, Asia thought, smiling faintly at the idea as she touched her rosary. Yet still, we must rise to be worthy of Heaven for all our fallibility.

Brigid turned back to Harry and the others. "We created the Undertaking. After that first clash, where Lugh, our greatest warrior, died along with Nemain, all but the most stubborn among us realized that we were overmatched. The Undertaking, as you have no doubt discerned, was meant to take us, our believers, the heroes among our followers, and the creatures and beings allied with our pantheon to the land from where we had initially sprung."

"So, how did you die?" Lily asked with all the bluntness of a child.

While the adults around her winced, Brigid simply chuckled, then answered just as bluntly, "The Fae betrayed us. Both courts had long been chafing under our rule. They wanted free rein to play with humanity to play their tricks, to lure them into traps, to toy with them as a cat would a mouse, taking delight in causing them pain or simply see them dance to their tune depending on the court. Even the summer court was not composed of entirely nice Fae or other magical creatures. A man-made to be a puppet or made to feel pain is still being toyed with."

"But you, as local deities, needed the faith of the common man, and thus put a halt to their games?" Rias guessed.

Brigid nodded. "Indeed. It was one of our principal roles throughout our pantheon. We could protect our followers from the supernatural. Lugh, in particular, was called on often in that role against the beast of the Unseelie, and the rest of us contained both courts easily. From there, we spread our influence, and thus gained more patrons over hundreds of years."

The ghostly form seemed to sigh. "The cursed Fae must have somehow suborned one of my fellow Tuathans, perhaps Gobinu, or Dian Cecht, who was never a good man as I would measure such things, always jealous of his children's accomplishments. And Gobinu had long wanted to simply take over all smithcraft from myself, Credne, and Luchta. I know not how they did it, but regardless, I and many others were attacked at the Hill of Tara as the enchantment was powering up as the Fae slowed it down from this end of the enchantment. Suddenly what should have been a simple shift as you all experienced was as if… well, it was as if someone had tried to transport us away only to cancel the spell halfway through."

Rias grimaced. "I did the same thing recently to a rather annoying example of my clan. You basically let the spell cover about half their body, then cancel the spell, and suddenly, you don't have someone standing there looking like a peacock, you have someone screaming and caterwauling and staring at his legs from where his upper body has fallen to the ground." And such transport between dimensions would be even worse for that kind of thing, scrambling the individual something fierce.

Now somehow looking queasy, Brigid waved one hand noncommittally. "It was something of that sort. Of course, because we were gods, the tearing was not just physical but mystical in nature. Our very souls were torn apart, and that, that had unintended consequences, or what I assume were unintended consequences anyway. For one thing, it shattered several of the protections on the enchantments on the teleportation side of things that was meant to protect it from wear and tear, allowing the outer fal stones to slowly erode. For another, as I said, it killed many of us. During a ritual of such a vast scope that even a goddess like myself called it the Undertaking, it changed the entire feel of the enchantment."

"Sacrifice. You were all sacrificed during the ritual no matter how haphazardly, and that would have added a Dark blood magic element," Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Making it even stronger, but also unstable. Very unstable." We're lucky it worked at all for us, but I'm not going to say that aloud.

"Indeed."

"And because Manannán was involved, despite not coming through the portals himself, the enchantment as a whole reacts to me. When I call upon his powers, that power too can come when I call," Harry mused.

Brigid nodded once more, answering with a single word. "Exactly."

"So… how do we stop the magical fog from spreading out as it does?" Tonks interjected, looking apologetic but concerned about the main thing that had brought them here. "I mean if this enchantment or whatever you want to call it reacts every time that Harry uses demigod powers. That limits him a lot. And if we don't, the fog is just going to spread, far too much to control. Eventually, its existence is going to get out among the nonmagicals."

"Tonks is right. As fascinating as meeting you is and learning our guess as to where this is was right, that wasn't why we came here. The world isn't ready to know about magic, not yet. So, can I remove the enchantment somehow? Either cut Tir Na Nog off from Earth entirely or repair the damage done?"

"Just because I'm a goddess doesn't mean I'm all-knowing. I was never a goddess of magic, so I know little of the magical theory of my brethren save where it pertains to smithcraft and mine own powers. Indeed, most of what I learned I did so as Fawkes from Wizards when I followed them behind their massive wards, twas the reason why I entered the Wizarding World. That, and feeling the power of Manannán Mac Lir in the Hallows."

Brigid shrugged apologetically. "I know nothing of what you will find. I only knew that from the moment you began to absorb Manannán Mac Lir's power, you would become my best chance at once more being whole. I have aided as best I could at times, and watched gleefully at others, though I will say that time with the Devils down in the Underworld was just me having fun at their expense. Honestly, naming yourself after a creature of Light? What hubris."

The goddess then giggled, an odd sound coming from such a woman. "Although the young one's reaction was quite nice. As was just feeling you going about your life through sympathetic magic via my connection to the Man of the Sea, discovering more of what you could do, more about magic. Like watching a mystery almost."

She scowled, looking down at herself. "Even now, much of that power has yet to seep back into my being. The Unseelie have… done something to the magi-sphere here, and I cannot access it as I should be able to. As to your problem…"

Brigid frowned, thinking. "Given the nature of the Undertaking and the Fal stones being, magically speaking, something like mirror images of one another, you might be able to repair the stones linked with the ones on this side. Perhaps. I am uncertain. It depends on what you learn when you touch these stones and interact with the enchantment within. But if so, to repair the damage, you will have to gain physical contact with each of the receiving stones in turn. With each you touch, you will find the magic within you reacting to the magic Manannán Mac Lir gave to the Undertaking through your already existing link to his magic. What happens after that is anyone's guess." Brigid shrugged once more. "I can't tell you anymore. I'm sorry."

As they watched, the goddess started to fade again, becoming even more see-through than the ghosts Harry had seen in his time in Hogwarts. "Are you going to be fading away entirely, or are you simply losing power as you speak to us."

"I am practically dead anywhere but here, Harry Potter, so I am doing quite well to be able to talk to you at all," Brigid answered tartly. "I cannot stop myself from becoming incorporeal; the effort of transportation and connection was too much. But I will retain my consciousness, and when you touch the stones, I should be able to peel away my own strength. Do so quickly if you would? Beyond that, I should be able to keep myself alive. And eventually, reform in human form permanently."

Even as she started to fade, even more, Brigid laughed. "You have no idea how long I wanted to be human-shaped again. You never notice what you have until it's gone, opposable thumbs and fingers, they are the most precious of gifts!"

With that last joke, Brigid faded away instantly, her words slowly disappearing into the wind. "The rest is up to you, Harry Potter. Your family and allies."

After staring at the space where Brigid had previously been hovering, Harry finally let loose a sigh of long-suffering. "Well, that was informative in an entirely unsatisfying way." He stared at the stone in front of him, then down at his hand. "Still, she did give us one thing to try. But I ask all of you to watch my back while I do this. I've no idea what to expect from this, and I don't like it."

"You don't say," said more than one voice, the accumulated dryness enough to create a desert.

Without waiting any longer, Harry reached forward with one hand to physically touch the stone in front of him. The spell within the rock seemed to reach out for him, grabbing at him, trying to suck him in, drowning his mind with information and his body with raw magic. Physically this was showcased by gold and green lightning crackling up and down his body, causing Rias and the others to twitch away.

Harry could see it now, the same enchantments that he had noticed in Ireland. But here, the enchantment wasn't obscured or broken. He could see both the Undertaking's enchantments and the runes that directed the internal Blessings. In Ireland, each site hadn't looked connected, but now, Harry could see another layer almost beneath the initial one, hovering in front of his eyes, seven sites in their original dimension to five here.

And just out of sight, he could feel the enneagrams, as Rias had put it, of the other gods and goddesses who had become a part of this ritual as a blood sacrifice, much of their power caught within the spell, but not enough of their selves to be called 'alive' any longer. He felt Brigid reaching out, but like Harry himself, she couldn't quite grasp any part of that magic, even her own. Something else was stopping her, some other presence was in control of the magi-sphere, unaware of them as yet, but still, it's spellwork stopped Brigid from connecting to the magi-sphere, unlike Harry, who could ride the Undertaking's connection into the magi-sphere.

For within that complex web of energy was the single glowing line that was Manannán Mac Lir's magic. That was Harry's, now. And like when he experimented with the ocean on the Isle of Man when Harry reached out a metaphysical hand for that energy, it came to him like an obedient pet, moving upwards and through the rest of the energy matrix of Tir Na Nog to his touch. When it did, the information changed, becoming more manageable. Harry began to see other things, where the next nearest stone was, a sense of the magic blocking his ability to see further through the vast web connecting them all, the magical powers of the land itself.

And he could also detect and interact with the seven teleportation areas connected to this receiving zone on the other side. He even understood the rudiments of the Arithmantic formula connecting them all, the various enchantments that went into that aspect, and how to repair them all.

If Harry had not absorbed the Hallows and become a demigod, the amount of information he was getting right now would have overloaded his merely human brain, frying it from the inside. If Harry had not conquered the three Hallows, the power which now flooded into him would have burned him to ash. Even now, Harry reeled under it, slumping to his knees in front of the stone, his hand glued to the side of the stone, holding him there like a single string on a puppet.

The information kept coming, even as the power within the stone that had filled Harry slowly started to subside. He now knew how to connect his mental self to the stone here and now knew how to reach through it to the stones on the other side of the portal. Harry began to mumble the enchantment under his breath, Manannán, like most of the gods and goddesses of Ireland having used verbal spellwork to go along with written words on their greater works. Harry could see the edge, the 'fal' of the enchantment and Blessing so intrinsically woven, and he rode that line.

As the others worriedly observed, unable to come close to him, the surface of the stone changed. What had been vague outlines of runes before began to shift and mold themselves into true runes again, sharply delineated, each one set perfectly in the array.

At the same time, on the other side of the Dimensional gateway back on Earth, the fal stones linked to this particular receiving stone, as Harry thought of it, each place on the other side of the array so linked, wildly scattered though they were, began to show similar markings as they reacted to Harry's magic. In this manner, the wildly scattered 'sending zones', another term Harry made up on the fly, began to repair themselves. First was the passage tomb portion, the part of the Undertaking that contained the teleportation spell. Next came the outer fal stones, which had been designed to reign in and hide the magical potential of the Undertaking as it gathered.

Needless to say, this did activate the Undertaking in its entirety once more. But thankfully, the powers-that-be back on Earth were well aware that this was a possibility and handled it about as well as could be expected…

OOOOOOO

"Can I just say that it's really nice that we're all working together on this," muttered Daniel, as he directed a team of squibs who worked for the British government and the Irish governments into chivying some of the civilians along. Nearby, two Unspeakables, guarded – or under guard, he wasn't certain – were busy examining the stones at the center of the Mound of the Hostages, where the fog had once more appeared. Those stones were shifting as they watched, with runes of some kind molding themselves out of the stone.

"A heads up on when to expect the fog was very nice," agreed the magic-user across from him. A young Irish lass, she was somehow in charge of the Obliviate squad here even though she looked as if she was barely out of Hogwarts herself. "Someone else must've thought of that one. Harry Potter's supposed to be a good tactician, but thinking about the repercussions of things has never been a priority of his."

Daniel cocked his head, thoughtfully. "Harry Potter. Now there's a name to conjure with, no pun intended. But you sound like you know him."

The woman chuckled, shaking her head. "I didn't know him personally. My older sister went to school with him." She blinked then turned to the crowd as one of the other Obliviators motioned to the crowd.

Putting a nice smile on her face, the young woman held up her wand next to her head, whispering the word, "Lumos" under her breath. "Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Agent W, and I work for the government. I realize you all have questions about where this fog is coming from, what it could mean, and so forth, and they will be answered, but first, we need to perform an eye exam. If you could all look at the glowing end of this torch for a moment. Thank you."

Daniel was still laughing as his own men began to remove what recording devices and such they could find on the civilians as another agent started to come up with a story to replace the Obliviated memories.

OOOOOOO

"That is so cool," Lily whispered, staring at the stones. "I mean, the magic in that stone is like, shifting to Daddy's touch." Like the others with blood or faith-based connections to Harry, Lily could vaguely see what was going on in the rune-covered stone but didn't have the vocabulary to describe it.

"That's nice, Lily," Rias said, her back to both stone and little girl as she stared around at the surrounding woodland. "But it isn't something the rest of us can concentrate on right now."

As Harry had touched the stone, something had changed in the atmosphere of the forest. The shadows had lengthened, and there was a pressure in the air like someone was looking at their group now in some fashion from afar, and with fell intent. Just like they had become aware of Yubelluna, Lily, and Asia, in their out of body experience, the powers-that-be here in Tir Na Nog was now aware of them.

As Harry continued to kneel by the stone, the sound of howling, shouts and screams of various beasts racing through the woods began to reach them. So dense was the forest Rias couldn't figure out where they were coming from or how distant. They don't sound like wolves either, Rias thought, not quite. These sound like the kind of wolf that was created by the Brothers Grim: slavering creature of the forest set to steal children away.

"Koneko," she said on the heels of those thoughts as she turned, only to pause. Koneko was already standing by Lily, one arm covered in the Boosted Gear, her ears flat to her skull.

The dragon within was silent, even though Koneko had asked him several questions since they'd arrived. Ddraig had told Koneko to go away, rather rudely in her opinion, and that he was trying to remember something.

"Yubelluna, you and I will have to be careful to avoid hurting our friends. Luna, Rolf, Tonks, conjuration spells first please, creatures that can act as an early warning system," Rias continued without pause, sending a smile of approval at her Rook. With how deep the forest was all around them, being able to see through it to any degree was an impossibility. "Arthur, close defense please, Le Fay, in the middle with Lily and Asia on defense, shield spells and transfiguration. Mittelt, get ready to take to the sky."

The three of them instantly obeyed, joining Rias herself in creating conjured beasts. Massive rabbits with stone axes from Rolf, panthers from Tonks, and hundreds of cats and strange, horned creatures from Luna. They all were sent out into the forest, while Loup moved away from the rest of the group in the direction he believed the sounds were coming from.

"I'll join them," he growled out through his change jaw. "Unless they're armed with silver, they don't have anything out there that's going to do anything permanent to me."

"Be careful all the same," Rias warned. "I'd hate to explain to Harry how you died."

"Harry, not Momo or Suzaku?" He quipped back before loping out into the forest.

In comparison to the others, Loup had a much better sense of smell than even Lily or Koneko, and he could smell a change in the nature of the forest occurring all around him as he loped into the shadowy depths of the massive forest. On the breeze, there was a smell coming towards them: a smell that reminded Loup of damp places, dark moss, blood, and fear. But the fear was not part of whatever was coming towards them, the fear rode before it, the froth on a wave.

Loup was a werewolf. He had been part of the Youkai Association for most of his life and a bit of a trouble-shooter for the Association for several years before meeting Harry and having even more adventures. He was no stranger to fear, and even he could feel the impact of the fear hurtling towards them. His fight or flight instincts began acting up, yet it did not have the power necessary to break through his mental defenses.

In response, Loup bared his fangs, his hands suddenly glowing with magical spells, one Protego, and one cutting spell just ready to be sent out. "Come on then! Let this wolf show you that he's not afraid of the big bad forest!"

Seconds later, the owners of those smells were on him, and Loup started to regret his bravado.

They came from everywhere around him, shadows becoming beasts, slavering snarling caricatures of beasts rather or hounds driven insane. Behind them came riders, first a dozen, then a hundred, moving through the forest adroitly, as if the forest parted for them. It was with a start that Loup actually realized that portions of the forest did, the trees shifting this way and that to move out of their way.

The riders he could see were a very mixed bag. Some of them looked almost human, except for the fact that they were far too thin, and while they still seemed to possess human heads, the rest of their bodies looked more like skeletons. Each of their helmets was open-faced and had large rams horns stuck to them. Others were bulkier, stronger looking and thus more human, but their skin was covered in spikes and gnarled bumps. Other riders were seemingly human entirely, their skin visible from the waist up, covered in whorls and tattoos in red and black. But humans didn't normally have red glowing eyes.

The riders and beasts immediately began to fall upon the conjured creatures, slaughtering them efficiently. But even worse, there was a flash of magic from nearby, someone in the Wild Hunt using magic. As the flash spread through the forest, half of the conjured creatures were banished, disappearing entirely. Thus before Yubelluna and Rias could start clearing an area around the stone, several dozen wild shadow beasts and an equal amount of riders fell upon them.

Out in the woods, Loup had no way of knowing that his attempt to hold up the Wild Hunt had failed as he cut one of the riders down with his prepared Reducto spell. He then used his readied Protego spell, using it to block the slathering claws of the first group of shadow beasts. The moment that it shattered, he raced forward howling and cutting at the horse of another rider.

The horse, which looked like a thoroughly evil nightmare all on its own, went down, crashing to the floor of the forest, while the rider jumped clear. For just a second, the rider stood there, before Loup's fist slammed into his face, hurling him backward.

Then more shadow beasts were upon him, and Loup gave himself to the fight, howling in the face of the miasma of fear these beings seemed to bring with them.

Nearby, two more huntsmen also whirled their horses around and moved towards Loup, pulling out blades of silver. It'd been a long time since they'd skinned a werewolf, but they still carried the tools, just in case.

At the center of the beasts and riders now attacking the group from Ireland was someone that could never have passed for human. He was tall, three feet taller than Loup in his werewolf form, putting him well above any human in height, riding a horse equally massive whose fur bristled like that of a bear.

His shoulders were broad, his waist thin, his arms and legs seemingly normal-looking, except for the fact his arms and upper torso, bare to the elements, was covered by something that looked like chalk. His hands were also painted the red of fresh blood.

It was his head that truly set him apart from a human. It looked as if someone had taken the head of a human, then distorted it to look almost like that of a dear, but one with pointed, meat-eating type teeth.

And from the sides of his head, massive antlers rose, fit to make any moose proud by the sheer size, even though they looked more like deer antlers than anything else. Each prong ended in a wicked point. His eyes were deep-set, twin plumes of ruby light that shone with malevolent energy even in the scant light that got through the forest canopy.

As he rode forward, the baying of the blood-maddened hounds rose, racing towards their prey as he shouted in ancient Welsh, his voice deep, guttural and almost vile sounding. "Hunt! Take their skins, drain their blood! Take their power for our own!"

Yet even as this creature stepped forward, He felt a buildup of some kind of magical energy from one of his victims and then, there was a blast of red and black magic flashing forward toward him. When it hit the trees between them, the trees in its way didn't so much burn as simply disintegrated, removed from existence, and it was only an instinctual reaction that kept the King of the Wild Hunt from possibly dying himself, lurching his horse around to one side.

"Hmm, that does not look like an Unseelie would I think, nor does he seem to be Woden or Nuada as he would be in the British and Irish traditions. We might be dealing with an example of another area with which the Tuathans were associated," Luna observed as she stepped forward in front of Rolf, her face serene. Despite the fact it had been a while since she had fought against thinking opponents, she could well remember the steps to this dance.

She hopped on her feet as the first of the beasts raced past their conjured animals then was away, bouncing and laughing as she raced towards them. She knew her laughter bothered her enemies, and as the creatures of the Wild Hunt attempted to bite her, she could see the impact on several of the huntsmen themselves who were looking at her in confusion even as they closed. Her wand flicked out, sending out cutting spells, then a blinding spell, an ice spike, then pure bolts of magic followed by tickling, color change – aimed at the eyes of the dogs - immobilization and others.

Tonks and Rolf followed suit. Tonks worked with Luna, guarding her back even as she skipped among the trees, dangerously over-extended away from the others, but with Tonks there, that never became an issue.

Rolf concentrated on cutting spells almost exclusively, sending them against the riders, but with the trees in the way, any mid-range magic was almost impossible. Unless you just punched straight through as Rias and Yubelluna could. The Bombardier Sacred Gear was once more proving a match for the creatures of the Wild Hunt, hurling them back in bloody ruin or dissipating the shadow beasts that rode at their sides whenever she could hit them, but this wasn't as easy as it sounded, given how dense the forest was and the huntsmen's agility on horse or on foot. Although it was getting easier as she and Rias, with their immensely destructive magics, started to blast the trees all around them into pieces.

Conversely, Arthur was not having as good a time of it. Le Fay, like Rolf, was not very experienced in terms of combat, and Arthur had sent her back to be with Lily well behind the fighting, as Koneko had moved forward to reinforce Rias, who had almost been nailed by a hurled spear from the King of the Wild Hunt, who in turn was now moving around the woods so fast Rias couldn't track him. Indeed, she was destroying more trees than anything else. The creatures of the Wild Hunt, both beasts and riders, were adept at using the woods to their advantage and seemed able to use shadows to transport themselves short distances.

What this meant for Arthur was that he found himself almost entirely without support near the left flank of the group. At first, this was fine with him. Excalibur Ruler had proven very effective against the two creatures Arthur had been able to tag with it, dissipating them. The swordsmanship of the one rider he had crossed swords left Arthur mildly impressed, being able to survive several exchanges before Arthur ran his thigh through, pinning the man against his wild-seeming horse to twin resounding screams of agony.

Pulling his blade out, Arthur had barely a second to note a bit of movement to the side before he was bowled off his feet by a massive black dog. A true Grim, or Cu Sith as they were called in Irish legend, it was as tall at the withers as Le Fay and extremely well-muscled if scarred in places, but still lean, looking like a perfect cross between an Irish wolfhound and a pit-bull. Its eyes were almost as red as the eyes of the Wild Hunt's leader, and its fangs gleamed. This was no shadow beast but a real animal.

But for all that, it was just a dog, and Arthur attempted to stab the creature quickly even as they rolled on the ground, Arthur's other arm thrust up, using his forearm to try and keep the beast's head away from his throat. But the beast somehow twisted just enough for his thrust to pass it's body harmlessly, and one back paw slammed with punishing force into his thigh.

Then it's head twitched backward before darting forward like that of a snake, biting at his arm. Arthur could not move his arm back in time, and a forepaw smacked into his sword arm, sending his blow wide.

The strength of the beast! Arthur thought, his eyes widening behind his glasses, which had been knocked askew during the battle even as the creature clamped down on his arm, biting deeply. He groaned in pain, even as the carbon-fiber weave in his suit kept the bite from simply tearing straight through his arm as Arthur desperately tried another stab.

This time it hit, and as the blade of Excalibur Rule cut into its flank, the tip of the sword becoming a kind of yellow energy that disappeared just slightly into its side. As this occurred, the black dog came under Arthur's control, thanks to the power of the Excalibur fragment. "Let go of me!" he shouted, and the beast opened its jaws, leaving Arthur's arm mauled, but not torn off, as he knew the beast would have done within seconds.

A second later, though, the Cu Sith shook Excalibur Ruler's effect off and dodged as Arthur lunged forward in what should have been a killing stroke. He recovered instantly, circling the beast who lunged forward, then leaped to the side and back, dodging around each strike Arthur launched almost before he did so. How is it able to do this? I know I have no tells, but it is almost as if this beast knows what I am doing before I act.

Nearby, Rias began to fire out smaller Power of Destruction attacks, with one hand, while using her other to direct a Protego spell towards Arthur, just as the black dog lunged forward. It struck the shield, bouncing off for a moment, before ducking under a blow from Arthur, then smashing through the shield like it was glass with a single powerful lunge.

It was only a last-second "Accio Arthur!" from his sister that saved Arthur as the Cu Sith lunged forward almost too fast for him to track. Even so, it took a chunk out of Arthur's side, biting through his suit and coat this time with ease.

"Mittelt into the sky, we've destroyed enough of the canopy. Tonks, take out that dog!" Rias ordered while Asia knelt next to the swordsman, the rings of Dawn Healing appearing on her hands. "Yubelluna, keep the pressure on their leader, I just need one clean shot Maou darn it!" she would normally have used stronger language, but she was trying to set a good example for the nearby Lily, who had yet to turn her attention to the fight occurring around her, staring avidly at the magic within the stone.

Tonks had switched to conjuration spells sending creature after creature into the forest around them to help Luna, while at the same time guarding Rolf's back. Now she twisted around as Yubelluna replied in the affirmative, finally allowing Mittelt to back away from her own battle and take to the sky. Between Tonks' spells and Mittelt's aerial attacks, the black dog retreated, while others charged forward out of the trees.

Back with Loup, he had finished off several of his opponents by this point, even the two with silver weapons before they could stab him, the two having been obvious in their approach to the melee around him. He was about to try to make his way back to the others, his sense of smell and hearing at least telling him where they were even if they were still mostly out of sight from where his personal battle had taken him.

Then another black dog rushed him, crashing into his side with far more strength than either of the others. It was also fast and tore into him even as Loup turned, trying to rake its side with his claws, unable to concentrate on a spell.

The two bit and snarled as they rolled around, but Loup realized with dismay that the creature was stronger than him and much faster. Worse yet, it's hide, which was almost like that of a pit bull but not quite, was immune to his claws. That left only his fangs and jaws to break the beast's hide, and it seemed to understand that, always dodging away.

Soon Loup was fighting for his life as the black dog continued to maul him, nearly tearing off an arm, and then his guts in short order.

By where her father was still slumped against the rock, Lily shook her head, unable to follow most of the battle thanks to how they'd had to spread out around the stone and the trees getting in the way. But she could see what Tonks and Yubelluna were doing and knew they were doing it wrong. "Tonks, you've got to remember what kind of spells Asia and I used in our dream! The Patronus!"

Tonks could have hit herself when she remembered that. "Right, thanks, lovey," she muttered, unheard by anyone over the sound of the battle as she gathered magic into her hand. "Expecto Patronum!"

From her outthrust hand, a massive badger leaped out, its large incisors bared as it raced into the shadows of the forest, banishing them with its blinding light before slamming into two of the shadow beasts, burying them to Earth. When the corporeal shades of darkness met the almost incorporeal shade of light, their very essence was torn away from them by its searing touch.

Asia also instantly shifted from defense to offense, using the same spell, having been taught it by Harry. The others hadn't been all that interested in learning it, and Rias for one didn't really need it, her Power of Destruction attack spells proving to be just as deadly here as it was against most anything else. And Yubelluna's Bombardier Sacred Gear was also proving to be a match for the shadow and physical forces of the Wild Hunt.

"Mittelt, full power aerial attack!" Rias ordered. "Luna, Rolf, if you know that spell, use it too!"

Above them, Mittelt, in the same aerial position she had been during the battle against the Unspeakables, cackled madly as she launched an entire flight of Light Spears down into the surrounding forest. And while the Holy Magic of her spears didn't seem as purely anathema to the shadow beasts, they were still deadly enough. The Wild Hunt now found themselves being either pushed back and away from there would-be victims or skewered in the open around the stone that Rias and Yubelluna had created during the battle almost as a side effect.

Those few that still closed through this shattered ground met Koneko, who smashed them away with kicks and punches, protecting her friends from the in-close attacks of their enemies. At the same time, Luna and Rolf shifted their attention to light-based spells, shooting out their own Patroni. And finally, Arthur joined Koneko, now warier of the threat posed by these supposed animals, and most displeased at how Excalibur Ruler had proven ineffective against the Grim.

The next instant, Lily joined them. She hadn't honestly been taught how to use the Expecto Patronum as others would term it. But Harry had told her the theory even before her dreamscape adventure, and afterward, Harry had helped her define her own version of the spell, telling her, "Remember, however you want to use your magic, it's up to you and your imagination to make it happen. If you think you can make that spell work the way you used it in that dream, you go right ahead. Just remember when it comes to the Patronus spell, the kind of happy memory you call upon matters even more than raw power. If you can't make it work with one memory, use another."

So she did. Instead of sending out a single Patronus or a blast of light like Rolf could, Lily concentrated on smaller apparitions, but many smaller apparitions. Lots of them. All around her, light-based versions of her friends and family appeared, including those who weren't here at the moment. Rias gasped as a glowing Akeno stood next to her along with an almost real to life example of Kunou before they shot out into the woods, all of them rather amusingly racing along on all fours.

They were filled with such an infusion of light-based magic that even the Master of the Wild Hunt, who was stalking through the woods towards a horribly mauled Loup at that moment, screamed in fury, backing away as he held his blood-drenched hands up to his glowing red eyes to cover them from the flare of light the spectral apparitions created. The Cu Sith too howled, although looking up at his tormentor, Loup blearily thought it sounded like it was more in sympathy than in pain.

The next second, Loup disappeared from under the black dog, teleported back to the others. Rias had been trying to concentrate on too many things at once to be able to use the Gremory teleportation skill, but now that she had a moment was able to push out an area of control spell into the surrounding woodlands. Not nearly as far as she had tried to, something in the magi-sphere of the land fought against her willpower, diminishing the area she could contain within reach of her teleportation. But Loup was still within that zone.

With Loup out of the way, Rias was able to concentrate her attacks on the Master of the Hunt, seeing him through two trees in the way. The creature had barely a moment to look up before a blast of near Koneko-sized Power of Destruction was sizzling through the forest towards him, disintegrating everything in its path. He had a second to stare at it and then disappeared before the blast could reach him, teleporting away in as neat teleportation as Rias had ever seen, even from someone within the Gremory clan.

With him gone, the rest of the Wild Hunt disappeared into the shadows of the trees as if they had never been. Only a few of the riders and the giant dog which had mauled Loup retreated in a more normal fashion, racing out of sight through the ever-shifting trees. Watching this, Rias groaned a little. "Great, just great. Enemies that can appear and reappear out of the very shadows. I now understand why so many other clans get annoyed fighting mine."

"Remember Rias, tricks, shadows, illusions, and sudden small-scale teleportation are all part of the regular repertoire of the Fae," Rolf spoke up from where he was sitting on his rear, looking a little exhausted. He'd been throwing out a lot of spells today, and he wasn't so used to it as the others, nor did he have the power they had. Luna two looked a little tired around the edges but was still bouncing around like a jack-in-the-box, looking between the shadows of the surrounding forest and Harry.

Lily also was exhausted, although none of the others realized it until she collapsed onto her knees, gasping. Koneko and Rias instantly moved in her direction, as did the others. But they were not the only ones. Gwyn ap Nudd was still in the area, simply hidden from their senses and he suddenly appeared out from Rolf's shadow, reaching towards Lily with both of his bloody hands, howling something in ancient Welsh which Rias and the others could understand thanks to the inherent translation magic all Devils, Angels and Fallen possessed. "You are mine!"

This might have worked if he had tried it in the center of the battle, or if the adventurers were more spread out. But it was a final last gasp of someone furious at having been completely routed, a move of emotion rather than thought from someone who had become used to running down defenseless prey and it betrayed him.

Asia shouted out, "Protego!" at the same time that Yubelluna reacted. "Bombardier: Blasting Bombardment!"

The shield spell formed into a huge wall of indomitable magic, stopping Gwyn ap Nudd in his tracks long enough for Yubelluna's Sacred Gear-based attack to crash into his side, sending him skidding sideways a few steps. Even so, the odd white covering on his skin seemed to protect him from any damage.

But then he was smashed in the face by a Boosted Gear punch from Koneko, the roar of Ddraig booming "BOOST!" almost drowned out Koneko's yowl of fury, which was so loud it to almost hit like a physical force. The Master of the Wild Hunt was sent flying over the heads of Rolf and Luna, to land in the shadows, the strange white stuff covering his arm which had acted as armor now cracked and chipping away around the forearm he had raised in a desperate attempt to block the blow.

Even so, he still got to his feet and stared at them all, raising his hand in a gesture that made the ground rise up in response to a blast of her Rias's Power of Destruction. When the ravening beam of magic finished blasting through the mound of earth, the Master of the Hunt was nowhere to be seen.

"Are you all right?" Asia asked as she went to her knees next to Lily.

Lily beamed up at her, and gave Koneko a thumbs up before yawning. "I like that spell, but using it really takes it out of me," she said with a sigh, then grinned widely, spreading her arms. If she had felt any fear at suddenly being in personal danger, it was not apparent. "But wait till I tell Daddy! I got all the images to work that time!"

Rias laughed, kneeling on her other side, laying a tender kiss on Lily's cheek, before lifting the girl up into her arms, where Lily clung to her, still beaming. "That you did, Lily. Well done! Both for using that spell and remembering how well it had worked against the creatures of this place when Asia and Yubelluna forgot."

To one side, Yubelluna winced at that, scratching at her cheek in embarrassment while Asia was more rueful.

Koneko moved to exchange a fist bump with Lily, but this place wasn't done with them just yet. As she moved, she stepped over a root of a tree, and Yubelluna felt something stir within the tree. A sudden flash of malevolence and another kind of power moving through the tree's own more sedate one. "Koneko, look out!"

Koneko twisted, but she was too slow. Out from the root shot a small imp of some kind, almost the same size as the tiny neon Oni that Akeno used as familiars. It grabbed on to the Boosted Gear and shouted out something in some kind of foreign language, which, strangely, the Devils with their intrinsic translation magic couldn't understand. The next instant, both the cackling imp and Koneko were gone, almost dragged away through the air at light speed, rather than simply teleported.

"What the Hell!?" Rias shouted angrily. "Mittelt! Did you see where they went?"

Above them, the still hovering Fallen Devil shook her head before landing next to the others, seemingly exhausted herself. There was something about this place that seemed to be taking it out of them somehow. Not enough just yet to slow any of them down bar Luna, Rolf, and possibly Le Fay and Arthur, but it was beginning to tell on Mittelt's ability to stay in the air. "No, I didn't see anything except a flash of them going away somewhere. I think they went to our left, but, but beyond that…" she shrugged.

Scowling angrily, Rias was about to let her own wings flare out to fly in that direction when there was a deep thrumming hum through the air and the ground beneath them. But instead of being worried about what was going to happen next, with this feeling came a feeling of rejuvenation, all of them feeling suddenly as if they had just had a few hours rest rather than a fight. Turning, Rias and the others saw the stone finished repairing itself under Harry's direction, and the runes on it flared with blue, white, and golden light.

Harry slowly pulled his hands away from it, opening his eyes to look around at the others blinking as he saw the combat ravaged land all around him, shaking off the impressions of the stone as he saw the remnants of the battlefield. "Well, cock, I take it we were attacked while I was in there?"

Rias nodded, and as Harry took a still tired-seeming Lily from her, explained about the fight they'd had and how Koneko was missing. Harry instantly turned to Luna and Rolf, who were shaking their heads even before he spoke. On her palm, Luna held out her wand to show Harry that it was spinning wildly rather than pointing in Koneko's direction.

"I think either we're being blocked, or something about this place is intrinsically stopping us from using spells that can help us find one another or anything else. In fact, before this fight began, I tried to use a point me spell to discover the next nearest stone like this," Luna said, gesturing over to the stone beside Harry, the runes of which were still glowing with golden and light green magic. "That should have been specific enough to work, but it didn't."

"What's odd to me is that it didn't look as if Koneko was the one being targeted. It almost looked as if the Boosted Gear itself was, and the young Nekomata was merely pulled along for the ride," Arthur suggested with Le Fay nodding agreement even as she stared at the runes on the rock. Many of them looked to almost be based on trees, which was highly unusual.

Rias gasped, smacking her four head. "Of course! Ddraig comes from Wales! As does Gwyn ap Nudd!"

"Gwyn ap Nudd?" Mittelt asked while Harry began to curse under his breath.

"Master of the Hunt and King of the Unseelie of Wales. Trust me, his appearance is quite distinctive." Rias grimaced, looking over at Yubelluna, who winced as she recalled what they had discovered about the various leaders of the Wild Hunt. The stories about that particular creature, which were later used by Lloyd Alexander in the Book of Three were not the kind of thing she wanted to speak of even in the light of day.

"Ddraig was called the Great Welsh, heck, he's even on their flag, so perhaps the King or Queen of the Unseelie was able to create some kind of specific spell to combat him if he ever found his way here? One which eventually activated thanks to Koneko using his Boosted Gear power against that horned creature?" Harry postulated.

"Gwyn App Nudd," Yubelluna repeated unhappily. "I agree with Rias. That, that isn't good."

"Tell us later, we have Koneko to find," Harry replied crisply, along with Rias's firm nod of agreement. He closed his eyes, feeling his connection to the spell work of the stone, trying to reach out through it into the surrounding underlying matrix of energy and magic that flowed throughout this land. Like Harry had feared, he found himself blocked almost instantly. The powers that be here were now aware of him and were angry at his intrusion.

They beat him back, forcing Harry's consciousness out the magi-sphere, but not before Harry was able to determine which direction Koneko had gone. He turned to the others, then slowly rose into the air with his daughter clinging to his neck. He looked down at her, winking at her worried expression, the little girl having become almost silent since Koneko had been taken away. "Do you remember what else you could use a Patronus charm to do, Lily love?"

Her eyes widened, she nodded rapidly, as Harry held out a hand to one side, intoning the spell. The next second, a massive stag burst out, and Harry whispered to it, "Find Koneko! Find my missing girl!"

With Rias carrying Luna and the others following either being carried themselves or on broomsticks, Harry followed after his Patronus through the air towards where Koneko had ended up. Their overall mission would have to wait until they got their missing family member back.

OOOOOOO

Elsewhere, Koneko found herself flung through a set of trees, very grateful for her Rook-given durability. After an indeterminable amount of time, the Nekoshu found herself landing in a massive clearing in front of an equally large cave structure of some kind leading up into a mountain that seemed mostly rock rather than covered with trees, as what seemed normal around here.

Koneko shook her head groggily, a little disoriented from travel as the little in creature hopped off the Boosted Gear, cackling and caterwauling in front of the entrance to the cave.

"Oh, crap!" Ddraig muttered aloud, seeing through Koneko's eyes as was normal when the girl was using his Boosted Gear.

Koneko ignored him, pushing yourself to her feet and then leaping forward like a cat trying to pounce on a mouse. "MROWR!"

The little creature, which looked almost like a deformed gnome of some kind, disappeared almost instantly, flowing down into the root of the tree it had been standing on in that same sort of turning into light thing that had happened to Koneko herself a moment ago. She smashed headfirst into the tree, from where she scowled, looking down at her arm angrily. "What the heck was that thing?"

"I think that was a messenger imp, the personal creature of the Queen of the Unseelie. They were known to steal away people and items upon her orders, which is precisely what happened to you. But that's not important right now because I am sensing something here. Something I really shouldn't be. A portion of my own power!"

Blinking at the angry and worried sound in Ddraig's voice, Koneko pushed yourself to her feet, grateful, for an instant, that none of the others were there to have seen her little mishap. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean that I believe the Fae were able to somehow drain a portion of my magical powers during the conversion war. Only the Fae would be able to even think of something like that, and even then, I bet they had to get the help of Nuada in some fashion."

"Again, what are you talking about?" Koneko grumbled.

Instead of Ddraig replying, Koneko's question was answered by a roar from within the cave, as out tromped a giant red dragon. It wasn't as large in comparison to Koneko as Ddraig was when they sparred within their shared mental realm. And it lacked the sense of pure overpowering strength that Ddraig or Lucifer routinely had when she fought them during the different training sessions. But it was still a dragon, and it was still large, still very red, and currently, attacking her. The instant it was out of the cave, the dragon roared, sending out a tongue of flame at her, the fire scorching the ground between them.

"Oh, that's what you're talking about!" With no chance to dodge, Koneko was forced to cover her Boosted Gear fist with a bit of her Senjutsu powers, boosting it further, along with a protective spell. With a wordless roar, she slammed her fist forward into the fireball. The fireball exploded upon impact with her fist, the flames going everywhere all around her, but not touching Koneko herself.

When the stream of fire ended, and it saw Koneko was still standing there, the dragon glared angrily at her, before letting loose an earth splitting roar. This actually hurt Koneko's ears more than his previous fire had the rest of her body. She stumbled back, her hands going up to her head to cover her cat ears, and Koneko was barely able to concentrate enough to dodge the dragon's next attack as it swiped at her with one massive claw.

"The fire was real! Are you saying this is some kind of clone of you?" She asked mentally as she kicked off the top of the claw, flipping herself through the air to dodge two more, then sliding down the dragon's outstretched forearm before leaping out to lash out with a kick at the dragon's main body that caught the dragon in the chest, sending it stumbling back a little. She then used the impetus of the kick to flip away, landing to the side of the dragon, which twisted around to glare at her, flames curling up from the sides of its mouth.

"No! This is an enneagram, as Rias put it, a sense of my power and self from back then infused into an illusion. But remember, for all intents and purposes, Fae illusions are practically real. They're not alive, can't really think for themselves or bleed, but in every other manner, they are real things. They can and will hurt you by tricking your mind into believing the damage is real," Ddraig warned, switching to telepathic dialogue.

Dodging underneath another gout of flame, then rolling underneath a lashing tail, Koneko hopped to her feet, kicking off the side of the entrance to the cave, leaping high into the air, her devil wings appearing to cause her to soar even higher. "I don't care about that! Just tell me if I punch it, will that thing feel it?"

Ddraig began to chuckle, a deep growling sort of tone in her mind. "Truly, this is the most fun I've had in centuries! Yes, Koneko, if they have taken enough of my enneagram to give that thing, let us call it Y'Ddraig Goch, my instincts and powers, then it certainly will be able to feel whatever you can do to it."

"That's all I needed to know!" Koneko shouted as she reached into the Boosted Gear and activated its armor form. Within one second and the next, Koneko was covered from head to toe in scales, her tail lashing out behind her, her ears twitching on her armored head. "Bring it on!" She shouted, her voice gaining a deeper, heavier timber from the armor she wore as Ddraig began to chant, 'boost, boost, boost!'

By the time the others arrived, the battle was over, and Koneko was standing in front of the dragon whose chest she had caved in as the enneagram of Y'Ddraig Goch began to dissipate. She turned to them as Harry landed along with Rias, both of them hurrying forwards to her, pulling her into a hug as they both tried to talk over one another to ask her if she was all right. Koneko just smirked at them, shaking her head slightly even as she leaned into the both of them, feeling Lily's arms going around her neck. "What kept you?"

OOOOOOO

Deep in Tir Na Nog in among the hidden crags and valleys at the center of the island, lay the Winter Court. This was a sprawling complex around an ancient Giant Tree, easily the size of an apartment complex on Earth, towering out of the rest of the forest. Outside this tree, there were a few odd statues of worked copper and bronze, along with a strange mosaic made of tiny tiles of shaped stone on the ground in the center of the open area in front of the tree. This was marked by a set of large, wide stairs leading up to two intricately charmed and carved oak doors, some of the carvings glowing with moonlight and dark orange colors.

In the heart of this tree, there was a small courtroom. Smaller by far than what a human would have turned appropriate for a castle of this size. Yet despite its small size, it was still regal and within could be found the trophies of victory. Here and there, skulls were hung among the banners, bits and pieces of silver bark with intricate carvings on them, hung on the wall as if they were as important as the banners. And in pride of place, by the throne itself, lay a sword. It was very obviously a courtier's item, a thin rapier-style blade although with an odd curve to it, accompanied by a heavy basket hilt, and several gems studding its length. It was not a blade to carry to war, but it was a blade worthy of a king or Queen in his court.

The blade had been shattered, the magic within broken. It had once commanded the defenses of the last Seelie city in Tir Na Nog, the last bastion of the Seelie, overcome by the Unseelie.

On that throne sprawled a being, a woman. She had a long white hair falling down back almost to her waist, held away from her forehead by a crown made of black wood, it's tips denoted in blood. She wore black armor, which showed off her arms, blue-skinned legs and stomach, but there was no way anyone in her presence could be fooled into thinking that she was human. Her eyes glowed with harsh white light with large ears, while her teeth were all pointed, not naturally but filed that way.

In this place, music played eternally, the work of flute and string, and a party was currently underway. There was always a party in here, accompanied by music and the screams of ancient souls held in torment, the latter, more pleasing than anything that could be created by mere string or flute instruments. But all this activity came to a halt as the person on the throne raised a quelling hand, cocking her head to one side almost quizzically as she stared over the heads of all of her courtiers at the far wall.

They began to whisper amongst themselves, but she ignored them all, staring at the far wall. Then she began to smile, snapping her fingers. A series of green, purple, and black flames were lit there, winking out and flying away in different directions.

She stood up, moving around her throne room, casually allowing her hand to rest lightly on a few courtiers, who shivered in lust and fear at the same time. She then left her court and, indeed, the tree behind, moving outside. She strode through the Winter Court's home as more and more of her Fae became aware of something unusual occurring. Soon, anticipation spread as well, rising with the howl of wolves and odd horns in the distance. Finally, she stopped, staring down at the mosaic, which featured a hunt, made from the perspective of a Fae racing after a human through the woods.

She then raised her head, roaring out, "New prey has come! It is time to hunt once more, my court!"

Her answer was a roar from every direction filled with anticipation, dark delight, and a rising bloodlust. Whoever had entered Tir Na Nog would soon learn that the time of making deals, merely toying with humans, or picking off the odd solitary human for their fun had passed. Here, humans would never have power. Here, they were simply toys to be played with.

OOOOOOO

With no overarching strategy, to say nothing of having any real information about this strange new land beyond what Harry had been able to discern from his bonding with the stone, he and Rias decided that the best thing they could do would be to simply forge on to the next nearest stone, the direction of which Harry had been able to discover during that communion. He had even been able to keep it in his mind during their headlong race after Koneko. Thus the group moved off from the place where the enneagram of the Great Welsh had fought Koneko.

At first, Luna and Rolf provided air cover via broomsticks while the others trooped through the forest, conserving energy as much as they could, as they pushed their way through the unending forest. The reason for this mode of travel was that during the race to find Koneko, all of them had been struck by a feeling of slowly exhausting themselves. A spell had been cast throughout the area, possibly through the magi-sphere, that was slowly sapping their reserves of magic and physical endurance. This forced them to conserve their energy, and walking was less intensive than flying.

Luckily whatever kind of exhaustion spell was attacking them didn't work on enchanted items, so the broomsticks were safe. And Loup and Harry were pretty much immune to the physical aspects thanks to their werewolf endurance. Arthur, too, proved to have far more than a normal human's level of endurance, trooping on without complaint. The others, even Rias, were becoming more physically tired as the day wound on, their magical strength also ebbing, a double whammy for her and the other devils.

Yet even as they felt the unnatural waning of their stamina, Harry and the others could not deny the fact that the forest of Tir Na Nog was beautiful. There was no sign that humans had ever even seen this area, let alone impacted the forest in any way. And here and there among the regular trees were other trees, shaped into pieces of living art. Trees whose trunks twisted this way and that into odd fluted shapes, their boughs raised almost in adoration to the sun. Among them hollowed-out stones which made fluted noises as the wind hit them at just the right angle.

The tinkling of bits of little triangles here and there throughout the woods could also be heard in the distance, although the source was never visible. And more than once, Harry and the others spotted, water moving along tree trunks and branches, like the tree was a riverbed, then down to the next, before magically being brought up to the top again, accompanying the sound of trickling water, somehow magnified beyond the size of the water in question.

However, in amongst these signs of wonder and delight were… other things.

Near one of the hollowed-out stones close by the direction they were moving was a large tree, which looked all exactly like a normal beech tree. Until that was, Arthur stepped a little too near it. He had accompanied Le Fay as she moved a little bit away from the others to examine the stone, while the others were moving nearby, still in sight of the two of them. Rolf and Luna had both been very firm on that when they had begun this trek, back up by Rias and Yubelluna. The easiest way to be taken by the Fae was to be caught away from the party, regardless of what court you were speaking about.

Yubelluna was watching the two of them, frowning as her bandrui senses were trying to tell her something, there was some kind of anticipation coming from one of the nearby trees, but she couldn't figure out what that was about, not until Arthur stepped near that one beach. "Arthur, look out!"

Arthur turned, his sword already in his hand as if teleported there, as vines suddenly shot out from the ground and from above, attempting to grab at him. At the same time, several of the tree's limbs twisted, showing that they were not solid, but instead were more vines cleverly disguised, grabbing at him, mouths opening on their ends and reaching for him.

One of them was able to grab his leg and hoisted him up into the air with an amazing amount of strength, but even as he lost his footing, Arthur's sword flashed, cutting the vine off his leg. As he got his feet under him once more, Arthur began to twist around in an intricate sword dance, whirling and hacking. With each strike, a vine fell as he pushed his sister behind him with his free hand, a small smirk on his face as he butchered the tree's limbs the instant they entered his range.

Then an explosion from Yubelluna hit the tree, shattering it down to its roots.

Arthur turned to her, looking mildly affronted. "I had that, you know."

"Maybe, but that tree, that thing is vile!" Yubelluna replied, shaking her head. "I've never felt an evil tree spirit before, but that thing, that tree was carnivorous. It was trying to eat you, and it wasn't going to do so just because it had to feed, no, that thing was going to enjoy it, enjoying the pain it could cause you."

"I think we can safely assume that it is a sign of the Unseelie's influence." Le Fay mused, coming out from behind her brother to look at the stump quizzically. "I think we can only be thankful that such trees aren't the majority of those around us."

Yubelluna shuddered at the very idea of an entire forest of these creatures, and she used the term with feeling. "Now there's a thought to give me nightmares."

"Were you able to detect anything unusual to pick that tree out from the rest of the forest?" Harry asked, cocking his wolfish head to one side quizzically. He had been at the head of the column with Lily, who remained on his back with Asia, looking at the remnants of the fight with interest.

"No. I could feel a sense of anticipation in the air, but I couldn't detect where that sense was coming from until it struck at Arthur," the bandrui replied.

"All the more reason to stick together," Rolf interjected, very firmly.

Everyone agreed with that idea, and Arthur and Le Fay moved around the few trees separating them from the rest of the party, joining the line as they moved forward. Arthur took up the rear with Loup and Harry in the lead.

The next bit of trouble came from another kind of tree. Eventually, the way they were going brought them close to a black tree. Its bark was black as were its leaves, bar one or two that seemed to glow with purple light, pulsing from within. The black bark was smooth, almost glistening, and overall the tree looked beautiful in a goth sort of manner. But there was no sense of anticipation in the air, unlike a few times before this when Yubelluna had sensed such in the air and had warned the others to be an on the watch for beech trees nearby.

However, when they came close to the tree, it to vibrate, its leaves shimmering. At the same time, a noise accompanied the movements, echoing through the forest.

Harry had barely opened his mouth to order everyone to back away from the strange tree when Yubelluna shouted out, "look out!"

From out of the tree came several dozen tiny creatures, scrambling towards them, disappearing almost into the background of the forest around them in a kind of camouflage. When they were visible, they looked almost like the one that had grabbed Koneko away, although not as gnarled, or ancient seeming. They flew from the tree into several other trees disappearing inside them, closing with the party.

But Yubelluna was able to track them and barked out orders crisply to direct the party as they reappeared launching themselves forward from bough or root. "Don't let them touch you, they'll spirit you away somewhere!"

Koneko took a certain amount of glee in using brief bursts of the Boosted Gear's power to smash the little imps away so hard they came apart midair, splashing a few nearby trees with bits of green ichor. The others weren't nearly as vindictive in killing them, but they were able to deal with all the imps quickly.

The tree was still making noise as the last of the imps fell, and Harry negligently waved a hand at it, sending a simple cutting spell the tree's way. The tree toppled to one side, taking down one of its smaller neighbors as it did to cause a resounding crash that echoed dully through the forest around them. But the noise stopped, and he shook his head, looking over at Yubelluna. "An early warning system, do you think?"

"Almost certainly. But an early warning system for what I don't know," Yubelluna grumbled, staring at the two downed trees. The bandrui normally would have been rather annoyed by the wanton destruction of two trees, especially after several dozen had been felled in the earlier battle against the Wild Hunt. But after what had just happened, she felt it was more than justified, and simply felt annoyance for what had been done to the trees to make them homes of such evil creatures.

Yet despite their concerns, no new attack or hidden enemy appeared. Instead, the group continued on, running into trouble occasionally with the forest itself, but more often than not, the trouble was based around illusions. Pitfalls in the forest floor, trees that weren't real, covering up a simple series of magical traps.

Resting from her turn at flying, Mittelt was not as aware of her surroundings as she might otherwise have been, and when she put out a hand to one tree, she stumbled through it, as the illusion of the tree gave way. Instead, she found herself stepping onto a magical trap, which froze her in place from the waist down. Grimacing, she flexed and shattered the ice, shaking her head. If she had been human, that trap might well have frozen her solid like she had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

The rest of the party looked at her, and she shrugged uncomfortably. "Illusions. We have to be aware of them."

One of them might well have said something smart-alecky at that moment, with love of course, but at the front of the trail Loup who was taking his turn leading them instead of Harry, yelped suddenly disappearing from sight. The others moved in his direction cautiously, only to find him holding onto the side of a pit, the bottom of which was laden with spikes. "I didn't even smell the difference in the forest floor!"

"Illusions, like Mittelt said," Rias nodded towards Mittelt.

As Tonks began to levitate Loup out of the pit, Luna skipped around it, then hopped over another patch of dirt, before twisting around, and creating a stone from midair with her wand, flicking it down towards where she had just leaped over.

The ground shimmered for just a second as the stone passed through it, revealing a wide, long trench that passed to either side of the direction the group was following. "Watch your step there!"

With that, she turned away, humming still and then marking out a tree to one side in a similar manner.

"How does she do that!?" Le Fay gasped in shock. Even she couldn't see through the illusions, which was annoying her no end. Le Fay had been born with a unique gift. Beyond her basic intelligence, Le Fay had a unique ability to almost use mage sight from birth. Le Fay had a greater facility with it than anyone else that she had ever met, and it made her a crackerjack analyst. Yet Le Fay still couldn't make out much of what she could sense the air around her, and the illusions of the Fey completely eluded her.

"She's Luna," Tonks answered as if that explained everything. Which, to anyone who knew her, it kind of did.

With Luna in the lead next to Loup, they were able to bypass more traps of that nature throughout the day. But the carnivorous trees continued to occasionally cause trouble, as did the somewhat rarer black-barked trees. Despite this, thanks to the broomsticks and the werewolves among them carrying the others at need, they traveled at a decent clip for a group mostly moving on foot. But Tir Na Nog was vast, and it came to no surprise to anyone that evening started to fall with no sign they were close to their destination.

By that point, everyone was beginning to feel it bar Harry, Loup, and Lily thanks to their werewolf heritage. And Lily was still drained mentally from the Patronus spell she had used earlier. Loup also confessed to feeling as if he couldn't use magic without a rest.

Rolf, despite his own exhaustion, was getting worried about something else, as he took a moment to stop, drinking some of the water that Rias had brought with them in one of the mokeskin pouches she had bought while in England. "How long are we going to be here, do you think? If we can't return without first taking control of all the stones?"

"I've no idea. I suppose that having only four more stones rather than six is a good thing, but I can't say how long it will be to even get to each of them at this pace," Harry answered.

Rolf almost glared at the other man, who still looked chipper and energetic, his tail wagging as he tromped through the forest with Asia clinging to his back, along with Loup, who had Le Fay on his. Lily padded along between them, sniffing the air occasionally.

"I imagine that each of them will be a source of a fight, although don't quote me on that considering we have no idea how the Unseelie are going to fight us, if they are at all physically after the drubbing you all gave out earlier," Harry continued, blissfully ignoring Rolf's moment of annoyance.

"I wouldn't call that a drubbing. I nearly died against that black dog. No way that is a normal Grim," Arthur muttered to which Loup grunted agreement. "It might have taken me by surprise, but even so, that strength and speed were well beyond what I would expect even from a magically enhanced version of the breed. And it was solid, no hint of being a shadow creature like the rest we fought."

"Agreed, and the way the Fae were able to retreat, and then how Gwyn ap Nudd was able to use our own shadows to teleport around is concerning. Thankfully I think it's only a short-range spell, and I would wager I could use my own area of effect spell to offset it," Rias mused.

"Good to know, but I think we've gone as far as we should push today. We do not want to be caught out in the forest at night. All of the Fae were stronger, their magic more powerful under the moonlight," Luna interjected.

Nodding at that, Arthur looked down at his watch, the only one to have been carrying such that wasn't electronic and thus been able to survive the abundance of magic in the air during the ritual that had brought them to Tir Na Nog as his mind turned to the original question Rolf had posed. "Hmm. On the original topic that Rolf opined, thankfully, it looks as if time is not truly passing while we are stuck in here. Or at least my watch is stuck."

Everyone looked at Rolf, who made a moue as he thought. "I honestly doubt that the Fae even know what a watch is. I would say that this dimension is running on a completely separate time scale from Earth. That connects well with the few stories of the Fae lands that I would call at all accurate. There are stories about babies, young men and women, even middle-aged men and women, being taken by the Fae and then returned after a short amount of time to them, only to discover that decades have passed in the real world. Other stories show the opposite: the taken individual lives for hundreds of years and then is returned after only a day, their time in the Fae lands but a dream yet impacting how they perceive their life among humanity thereafter. I honestly don't know which it will be for us."

"If I return to Earth and discover that I've been away from the rest of our extended family for a hundred years, I am going to be right pissed. That is an academic concern right now, however." Harry looked up at the sky, and then around before looking over at Tonks. "Are you up for a bit more flying? I think we need to find a defensible position for the night."

Tonks nodded wordlessly, and the two of them were quickly joined by Koneko and Mittelt, leaving the others behind to rest as the flying group began to look all around them for an appropriate defensive point. They eventually found a hill in the forest, which had a small cleared area already on it where a stump of some kind of giant silver tree had once been. They led the others there, after which Harry and the other witches and wizards went to work, while Rias and Mittelt took up the position of sky patrol again despite their growing weariness.

Via transfiguration and conjuration spells, Harry and the others, although never having done this before, quickly established a camp of sorts while Arthur and Le Fay looked on, shocked. This consisted of an outer palisade made of stone that Harry had made rise from the earth, backed up by chopped logs courtesy of Loup and Arthur. In front of this area, a ditch had been torn out the ground by Yubelluna and lined with spikes thanks to Rolf and Luna.

The two of them had then turned their attention to the interior of the camp, clearing out the area, putting up their tents around the stump of the silver tree and creating a fire pit next to it as well as numerous torches. The more light, the less the Fae would be able to get within the interior of the camp. With enough wards, they would be able to stop the shadow jumping ability that the Fae seemed to use.

Returning from their patrol, Rias attempted to take this a step further, trying to create a bounded field around them all. It failed, the spell sputtering out even as she tried to concentrate on it. "It's as if the magic of this dimension is fighting against being copied. It's an automatic reaction, not something directed, or I think it is anyway," she mumbled, staring down at her conjoined hands for a moment before shaking her head. "Still, that doesn't mean that we can't put down defensive works."

While the others were handling the interior defenses, Rias and Harry worked together to create a cordon around the area with small ward stones and talismans. Most of these relied on the runic language of the Onmyouji, which allowed for more aggressively dangerous one-shot defensive works then the European Wizard style. Working together, they swiftly put up enough of both those styles and Devil-type wards, which were more powerful than any human-style runic language but were much less varied in what they could do. They first created a hard defensive outer edge, then with the sun fading, created fire lanes behind that to make their enemies bunch up as they neared the camp after getting past the outer defense.

By the time they were satisfied with their defenses, the sun was fully down, and the twosome headed back to camp quickly, the darkness under the boughs of the forest becoming foreboding.

Later, the group sat around the fire pit in their little camp as Harry, and surprisingly Le Fay cooked them a meal from the supplies they had bought in Ireland and England while Luna, Rolf, Rias and Yubelluna dominated the discussion. The wizard couple covering the basic nature of the two Fae courts first.

"Each court wasn't just comprised of Fae, but of different magical species and creatures which would look to the Fae for overall leadership, the court they were a part of would depend on their basic nature. The difference between the courts was much more profound than simple 'summer' and 'winter'. The Summer Court was composed, generally, of good or at best neutral races. Flower fairies, leprechauns, and the High Fae, who are kind of like the elves in common fantasy," Luna explained, bouncing lightly in place as she talked about one of her favorite topics.

"They liked, no, they loved to trick humans, to play with them, but rarely would they be truly malicious, or cause direct pain. They cared about privacy, being left alone above everything. That and their word. If a Seelie gave their word, it was sacrosanct, although they would still look for ways to get around any agreement made with mortals and even Tuathans."

Then she sobered. "The Winter Court, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. The Fae of that court was not only more warlike, but they were also much more vicious on the whole. And the creatures who looked to them are the undead or those who enjoyed death. When the Winter Court interacted with humanity pain and madness followed. Some Unseelie feed off such, growing stronger. And they have always called to the more primal, blood-soaked parts of humanity. To them, we were toys to play with or favored pets, not people."

From there, Rolf excitedly explained about many of the mystical beasts that they had discovered legends about which they might run into here, and which would be associated with the Unseelie. When the married couple wound down, Rias and Yubelluna took over. They talked about the Fae specifically in the Celtic tradition, using tales and their research to try to give everyone a better idea of what they might face in the battles that all of them knew were coming.

"None of us can eat or drink anything native to this land while we're here. The tales are very clear on that." Rias said, getting nods of agreement from Rolf and Luna. "Even moving water can contain an enchantment in lands that have been touched by the Fae. Second of all, and I cannot emphasize this enough, we do not split up, at all. If you want to go to the bathroom, use the tent or pair up with at least two people. All the Fae specialized in misdirection, trickery, and separating a few victims from the larger party is one of their deadliest tricks."

Yubelluna was a bit confused by the mention of a tent, but before she could comment on it, Rias went on. "Furthermore, as we've seen already today, illusions can fool even those of us with extra senses, magically or physically."

"I still can't believe I couldn't detect the difference between the ground and the pits we ran into," Harry groused. "I thought my training with Yasaka was proof that smell was insanely difficult to add to an illusion, but the Fae seem to have figured it out."

"On the more physical side of things, I think we might need to worry about what are called Fae Shot," Yubelluna said. "The arrows of the Fae are supposed to bring with them madness, sleep and pain beyond the wounds they cause." She shrugged then. "Still, with the magical durability most of us have the magic in those arrows might not take. Their illusions are going to be the real threat, I think. And any other spells the Fae might have."

"Is, is there any chance the Fae will talk to us? I, I mean, all we are doing is, is trying to shut down the spread of the magical fog, right? We, we don't need to come into conflict with them, do we?" Asia asked hesitantly. While there was nothing wrong with her courage, Asia always hoped for a more peaceful solution. And the implications of the way everyone else was talking, as if all-out war with the Unseelie was inevitable, worried her.

"I'm afraid not, Asia. For one thing, I have no doubt that the Unseelie will want to keep that connection open. By repairing that connection, Harry has opened up the road back to Earth to the individual or individuals controlling the receiving stone he repaired," Rias explained. "They might not have been willing to tempt fate by traveling through before, but if they can somehow learn how Harry is repairing the enchantment, then…"

"And then there is Gwyn ap Nudd," Yubelluna spoke up next, sharing a grim nod with her fellow researcher. "When we were asking the experts that Melissa introduced to us about the Wild Hunt, in particular, Gwyn ap Nudd was the leader of the Wild Hunt with the darkest past. In comparison to the English version, which is mostly benign chasing away all the fell spirits gathered at the end of the year, Gwyn ap Nudd is… He is a horror. His origins are mostly up for debate, but he delights in the hunt and not just of animals. But of people. Have any of you ever read the Book of Three?"

Koneko nodded, as did Le Fay and Arthur, while Asia shook her head, and Lily frowned before saying that it sounded familiar. The other adults also all nodded save for Mittelt.

"One of the characters within was based off Gwyn ap Nudd," Yubelluna explained. "And the thing they got right about it was that Gwyn ap Nudd burned his victims in cages made of wicker. He would tie them to the cages and then burn them alive, and he would take power from that act."

Asia and Le Fay both gasped, rearing backward as Le Fay gasped out, "That is the darkest of Blood Magic!"

Blood magic came in two varieties, willing, and not. Willing blood sacrifices, even symbolic sacrifices of a single drop of blood, could aid in creating the most powerful white-magic-type enchantments and wards. But sacrifices, they also brought power with that, a lot of power, based on the agony of the victim. And that was indeed the darkest of black magic.

"Exactly. The more pain, the more power that Gwyn ap Nudd would gain. That white substance covering on his body? It really is ash, ash from the powder of his victims' bodies, empowered by the pain and fear that they felt as they died."

Le Fay and Asia both shuddered, as Lily burrowed into Rias's stomach, the older redhead hugging her tightly as the little girl's imagination, unfortunately, tried to picture what that kind of death would be like.

With his youngest being seen to, Harry put an arm around Asia, noting that Koneko simply looked angry, clenching and unclenching her hands. Arthur put his arm around Le Fay, as Tonks spoke for them all. "Right. So that's the kind of people we're dealing with here. The question now is, how do we make war on them?"

"The receiving stones are the key. If I can gain control of them all, we can just retreat back to Earth, and the Unseelie will never be able to reopen the connection to earth without me," Harry said firmly. "Beyond that, we can't really make war on the Fae, seek out their bases of operation, supplies, or anything similar. Tir Na Nog is too big, we don't know enough about the terrain here, and I'm not even certain that such terms would be applicable for someone like the Fae."

"Right. And we shouldn't be overly concerned about the environment here either. Beyond the receiving stones, I don't think we'll find anything in this world that we want to keep in one piece," Rias interjected firmly.

"Agreed," Harry answered, with Tonks as Yubelluna both adding their own affirmations. The four of them had by far the most destructive magical spells and abilities, although Harry decided to keep Fragarach in reserve unless he came face-to-face with Gwyn ap Nudd or the owner of the consciousness that he had begun to battle against when taking control of the stone. When he did, he wanted Answerer to be a surprise.

From there, the talk turned back to the Unseelie and their known powers. These powers amounted to causing pain, a lot of power over the weather and nature, misdirection, traps, and course illusions as they had seen throughout the hike today. Direct combat was not the forte of the Fae. That was what they had their allied or controlled creatures and undead for.

"Our research really emphasizes that lack of direct combat?" Loup asked as Arthur nodded and stern agreement. "The members of the Wild Hunt seemed quite capable. "

"And of those members, we killed at least six or seven of them before the rest retreated, and we gave Gwyn ap Nudd himself something to remember Koneko by," Rias said, nodding to her Rook, as she patted Lily's head. Lily had yet to remove herself from Rias's side and was taking in the conversation slowly, as Rias ran her fingers wound through her hair. Something about the tale of Gwyn ap Nudd had brought home to Lily that this adventure they were on was dangerous even with her family there around her.

"Not nearly enough," Koneko grumbled, patting Lily on the lower knee. "He tried to take Lily away. I wanted his head, not just a bit of his ash armor."

"Still, Loup's point is well-founded. While the majority of the Fae might not like direct conflict, that doesn't mean that they aren't good at it when it comes. They also have all the creatures that Luna and Rolf mentioned as being part of the Unseelie, and I'd wager they have a lot of them.

There was some debate on whether or not the Fae could use conjuration or transfiguration. "Which, when you come right down to it," Rias said, "is one area where wizards have everyone else beat. Unless you count being able to summon up our contracted animals, we Devils have no equivalent, nor do the Fallen or the Angels."

After the meal was over, Lily quickly began to look tired, and Harry ushered his daughter into the wizard-style tent that Rias had bought during their shopping trip in England. As he did, Yubelluna looked at the tent quizzically. "I didn't say anything earlier, but who is going to get into the tent with Lily? I don't think a tent that size could fit more than two. Maybe three, if one of them is Mittelt."

Mittelt grumbled that, but Harry looked at Yubelluna quizzically. "You know about wizard-style expansion charms, don't you?"

Lily interrupted, reaching out to take Yubelluna's unresisting hand. "Seeing is believing. And Rias spared no expense when she bought this tent!"

"What do you…" Yubelluna's voice trailed off as she was pulled into the tent, and instead of finding herself in an actual tent, Yubelluna stood what looked like a large sitting room of some kind, with stairs leading up to a second floor above and doors in every direction, complete with furniture. "Is this a normal wizard tent!?" she exclaimed

"Not really. Oh, wizard tents are always set up to look like an apartment or something inside, but Rias really went to town on this one. There's enough room in here for all of us, even with Le Fay and her brother!"

"I really missed out on the shopping in the Wizarding World, didn't I?" Yubelluna mused, ruffling her hair. "And I presume you've already picked out a room?"

"Yep!" Lily answered cheerfully before hurrying off to brush her teeth, shifting into human form as she did so. Not only because inside the tent she didn't feel the exhaustion spell, but also because toothpaste just tasted weird when she was in her were-form.

Lily wasn't the only one to use the tent, of course. All of them were going to. Rias set up a rotation, sending in Rolf, Asia, Mittelt, Le Fay, Arthur, and Yubelluna to get some sleep. The two siblings were given another tent, a smaller version that Luna and Rolf had owned. This was a sign of distrust, but Arthur paid it no mind. He was both too tired and fully understood where the distrust was coming from to fight it. Le fay was a little more distressed by it but went along with it cheerfully enough considering this too was a wizarding style tent, even if the interior design was rather odd to her eyes.

This left Luna, Tonks, Loup, Koneko, Harry, and Rias herself awake and on guard later that night when the attack began.

The attackers timed it very well, about an hour before the group on watch was about to switch off. And as Harry and the others had known, it wasn't a direct assault at first. First, the weather began to change. The sky grew overcast, and a cold biting rain began to rain down upon them as the magi-sphere of Tir Na Nog bent to the will of their enemies.

Grimacing, Harry closed his eyes, shifting into his werewolf form, having been human earlier to cook better, werewolf hands not being designed for detail work. Kneeling down, he pressed his furry hands into the ground, trying to push his mind down into the magi-sphere. But without the connection of a ward stone to use, he didn't have a connection to the magi-sphere ready for use, and he could barely grasp the energy of the magi-sphere in his mind before he was flung back out of it, causing him to wince. "Right, I can't do anything about the weather folks, I'd say we're in for a wet time of it. Warming charms all around, I think."

A few warming charms all around kept them all warm enough, even as the rain turned to sleet and ice. When it became ice, Rias and Harry, as the most powerful magically, put up shield charms to protect them from the elements further.

Loup was on watch on the outer wall of the west of their little camp, staring all around them, able to see through the darkness despite the sleet now coming down heavily thanks to his werewolf enhanced senses. The forest held no terrors for him even after the battle that afternoon.

Through the darkness, Loup began to see lights, distant, little bobbing fairy lights, and he scowled, shaking his head even as he made a signal behind him with one arm to indicate that trouble was coming. He was soon joined there by Harry and the others, spreading out along the top of the wall, staring out into the darkness, their eyesight once more enhanced via spellwork.

"Remember, wait until right before they're going to reach the wall to use your light spell," Rias warned as an aside, biting her lip nervously. "That will be the best time for it."

"This isn't my first rodeo, my wife," Harry teased lightly, leaning over to give Rias a kiss on the lips. Rias chuckled at that, but subsided, knowing that Harry did indeed know what he was doing, far more than she did. When it came to strategy and logistics, Rias was head and shoulders above him because that was how she thought: long-term. When it came to direct combat, however, especially this kind of small-scale engagement, Harry was far more experienced, which he had proven in every training battle they had.

Nothing happened for a while, as in the distance, tiny lights continued to show up occasionally, not coming closer but not moving away either, with the sleet continuing to come down. It was now coming down so hard that the forest around them started to look almost covered with it.

"Cock," Harry suddenly drawled, as a brighter blip of color appeared. "They are taking out our outer defensive array."

For a moment, the lights continued, the outer circle of traps being destroyed by whoever was using those lights, apparently without losses. They didn't spread overmuch though from the initial direction they had appeared from, which struck Harry as unusual, and he quickly asked Tonks and Koneko to pull back from the wall and move to patrol the rest of the palisade just in case this was a feint.

As the two of them moved off, Luna frowned, staring out into the darkness her eyes narrowed even as they began to glow with all the colors of the rainbow. "Can anyone else hear that?"

Everyone, even Harry and Loup shook their heads.

Luna scowled, still staring out into the darkness and not looking away from a specific spot. After a moment, she cocked her head to one side thoughtfully, humming under her breath to a tune that only she apparently could here just yet.

This changed within a few minutes, the two werewolves hearing it first followed by the others. It was an odd melody, lilting almost, a mix of flutes and simple pipes playing from what sounded like five or six different places around the forest. Far out of sight of one another should have created a cacophony, but each portion of the unseen chorus seemed to be able to work in perfect conjunction with everyone else, creating a hauntingly beautiful melody that whispered to the listeners of hidden delves, deep caves, treasure and adventure just out of sight, trying to entice them out past their battlements.

This song failed in its purpose. Quite badly, in fact.

"It sounds like the songs from a few of the RPG's Koneko and Gasper like to play," Rias critiqued, shaking her head. The magic inherent in the music couldn't get through her mental defenses or those of the rest of them, leaving only the physical aspect. "Not very original, I feel."

"Perhaps instead, they should've been demanding royalties then?" Harry quipped from his own station on the side of the wall.

Rias laughed, looking over at him fondly, and then around at the others. "I wish we brought along a boombox or something similar, give them a taste of real music."

"Something to consider when Yubelluna is awake again. For now, I suppose we should rest a bit. Until they prove that they really are going to come out to play instead of just teasing us like this." Loup quipped.

Rias was doing no such thing. She was concentrating, creating one of her teleportation arrays, which when spread out into the forest. It wouldn't spread far, she knew. And the power consumption would be monstrous even for the tiny area it covered. But Rias had by far the largest magical reserves bar Harry of their group and could afford the cost so long as she would be able to use her teleportation powers during the battle as she had in the fight earlier.

The next aspect of the Fae's assault came in the form of fear.

Harry felt it: a shift in the magic of the land around them. An instant later, an almost primal feeling of fear reached out from the forest, accompanied by the howl of wolves and shadow beasts in the darkness. The fear struck with all the power of a hurricane, a dread of the dark and unknown that should have completely unmanned anyone hit by it. Human heroes would have crumbled, the strongest of wills turned to mush in the face of that fear. Even Angels or other supernatural beings would have been affected.

However, Harry just laughed while the others chortled, shaking their heads. That kind of spell might work upon non-magicals, or even most wizards and witches, but these were not regular people of any variety anyone with Occlumentic shields or any other kind of mental defense could sneer at such an un-aimed assault.

Even Luna, by far the most normal – physically anyway - of those currently on guard, shrugged it off, shaking her head. "The children of the night seem to have lost their touch, I feel."

This caused a round of laughter, and as anyone could tell the Fae, laughter was the greatest cure for fear. The coalescing fear spell shattered as the music stumbled to the halt, the unseen musicians flummoxed by this sudden humor and the night continued on.

With no moon visible through the falling sleet and Arthur having taken his wristwatch into bed with him, the defenders had no sense of time. But, neither were they quelling under the continued assault on their attention or mental faculties. Twice more, a fear spell tried to coalesce around them, followed by another type of emotion-based spell.

This spell tried to call upon more… primal urges. Lust and territoriality, anger, hate. One after another, the Fae attempted to call to the most base of these strange humans and Devils that had found their way to Tir Na Nog. And with these, they were more successful, if not enough for their purposes.

Loup had a very difficult time of that, but a swift spell from Luna stuck his hands to the front of the wall in front of him, holding him there until Harry dissipated the spell, himself having had issues as had Rias thanks to her Devil nature and her connection to the Sins which had so long defined her race. The looks they had been giving one another until Luna shouted that it was another mental attack had returned Tonks blushing, and Luna thinking longingly about her husband despite her Occlumentic skills.

"You know This isn't affecting you as much as I had thought it would," Tonks addressed Luna as she began to smack her cheeks, desperately trying to get rid of the image of the way Harry and Rias had been staring at one another from her mind. Their raw desire for one another at that moment had been almost obscene. She and Koneko had had a hard time tossing off that last spell, too, with Koneko almost leaping over the wall to chase what her senses told her was another Nekoshu trying to enter her territory.

"I know. I guess I'm just unusual," Luna said with a laugh.

Tonks chuckled at that understatement, and soon, Rias and Harry joined them, again causing the unseen chorus to cut off for a moment before once more starting up. Much more raggedly now. It was evident that the Fae out there had finally realized that their mental assault-type spells were not going to cut it. More direct action would be needed.

They tried one more time to create an aura fear, accompanied this time by high-pitched shrieking voices, speaking in ancient Celtic, which, thankfully, Rias and Tonks could understand. They translated for the others, at least some of the words. "Most of its just garbage about what they will do with the invaders, that's us, I suppose. Fresh meat, dark meat, time to hunt, a time to play. Mortal games no-no, our games, not those played by mortals. Played with mortals! Male, female, young, old, all will look the same on the rack. They all will scream so nicely."

"Gah, Tonks, you can sound so crazy when you want to, you know that?" Loup shivered.

"Meh, runs in the family," Tonks dismissed. "Bellatrix the Bitch of the Blacks would have fit right in with this lot."

Even as the two of them were talking, Harry tensed, waiting for the next blow to fall. There was no way the Fae could imagine this latest assault was enough to break their mental defenses. No, this was to cover up something else.

The next second, he felt the tremble in the magi-sphere once more as power boomed out, a series of spells making themselves known. These were not direct assault spells as he and everyone else was used to. No, these spells had been sent through the underlying magical matrix of the land towards them, flashing out and into the trees around the camp. Much like the way the imp that had taken Koneko away had traveled, Harry realized, even as he shouted, "Brace!"

Dozens of the trees all around the hill their temporary fortress was on came alive, portions of their trunks opening like jaws. From each a shriek of pure agony rose, creating a cacophony that had Harry's ears ringing slightly before the trees began marching up towards them tearing their roots out of the ground and moving like people could to the distant sound of tortured wood.

Many of them came into contact with the talisman protected areas. Two went up like torches, several found themselves bound in gleaming ropes, others were hit by lightning or water, and one was torn apart by a very localized tornado. At the same time, Harry, Rias, and Tonks started to take them under long-range spellfire.

But the initial spell continued to work through the nearby forest, animating further trees, which would scream their anguished cries and march up toward the palisade. There, they began to reach down into the ditch, tearing away the stakes, or smashing other trees down to make ramparts across to the palisade.

Luna stared at that in shock. "That just seems wrong, trees knocking down trees. Can't we all just get along?"

Still somewhat unused to her, Rias, Koneko, and Loup all turned to stare at Luna, but Harry and Tonks kept their minds on more important matters. "Continue to put them down as we can, that's only the first wave! Luna, get the others up, and make sure they have Pepper-Up potions before joining us out here."

In response, Rias blasted out with her Power of Destruction while Luna, after one shocked glance at the trees hopped off the wall and raced to the tent to get the others up and out and ready to fight.

Arthur was first, racing out and leaping up onto the parapet in time to see the first of the trees reach the moat before they were blasted away by a Bombarda spell from Loup. Over the top of the trees and all around them came a hail of arrows, far too many to come from human bowman in so short a time or area.

But these aren't humans were fighting, Arthur mused. With a wave of Excalibur Ruler, he lashed through several arrows coming towards him, the blade whirling in an impenetrable defense.

But many of them were not physically there, and the sword passed through these Fae illusions, pulling his sword just a tiny bit out of position. Another hit his shoulder before Arthur could recover, smashing several others out of the air with a desperate swing of his sword before two more struck the side of his chest and thigh. And as they had been warned, Arthur's mind tried to convince him he had just taken a nasty wound, causing him to stiffen and fall to the ground even as he tried to tell his body that the arrow in his thigh didn't exist.

Luna hopped up onto the wall next to them, smacking one hand into the side of Arthur's face as she waved her hands through the illusions where they had stuck to him, even running her finger along Arthur's thigh where his mind had insisted Arthur was starting to bleed. "Next time wait for someone to tell you where to go. You're no use to us if you can't see what's really there."

Arthur waved his sword around again, once more taking command of another flight of arrows that was coming at them, shifting them back towards the incoming arrows as his arm began to work once more, his will overcoming the illusion of pain. "I, I will keep that in mind, miss," the swordsman intoned, badly shaken. The Wild Hunt hadn't used illusions like that, and the reality of them had taken him aback.

From where she was, Rias continued to send out blasts of Power of Destruction, which ravened through the horde of tree creatures for a few seconds. Then, as more people boiled out to the tent, she teleported the people who had been resting up out onto the wall in different places.

Yubelluna instantly began to use her Druid powers to try to offset the control of whatever was animating the trees, only to fall back instantly. "There are now enneagrams inside the trees! I think I think they are tortured human souls or something! Whatever they are, they definitely are in a lot of pain! I can't reach them or break the spell."

"Brute force continues to be the best solution then," Rias growled, gesturing up into the air. The next second, she flashed out a massive beam almost the same size as the fire pit in the center of the camp up into the air. As the others watched, it split off into hundreds of tiny beams of power flashing down all around the battlefield. This was a trick her brother and taught her the last time he had stopped by to help train her peerage and the others. The beams cut through everything they touched, as usual, sending dozens of the monsters crashing to earth, their legs torn away, or their trunks or face just gone.

While this was all going on, Harry was also doing his own part. The spell to animate the trees had been but the first of the long-range enchantments sent their way by whoever was out there. It had been accompanied by several more, and more had come afterward in rapid-fire fashion through the magi-sphere.

Harry was shocked. He had never seen anything like that before.

When you cast a spell, the magic left the caster's body and traveled through the world towards the target. The caster didn't use the underlying magical structure of the world to send the spell out well beyond where his own physical senses could see, no matter how enhanced.

On Earth, such a thing would've been impossible, Earth barely having any underlying magical structure to speak of, although in the past, it held more. Here, however, was someone far, far away from him, sending immensely powerful spells at Harry and his companions, the design of which he could feel through the magi-sphere, the intent a shadow to Harry's mind accompanying the spells themselves.

They couldn't seemingly reach the palisade itself thanks to the number of wards that Harry and Rias had put down, but even so, the spells were the real strength behind this assault.

And the spells themselves? They were beyond nasty, making Harry grimace even as he blocked them. Gut-wrenching spells which would have torn an individual's innards out through their mouth. Laugh shitting runes, where you would laugh even as you began to shift yourself to death. Further enchantments to play off their fear and hate, these spells coming in a more physical form than the vague sound-based effect that had been there before. Spells, to break their minds, to basically fall into an orgy, unmindful of their surroundings, to see allies as enemies and to just flee out into the woods as the light became dark.

But Harry, thanks to his own connection to Tir Na Nog's magi-sphere and powers inherited from Manannán, could see them coming. And each time, he replied with a bolt of his own magic into the matrix, disrupting the spell before it could form. Harry couldn't keep that connection going for very long, but it was enough to let him disrupt the incoming spells. Unfortunately, this once more took Harry out of the rest of the fight, forcing much of the physical battle on to the others.

And as the first group of tortured trees began to go down, the real weight of the physical assault began to arrive.

This happened in the form of monsters, beasts out of various mythologies. First, were crows, but these were not normal birds. These birds were as large as vultures, with three eyes and serrated beaks, made to rend and tear, to cause pain just as much as to feed. They came down from on high, fit to tear and slaughter.

Having just ascended into the air Mittelt was nearly overcome by them. Having been up in the air to start providing air cover as was her normal role in a battle, the Fallen-turned devil found herself surrounded by these creatures within a few breaths.

But her own cackling rose to meet their cawing hands filled with Light Spears as she slashed in every direction, even as the crow things began to bite or peck at her drawing blood. "That's right, you fucks, kip and kill at will! Bring it on!" Soon her arms were streaked with the stuff, mingling with the sleet as it soon drenched her and the others from the tent.

On the ground, the attack came in the form mythological beasts backing up the moving trees. Banshees and Bodach, or boogeymen, appeared out of the woods, rising into the air. But they were intercepted, their near-ghostly forms no protection against Devil-style spellcraft. The banshees didn't even get close enough to use their deadly cries.

The first to penetrate the defenses of the camp was instead a giant frog creature, the type of monster that Luna and Rolf had earlier called Llamhigyn Y Dwr. There were several dozen of them, although their numbers were badly impacted by the talismans and runic traps around the camp. But a few who were lucky enough to enter the fire lanes sprang forward, leaping entirely over the outer wall and moat, trying to get behind the defenders.

Arthur and Koneko and Loup met them in the main area of the camp, smashing them to paste. But, these frogs were poisonous, and Koneko reeled away, her flesh starting to turn green where a tongue of one of them had touched her. Even her Rook durability wasn't up to this kind of poison.

While she hadn't been woken up by Luna, the tramping of the others out of the tent had woken Lily up despite Luna's attempt to let her sleep. She stared out from the tent and seeing her friend and semi-sister falling, shouted out, "Asia!"

Asia turned from where she had been maintaining a protective spell over Rolf as he tried to get a bead on one of the tree monsters, disregarding his own defense. She saw Koneko falling to her knees and raced towards her, using a cutting spell to get one of the frog creatures out of her way without even thinking about it. The creature's life at that moment mattered not at all in comparison to that of her friend. She skidded to a stop in front of the cat girl, the rings on her hands already glowing into being as Dawn Healing activated.

Almost instantly, Koneko began to feel better, the poison from the frogs simply no match for the advanced Sacred Gear. Nearby though, Le Fay also fell, having taken an arrow to the thigh, her entire leg becoming dead from the knee down and then the dead feeling rising up her body. Rias too was struck from the side by an arrow, but the arrow, while nicking her skin slightly, could do no real damage, her magical resistance more than enough to ignore the spells on the Fae Shot.

Behind Asia, Rolf too nearly fell from another arrow just as the Fae made themselves known physically. And Tonks, slipping in the sleet-coated wall, found herself stabbed through the side, the blow puncturing a lung despite her added Devil durability.

The Fae were composed of both men and women. The women looked somewhat human, but their skin was green or dark purple along with pale white. They wore form-fitting black armor, had wide, pointed ears, and were thin almost to the point of boyishness in terms of hips and bust. Their fingers were long, their nails sharp, with only a few of them using short, stone swords rather than their nails. They wore cloaks of shadow, which seemed to blend into the dark of the night around them despite now being more than close enough to be seen in the light of the defender's various torches.

The men, on the other hand, were decidedly not human. Humans, after all, didn't have rams horns curving from the sides of their heads. Their skin too ranged from dark green to pale white, but portions of their arms and shoulders were covered in what looked like bark as well, adding to their armor, which was much the same as that of the women. Their eyes were slitted, and like the women, they lacked pupils, their eyes black as night. They wielded either short swords and bucklers made of stone or staves with leaf-shaped ends that seemed to gleam almost along their edges. And like the women, they had closed through the use of illusion and their shadow-bending cloaks.

Even Harry didn't see them coming until they were on top of the wall, their blades of green-tinted bronze slashing out at the defenders, the illusion covering their approach had been so good. While Harry was a very talented student when it came to illusion magic, every Fae they were facing was a past master at it.

But as they closed, the long-range spellfire subsided. Evidently, whoever was on the other end didn't want to hit the Fae. This allowed Harry to turn his attention once more to the physical side of this battle as the Fae closed on him from both sides along the wall.

Moreover, the Fae had not reckoned on Rias's powers of teleportation. The Fae's victims, Rolf, Tonks, and Le Fay, were suddenly teleported away from the point of contact, while Arthur and Loup were teleported into their assault group as it closed with Harry from both sides along the wall.

Now able to take part in the battle around him, Harry defended himself ably. "Lacero." With the fire whip in one hand, he lashed out to either side with a fire whip in one hand even as he shouted out, "Accio silver weapons!"

The Fae had known they faced werewolves, and one in every three of the attackers had a silver dagger on them. These were torn out of hands and sheathes before being tossed back into the camp, landing in a heap on the stump of the silver tree, the Fae's grip no match for Harry's overpowered spell.

Fragarach did not make an appearance. If the enemy didn't understand yet why he had been able to take command of the receiving stone and his connection to Manannán Mac Lir, he didn't want to show that particular trump card until he had to.

Loup disdained spellwork, howling as he smashed into the nearest Fae. Their black stone daggers stabbed, bringing with them a numbing cold, each hit made to cause maximum pain, but against a werewolf, they couldn't do any permanent harm, and without silver, they just couldn't hurt him enough to slow Loup down. Every Fae seemed to be highly experienced, dodging this way and that, working together, knowing how to use their mobility to great advantage, but they just lacked the brute power to hurt their two werewolf enemies.

In contrast, Arthur was controlled fury, Excalibur Ruler slicing this way and that, sending the bodies of four Fae to the ground in bloody ruin. While the armor of the Fae seemed to be able to mitigate the spellwork from all but the strongest and even stop the cutting power of Loup's claws or teeth for a time, they parted like paper under Excalibur Ruler's edge, and while the Fae seemed to be very good swordsmen, Arthur was an expert.

Moreover, the Fae might have fallen into complacency, he thought as he noticed one of them actually take a stance from a dueling style of some kind, waiting for him to attack before lashing out with an assault of his own. It has been a very long time since they have faced true combat.

Six more Fae fell to this close defense, and then Harry and his two companions were teleported away as a blast of explosive power lashed out from Yubelluna, destroying the attackers and that portion of the wall. But the wall was quickly repaired by Harry, and the defenders back in position before the tree-like attackers could take advantage of it. And out beyond the wall, the talismans that still were in place and the other runic traps continued to take a toll on the conjured or transfigured beasts and the monsters gathered here. The enemy pressed in hard, disdaining any attempt to find the 'safe' paths through the defenses.

From his position, Harry could see other Fae and the Wild Hunt out there. The huntsmen waited out in the woods, twitching from one shadow to another while sending in hundreds of shadow creatures.

By this point, Tonks had returned, and she was pissed at how close she had come to death. Indeed, without Asia, there, even with her Devil constitution she would have bled out quickly. So she was in no frame of mind to pull any punches. "Fiendfyre!"

The living flame shot out from her outstretched hand, roaring and seeking the bodies and souls of everything around it. Tonks controlled it, directing it into the Fae.

But before the near-demonic fire could reach the Fae, indeed even before it could start to shape itself as was the wont of Fiendfyre, something happened. There was a blast of wind coming from one side of the battlefield, and a flare of blue and white. Tonks found her fire being dragged sideways despite all she could do to force it back in even as she felt the Fiendfyre itself trying to fight against whatever was pulling it. then the fire impacted the source of the white and blue magic, the nearest black tree, at which point the attack was sucked into the tree, disappearing.

Seeing this, Harry started, realizing suddenly none of them had seen any of the fire-based talismans going off. Some kind overarching protection for the forest from fire? Strange, but extremely effective if so.

The impact of this on Tonks was extreme. The power she'd been pouring into controlling the Fiendfyre spell lashed back at her, hurling her back off the wall with a cry of agony as her mind blazed with pain.

However, her attack had made the Fae pause in their attack, cringing until the fire had been dealt with. And Harry was not one to ignore such a moment. "Expecto Patronum!" At Harry's shouted spell, a massive silver wolf appeared beside him, filling the sleeting night with light.

Instantly, the Fae screamed, the survivors of the initial assault and their reinforcements out in the woods falling back into the shadows of the surrounding forest. White, or light-based, magic was anathema to such as the Unseelie High Fae. The Wild Hunt too retreated, although Gwyn ap Nudd lashed out with a spear that demolished a portion of the wall, hitting like a Bombarda and dumping Rias off the wall with a cry. The creatures, the frogs and the crows stayed, as did the tree creatures. White-magic did nothing to them.

But with the defenses reformed, and Harry now engaged on this level, they stood no chance. Not twenty minutes later, the battle ended, the last frog creature dealt with by Harry smashing it into pieces by simply picking it up and hurling it away through the forest via another Accio spell.

The defenders stared wearily out at the battle-ravaged forest, waiting, but even the fairy lights from before were gone. The enemy had learned that to play to the strength of their enemy, i.e., direct combat wasn't going to work even with the night and now had shifted entirely back to their initial tactics. The weather began to grow even colder as the defenders stood there, their breath beginning to show in the winter air, the nighttime still lit up by the silvery wolf form as it prowled around the campsite.

"Rest by teams," Harry ordered. "One devil, one wizard, myself, Rias, or Yubelluna on guard at all times. Yubelluna, go get some more sleep. Loup, you too, along with Tonks. I want you both to take over for me in four hours." He looked over at Rias.

"Right. There should be a clock in the tent. If it is working, anyway," Rias supplied.

Harry nodded, then waved to Lily to come forward to help Asia with moving the extremely tired Rolf and Luna into the tents. The other wounded, Tonks being the worst, moved after them, healed but exhausted. Le Fay volunteered to stay up with, Harry, forcing Arthur to volunteer as well. Mittelt also stayed up. Alone among the wounded she was the only one who refused to rest. The Ancient Loli Fallen Devil was actually keyed up after the fight, and she kept on clenching her gloved hands and licking her teeth in practical ecstasy.

Astonishingly enough, the rest of that night passed uneventfully. Yes, the weather continued to worsen until it actually started to snow, but the snow began to disappear with the coming of the sun, even if the coldness remained. It was evident that the Unseelie had decided to mess with nature, which was kind of worrisome. Yet the buildup was slow, and to Harry, it felt as if that, and the exhaustion spell which was still impacting them, was the limit of the ways the Unseelie could use the magi-sphere.

He explained his feelings to Rias early during breakfast the next day, taken within the tent in the kitchen area rather than outside as Loup, Rolf, and Koneko stood guard. "Don't ask me how I know, but while they can manipulate most of the energy of the underlying matrix, they can't really use it to empower their spells. It would be the difference between being able to use the power grid, to say the power of your laptop or your computer and being able to tap into it directly."

"Still, last night was too close for comfort, Harry," Rias said with a shake of her head. "I think we need to think more about defense in depth. Our talismans and everything else worked, but they just soaked up the damages and kept throwing numbers at us. And the moat was next to useless as a physical defense."

"More conjured creatures at night to help deaden the assaults, more wards down around the area, pull them in closer, make them thicker and don't use anymore fire-based security talisman," Harry replied firmly. "They stopped the spells that whoever is out there was hurling at us through the matrix from being able to strike at us from within our camp, so they had to come at us the last dozen yards from the forest around us. We spread them around, we'll gain more space to work with. That, and clearing out a larger area of the forest, paring back the trees. No more attempts to create fire lanes, the Unseelie just ignored it."

"More space plus my own teleportation powers will be marvelous," Rias enthused, smiling at Harry. "They still weren't able to deal with me being able to do that."

Harry grinned back at her, and the two of them quickly exchanged a kiss, while the others, who were busily shoveling food into their mouths, hungrily shook their heads. Yubelluna, however, smirked at Harry. "I don't suppose I could get one of those, could I?"

She had meant it half-jokingly, but Harry just nodded, got up and before Yubelluna could stammer about the kitchen being a little too public, leaned over and kissed her in turn. The moment Harry's lips touched Yubelluna's, the bandrui shuddered a little, and then kissed him back, forgetting where they were, forgetting who could see them. All that mattered was Harry, and the growing emotions between them conveyed through the medium of that kiss.

Watching this, Mittelt grinned as next to her, Le Fay blushed and looked away bashfully while Arthur ignored everything but the food in front of him, much like Luna and the others. Not long at all now. I wonder if she'll have enough self-control to remember she wanted to let Akeno go first? Ooh, the sparks will fly when we get back to Kuoh if so, Mittelt cackled to herself.

However, despite that moment of levity, what followed breakfast was a near-torturous slog. First, the spell impacting the group's physical and mental endurance was still in effect as Harry had felt that morning. This caused their speed to remain at what it had been the day before. All save the trio of werewolves were feeling it by lunchtime.

Three times during the day when the group was attacked as they moved through the forest. Arrows, conjured creatures, spellwork. All of them assailed the group occasionally, but what was more dangerous were the traps of their enemies. Several times they ran into pitfalls, trees that came alive screeching at their approach, driving back those with enhanced senses for a few seconds. And more than once, they were struck with an illusion that tried to convince those struck that they were surrounded by enemies.

All of this slowed the explorers' progress through the woods while the Unseelie continued to gather their might. The winter weather also continued to worsen throughout the day, with snow starting to pile up above them in the boughs of the trees.

These conditions continued for several days as they moved through the woods. And every night when they made camp, the Fae ramped up their attacks to constant spell-based assaults coupled with more than an occasional hit and run strike. Gwyn ap Nudd also made an appearance every night, sending in shadow beasts, but not becoming visible himself, simply adding to the aura of fear that impacted the adventurers.

But these attacks failed in their purpose, that is, tiring their enemies out just like the exhaustion spell should have. The physical assaults were matched by the conjured creatures of the defenders and their own rune-based defenses. They also started to use a bit of Fae lore against the Unseelie: that they were afraid of cold iron, iron that was shaped and beaten rather than melted. A few conjured pieces of such seemed to work, although the effect was, in Luna's terms, "Lessened due to being transfigured instead of real." Luna also started to use salt occasionally to banish the Fae's illusions. Easier to conjure, this worked slightly better because of that than either the iron or the one experiment they ran with hte sound of bells, which was supposed to chase Fae away as well. The conjured bells just failed completely, doing nothing other than startling the Fae.

Second, the majority of the mind-based magical attacks simply failed to impact the defenders. Of all of them, only Lily didn't have basic mental defenses. She was too young to be taught Occlumency, which would have obstructed her ability to grow mentally. But she was in the tent every night before the moon rose, and thus was safe in the expanded space of the interior.

The other, more direct spells sent through the magi-sphere were much more dangerous, but Harry could deal with them before they struck the camp. And he could get by with only a few hours sleep during the day if need be, or Pepper-Up potions that Rolf had brought along. Moreover, their supplies were such that any needs in that area were met. No one was tempted to pick an apple from a Fae-touched tree or drink from a spring that had been touched by their power. Although the carnivorous trees did cause them some trouble, there being no way to tell them apart from a normal beech tree until you reached their area of interest.

The next true battle came when, after three days of travel, they finally reached the next target stone. There, the enemy had perhaps divined where they were going and had set an ambush. But ranging ahead of the group in anticipation of this very thing, Loup and Harry sprang it early, mainly, admittedly, by falling into a giant pit.

As the two werewolves fought off a group of shadow beasts, crows and Llamhigyn Y Dwr with spell and claw Rias had led her peerage, Including Tonks, on an aerial assault. The attack from the Devils on the monsters and Fae, who had been concentrating on the two werewolves, shattered the ambush. They were aided and abetted by Luna, Le Fay and Rolf taking a page from the locals and sending in conjured creatures to do a lot of the fighting for them as Arthur guarded the. In their case, it was rabbits with stone axes, crumple horned Snorkacks from Luna and hundreds of thousands of birds of various sizes.

Strangely, the sight of the Snorkacks seemed to scare a lot of the other creatures for some odd reason, including more than a few of the scattered Unseelie warriors there to aid the main assault through their spellwork and Fae Shots. This was heightened a moment later when Luna, disdaining the battleplan, came roaring into the main battle on top of an extra-large version, which seemed to respond to her commands as easily as a trained mount while Luna lashed out all around with her own magic.

Once more, the Fae retreated, leaving their animals to fight and die alone for no real purpose.

After the ambush was broken, Harry reached the second receiving stone and began the process of taking control of it and the portion of the Undertaking that had run through it. Once more, he was faced with a purely mental battle, facing the ancient, possibly female mind – this was just an impression he got - that led the Fae. Soon the spirit knew what he was doing and tried to throw Harry out of the enchantment that linked Tir Na Nog's magi-sphere to the dimensional teleportation. But while the Fae Queen had a natural connection to that spell and the underlying magi-sphere, so too did Harry, and she had not been waiting for him in the stone itself, letting him get a foothold there. On this almost even playing field, it was a battle of pure will fought within the varicolored fibers of the Undertaking and then the connected magi-sphere without any physical component.

Harry's willpower, combined with the advantage of being connected directly to the ward stone they were fighting about, was eventually able to overcome the enemy once more. You've grown complacent, you old bitch, He thought, having become more certain in the gender of his opponent as the mental battle continued. With that, he reached through the stone to the various teleportation points connected directly to it on the other side, repairing them in turn, the stone shifting like molding clay under his touch.

But the real impact of Harry taking command of a second stone was felt in the physical world around him. Almost immediately after Harry pulled his consciousness out of the stone, everyone noticed that the cold of the winter weather around them had faded a little bit. It would come back, but not right away.

"I think with each stone you command Harry, the Unseelie's ability to impact the weather becomes more difficult. Or perhaps just more difficult to project over long distances," Rias hypothesized as Harry looked around him in surprise.

Touching the stone once more, Harry reached through it into the magi-sphere and was able to push his consciousness out much further than he had the first time before coming into conflict with the Winter Queen's psyche, causing him to smile faintly. "I believe you're right. And moreover, I think I'll be able to anticipate their direct assault spells much faster next time." He paused, thinking about what his senses were telling him, and then his smile widened. "I've also discovered the locations of the next receiving stones."

Harry shivered. "One, the closest one, is in what I'd call the center of the Undertaking's foundation on this side of the dimensional divide. I think it is also the direction of the will I've been sparring within the magi-sphere comes from. I don't think we're ready for that battle yet. The other… that one's much further away, possibly as long as a week, but is a much safer bet."

"Regardless, let's put some distance between us and this stone," Tonks interjected. "Unless you think the Unseelie can reclaim your control of the stones?"

"No. The Unseelie might have evolved here, but this land was the Tuatha De Danan's too, they were its original royalty, as Rias and Yubelluna reported from their research. I have more right to access the magi-sphere than the Fae do, and those stones are tied to me directly now too. She would have to kill me to regain that control," Harry replied.

"Good to know," Mittelt muttered, staring at Le Fay, who was studying the stone intently.

The young girl in the witch's hat turned, frowning faintly as she looked at the renewed runes on the stone. "I agree with Mr. Potter. Despite not participating in the actual mass teleportation, Manannán Mac Lir's magic, which is based on passing from one um, one shore to another, so to speak, dimensional travel, was a far larger part of the Undertaking. I think these two paired marks, which are at the beginning, middle and end of the runic array here, signify his name, a kind odd physical embodiment, or hook for his magic. I can only detect the faintest touch of the Fae in this."

"Do you think that the Fae could have taken control of the Undertaking if Manannán was involved in the activation of it?" Mittelt asked.

"I… I don't think so. But I also think that the Tuathans would still have taken a lot of losses before the Unseelie betrayed them. Remember, Miss Brigid said they were under attack even as they tried to retreat. And Manannán Mac Lir's defense of his isle drew off a large portion of the Host," Le fay mused.

She didn't say what else she saw here though: that with each stone Harry physically took possession of, his magical power was rising. The magi-sphere of Tir Na Nog, which fueled the powers of at least the Unseelie Queen if not others, was also now feeding Harry, and Le Fay guessed, to a far greater degree too. Who already was on a whole other scale from any human wizard. If Harry keeps growing, he might become a threat to even Vali or anyone short of Ophis, maybe. Which is a very good thing indeed I think, Le Fay mused.

Unlike her brother, Le Fay didn't blind herself to the fact that the Khaos Brigade was made up of a lot of outcasts, yes, but far more bad people than good as well. Indeed, she hoped that this whole separate adventure would be enough to convince him they no longer needed to remain with the Khaos Brigade to have access to fights and conflict that Arthur so craved.

The group quickly left the site of the second stone, with the broom users ranging out widely in every direction. They came under attack from the monster crows, of course, along with a few banshees, but were still able to scout around until Rolf sent up a signal flare, calling in everyone else.

What he had found was a large vaguely rectangular mound, on top of which had once been a copse of silver trees filling the area from end to end. They had all been chopped down much like a few of the massive silver trees that they had seen, similar to the one around which the group had based their camp that first night.

But that wasn't all that was there. Amidst the trees lay the remnants of wooden walkways that might once have linked the trees, torn down at presumably the same time the trees had been hacked down, just like an outer hedge of berry bushes, which had also been torn out, only a few remaining near the edge of the area. Here and there in the stone mound there were small entrances to tiny caves, marked out by little sigils. Not runes, not even of the Celtic variety, but ancient personal symbols of some kind. And visible from the mount Harry could see what had to have been gibbets, hanging from nearby trees. There were also far more of the black, gnarled trees then they had seen before in one place surrounding the mound.

While he was pointing this out to the others as they landed, Luna was not looking in the direction of the rest of the surrounding forest. Instead, she was looking at the silver tree stumps. Leaving the group behind, she moved among them, touching each of them in turn, as if they called to some ancient memory.

Rolf had also been looking over the distant gibbets, a scowl on his face until he felt Luna's absence from her side, and he turned back to her, his eyes widening. "What's wrong, Dear Moon?"

The others turned and saw that Luna was crying. She turned back to them all, reaching up to gently wipe away the tears, while Lily and Asia hurried over to give what comfort they could. "I don't, I don't know. I don't know why, but the sight of this place, the way it is now, it just made me very sad."

"A genetic memory, perhaps?" Rias murmured to Harry, who shrugged his shoulders. The two of them had been speculating ever since Luna had seen that first pitfall that Luna's family might have descended from a Seelie Fae who had stayed behind on Earth after the rest of their people had fled to Tir Na Nog.

"I know what you mean," Le Fay confessed, speaking up before anyone else could. "This place, there's something poignant about it isn't there?" She gestured down to some of the rocks among the rest of the sides of the mound. "Some of those look like they might have once been pieces of something larger. This might be what the Seelie would have called a city."

Looking around, Harry nodded slowly. "I can see that. Which would've made it an obvious target for the Unseelie when they betrayed the Tuathans and everyone else who was retreating hereto Tir Na Nog at the time." Harry's werewolf expression shifted to show his fangs in a grim smile. "Which makes it quite apropos that we will be forting up here, daring the Unseelie to do their worst."

Luna replied with her own grim look, a look that Harry had not seen on her face since the war against Riddle. "Yes. Let them come! Let them see what a prepared foe can do on this ground!"

Throughout the rest of the afternoon and all the way up until they didn't have any natural light to see, the group prepared the defenses of the former city of the Summer Court. First, they destroyed every black tree within sight of the campsite. Luna took a certain amount of delight in that. Then, Loup and Harry headed out into the woods to find and destroy every other black tree they could find in a five-minute walk from the edge of the mound out into the surrounding forest, along with every carnivorous beech.

Meanwhile, Rias was expanding their territory of total tree destruction, creating a wide-open area around the mound, far wider than they had done previously. Yubelluna helped her, despite her bandrui side bemoaning the loss of such ancient trees.

Then Rias and Le Fay who had been very quick to pick up on the Onmyouji style of runic script began to lay down talismans while the rest, bar Koneko and Lily, began to create a series of pitfalls, mounds, wide ditches, and runic based traps as far out as the new tree line. The stone of the side of the mound itself was also transformed, slowly transfigured by Tonks. It grew to be a four stories tall wall, completely obscuring the interior of the campsite, with ramparts and even some portions under . Inside, she also raised two more walls, each smaller than the last.

During this time, Rias noticed that Luna and Rolf had gone missing. But before she could sound the alarm, Luna appeared out from under one of the small caves they had noticed on the top of the mound, trailing her finger along the sign that had been there. It was at the base of the smallest tree there, the youngest tree in other words. "What's the password?"

"You rather enjoyed what it the muggle term, laying the smackdown on Ginny and Molly, even if you only did so verbally," Luna replied absently, frowning as she stared up at the sky, more visible here than it had been throughout the day's travel and battle under the canopy of the forest.

Chuckling at both that understatement and the memory in question, Rias asked, "So what were you doing in there?"

"Finding out something highly unusual, but also quite personal." With that, Luna moved over, leaving Rias to shake her head in confusion behind her. But the taller redhead didn't question Luna about it. Whatever strangeness was within the short blonde, she was on their side, and Rias knew it.

Coming back with Loup soon after that, Harry stayed near the outer edge of their new defensive works, using Serpentsortia to summon up more than a dozen snakes, spreading them around. Using Parseltongue, he gave them orders to attack anyone who came through the woods that night near them, turning when he heard the sound of someone approaching he smiled faintly at Rias, then asked quickly, "What's the password?"

"Handfasting," Rias replied promptly.

It wasn't as if they had actually come up with passwords. No, it was the answer that mattered most. As good at illusion as the Unseelie were, they didn't know anything about the people they were fighting beyond when they arrived in Tir Na Nog. And it was good to get into the habit now since everyone assumed it was only a matter of time before a Fae attempted to imitate one of them at some point.

Harry wordlessly opened his arms, and Rias smiled, stepping into them, her own arms going around his waist as Harry kissed her lightly on the forehead. It wasn't the time for anything more, but both had grown accustomed to stealing what tiny moments of affection they could find.

Even so, Rias was all business as she asked, "I don't suppose you remember enough about the runic arrays that went into the golems to create one here, do you?"

"I can remember a goodly portion, but not enough to really make them worthwhile," Harry shrugged. "That was more Kala and Akeno's project than mine after we started it up. We'll have to get by with conjured beasts, rather than magically imbued human-shaped guardians."

"Pity." Rias looked around now ruined woods around, then at the snake which was currently slithering away through the bushes before moving out of Harry's arms and gently taking him by the hand back toward the mound, where they could both see snow beginning to accumulate from the constant slow snowfall which had begun days ago. "Come on, it is Lily's and my turn to cook, and you wouldn't want to be late for that, now would you?"

After a dinner that was mostly spent convincing a scowling Lily that the best place for her was in the tent rather than outside taking part, Harry looked around at everyone else, while Koneko carried her still protesting little sister away. "We all know tonight's going to be a big one. Before this, the enemy knew I had connected to one receiving stone, but they might have thought it was a fluke. Now they know that it wasn't, and they also know that with each stone taken, my access to Tir Na Nog's magi-sphere grows. They'll come at us with as much as they can bring to bear in one night, I think. Much more than we have seen before. But they've given us enough time to prepare too, and we have spells and tricks they haven't seen yet. Don't be afraid to retreat, and we'll all see the morning together."

Everyone nodded firmly, and the first watch took their places, while the others hurried inside the tent, eager to get as much sleep as they could before the night's events. As they did, Rias grabbed Mittelt's shoulder, holding her still. "Wait a minute. I think given what we know might be coming, we need to change your role in this fight." She smirked grimly, gesturing over to the tall stone walls. "After all, there's more than one way over a wall, so I'd wager that the aerial attack's going to be extreme from the get-go."

About an hour later, while watching still more snowfall, Harry sighed. The snow was already knee-deep in places on the mound before they began to move it around and melt it. If the snow kept falling, it was going to start to get really annoying to move soon, even under the trees. Of course, there were spells to move across snow without sinking into it, but even so, it would be a pain, added to the exhaustion spell they were all still laboring under.

Then he sighed for an altogether different reason, as Elven music began to play from out in the forest.

These were accompanied not by the regular spells that would normally begin the night's action, the fear spell, and the spells designed to make its victims give in to lust or anger or other such emotions. Instead, the enemy began by sending several dozen area-of-effect attack spells through the magi-sphere.

As he had predicted, Harry saw them coming through the magi-sphere quite a bit further away than he had been able to before. Now, with both hands on the ground, Harry thrust his consciousness into the magi-sphere, intercepting the spells as they came, grimacing as still more began to form and come towards them shooting through the magi-sphere. He sensed they would then come out from the nearest trees as if the trees themselves aimed the things. Although, given our forestry efforts earlier, they are quite a way's away. Still, this proves that the Winter Queen's spells don't need to come through black trees curse it!

"It's begun," Harry spat out tersely, not even turning away or opening his eyes, concentrating fully on the battle within the magi-sphere. Dammit, I wish I could send magical spells out in this kind of manner too! He'd experimented with that before, but every mental trick he tried failed, he simply couldn't push the spell he wanted out into the magi-sphere and have it travel through that connection. But the spell dissipated harmlessly or appeared in the material world around Harry. Still, Harry had hopes for the future on that score.

But despite Harry's warnings, the physical assault didn't happen right away. The magical one continued for more than an hour by the clock in the tent, and the music of the Fae continued to rise, attempting to unnerve the defenders. They were soon joined by the howls of beasts, shadow beasts, and still more wolves. The cacophony grew so much that it almost sounded as if there were enough wolves to completely surround the mound.

At the same time, that noise was interrupted at intervals as the Fae met Harry's conjured snakes. The snakes took a toll, but soon they were all gone, and only the howl of the Fae beasts remained.

Finally, lights began to appear, swamp lights, bobbing and weaving, searching out and attempting to destroy some of the outer runic defenses they had created. Watching this, Rias idly wondered how those swamp lights were taking out the outer defenses, or why they weren't simply sent in to do the same to the rest of the runic traps.

However, this time the group had done something different. Instead of the more restrained European-style runic traps, the outer defenses were made up of talismans. And as Rias watched, several of them activated, creating bursts of lightning, fire, and tornado force winds, much like what had happened to the tree creatures that first night when they reached the interior magical minefield.

"So that's how they do it." Rias scowled irritably. "They don't get rid of our outer differences, they absorb the damages they do. So are those fairy lights actual fairies? Or created spells of some kind? We haven't seen the Wild Hunt or any of the creatures use conjuration beyond those shadow beasts, but I suppose…"

She broke off, staring up into the sky as a wail of such piercing quality was heard, it sounded like nails on glass magnified a thousand-fold. It buffeted all of the defenders, causing Loup to whimper, and Koneko to clamp her hands over ears, while the others simply grimaced in pain.

From out of the nighttime sky hundreds, then thousands of massive crows followed on their heels by several hundred banshees, who began to shriek and scream that the defenders. But nearly every magical there knew the Muffilatio and cast it now, while Rias turned to the interior of the campsite, waving her hands wildly in the air pointing up. "Mittelt, Le Fay, Rolf, now!"

The three named individuals were not on the wall with everyone else. Instead, they were clustered around the center of the former Elven city by the tent that had been set up there, along with Asia.

Since the alarm had been raised hours ago, Mittelt had been busily creating Light Spears, spreading them around herself, until the former Fallen could feel her body's magical reserves groaning with the effort of creating so many. Now even though she couldn't hear Rias's orders, she knew what she had to do. With a cackle of "Eat Light Spear shotgun-style, bitches!" that no one heard thanks to Le Fay casting a Muffilatio over the trio, she launched her Light Spears up in every direction, a massive shotgun blast right to the teeth of the incoming crows and banshees. A hole was torn into their formation, which covered half of the mound.

At the same time, the other two, the least experienced combatants there, began to also launch out attacks, targeting the banshees themselves. Le Fay used the Patronus spell to create a small bright hummingbird, which flung itself from her hand straight towards the nearest banshee and through its skull, causing the nearly-ghostlike creature to dissipate with a faint whimper, before zooming after the others. Rolf concentrated on defense, creating a magical shield above them, while Mittelt began to reload, creating still more Light Spears and hurling them up into the face of the oncoming aerial attacks.

There were so many of them, she didn't even have to aim, but because there were so many of the crows attack, many of them were able to attack the defenders regardless, along with more than a few banshees, shrieking point-blank at the interlopers. Point-blank, even the Muffilatio began to fade.

But the banshees had taken so many casualties by this point those that landed were quickly dispatched by the defenders before more than Loup could be overcome. He fell insensate to the ground, but a quick Rennervate had him back on his feet. He was bleeding from the ears quite badly, but Loup was a werewolf and didn't even bother to head to Asia for healing.

He chose to stay on the battlements because even as the aerial assault continued, the Fae sent in their second wave. And it was a wave. An uncounted mass of shadow beasts and wolves launched themselves out of the woods from every direction around the fortress-mound, racing towards the walls. Thousands of them fell victim to the runic traps, and Rias would later reflect that watching a shadow beast who had just dodged a tumult of fire disappearing into a pit lined with stakes was rather more hilarious than it should have been.

And yet Rias couldn't deny that much of the outer senses were being worn away by the enemy's numbers. "Just like the fairy lights. Crap! Most of the shadow beasts and wolves must be conjured beasts. I suppose that means that they can't conjure up a variety of things, but that the Fae can use some conjuration. I guess we should count our blessings that their use of it is so limited."

The last banshee fell, and Rolf sent a large firework into the air, signaling that it was time to remove the Muffilatio, allowing the defenders to talk to one another once more. The cacophony of the fairy music continued to assail their senses, which was not very fun at all, but even Koneko and Loup could endure it. "Everyone hold fire. They can't expect to break through the outer wall with dogs! And if we destroy them, they'll just conjure more," Rias barked out, her words carrying across the mound.

There were more than a few curses at that from Arthur, Loup and Tonks, all of whom had had some close calls with shadow beasts before this, as they realized the truth of what Rias was saying. There was no way that the hundreds of shadow beasts and wolves currently being tossed their way were regular animals.

"Fight fire with fire?" Luna asked from her place on the wall, twirling her wand in one hand before passing it to the other. Unlike Rias, she had to resort to a Sonorous to be heard, though, something that made her pout. But only for a moment. After what she had learned today, Luna Lovegood was on the warpath, eagerly waiting to take out her anger on the Unseelie.

Rias shook her head. "No, for the same reason that we aren't going to take to the air just yet. It would simply tire us all out more." With that, Rias raised her hands, shooting up a large beam of Power of Destruction, dissipating much of the remaining swarm of crows. Then she flung her hands downwards, and the Power of Destruction broke into thousands of tiny bits, crashing down all around the campsite. "Asia, Tonks."

Upon hearing their names, both Tonks and Asia flung up their hands towards the sky, creating Protegos around the campsite from above. This coupled with the destruction of the majority of their crows, and all of their banshees, caused the aerial assault to stop almost entirely.

The ravening beams of Power of Destruction had also completely decimated the hordes of shadow beasts and conjured wolves coming towards them. But now from the distant woods, much further than any human archer would have been able to fire a bow, came arrows. They were accompanied by stones hurled from large, unseen hands.

"Duck and cover!" Koneko shouted, being the first to see them in the air coming towards the defenders. At the same time, the Boosted Gear shot forward, smashing a spear of normal size coming towards her like a homing missile. The bits of spear, which was made of a stone shaft and bronze head, disappeared even as they fell to the battlements underneath Koneko, and she wondered if it had been a Fae illusion. Then she had to smash aside another similar spear. And another, and a fourth, followed by a fifth, causing her to no longer have any time to wonder about the nature of what was coming her way.

Luna began to create Protegos around the area while Yubelluna blasted the stones apart before they could come close. Luna shifted along the wall toward Rias, as she started to fire out more Power of Destruction into the distant woodlands, hoping to disrupt the long-range assault. The stones stopped soon after, but the arrows and the spears hurled towards Koneko, just kept on coming, and one of them got through everyone's defenses to smack into Le Fay as she joined the others on the outer wall.

It would've taken her in the chest, if not for Koneko pushing her out of the way, allowing the shot to only graze her side.

Elsewhere on the wall, Rolf, who had also only just moved to the parapet, fell, an arrow sticking out from the side of his knee. "Dammit, that's twice!" He muttered, even as his leg went dead, and blue striations of some kind of poison began to crawl up his body.

A second later he, and Le Fay both disappeared, teleported back to Asia by Rias. She'd had more than enough time to create her defensive teleportation array, even if she hadn't been able to spread it very far beyond the edge of the mound due to pressure from the magi-sphere.

At the same time, Mittelt moved up from guarding Asia, gulping down a pepper up potion as she did, flapping her wings once to land next to Rias. The redhead shook her head and pointed back to where Rolf and Luna had been, wordlessly saying that it wasn't time for Mittelt to take the air just yet.

Glancing out past the shield, Mittelt could see more than a dozen banshees still up there, waiting for a target of opportunity, and grimaced but agreed with her King's assessment.

Moving along the wall on all fours to not provide a target for the distant archers, Rias came to where Harry was, kneeling down beside him. "How goes it on your end," she asked dryly.

"Well enough, if I concentrate on it. The Winter Queen's not going to stop this time, I don't think!" he said, opening his eyes to lock gazes with his wife. "I think she knows now that doing this pins me down. You all are going to be on your own again."

Rias nodded, and stood up, staring out over the battlements as still more dogs were hurled their way, idly creating a shield of Power of Destruction in front of herself. These were not illusions she knew. They were conjurations like all the rest. Conjurations could fool talismans and other traps, illusions wouldn't.

And what she was watching following them out of the forest after that was not an illusion of any kind. Out from the woods trundled seven giants, a group of magical creatures they hadn't seen before this. Looking pretty much like the breed of giants Harry and the other survivors of Riddle's second rising had seen, they trundled forward, roaring a challenge. At the same time, the arrow assault redoubled, trying to force the defenders to concentrate only on their own protection.

This failed, as Rias, not wasting any time, lashed out with a wide beam of Power of Destruction that took all seven giants out at once. They might have had magical resistance, but not enough to stand against the Bael Power of Destruction.

There was a brief second of shock at that across the entire battlefield. But then the Fae themselves also made an appearance along with another type of magical creature. These creatures looked like dwarves, but they had the chalky skin and long fangs of vampires, as well as no beards.

Using illusions, the group had snuck up onto the wall, and now the Fae cast spells on it. Segments of the outer wall began to decay, stone turning into sand at their touch, dumping Rias and Luna off the wall in two different places.

Arthur was sent downwards in a heap of sand, but he moved with it, his sword slashing out, as he closed the distance faster than the Fae warriors below him had anticipated. Four of the vampire dwarves fell quickly, while a Fae warrior dueled with Arthur for several moments, before being overcome by the magic of Excalibur Ruler which stabbed straight through his neck. After witnessing his sister's recent close call, Arthur was in no mood to be merciful.

Yubelluna also stumbled as an arrow slammed into her shoulder but lashed out with Bombardier. "Finger Bomb!" This caught the Unseelie below her own position in its radius, exploding their bodies into blood offal. Then her eyes widened as a segment of the wall directly under Harry also turned to sand. "Harry!"

At Yubelluna's cry, Harry's eyes snapped open, and he lashed out with cutting spell, at the same time leaping clear of the now-defunct wall. The Sectumsempra caught the vampire dwarves who had been about to make for him, catching them and several others who had seemingly phased through the stone wall racing towards Asia and the wounded still with her, not to mention the tent and Lily within.

"Watch out for the vampires, they can ignore the stone walls!" he shouted, before cursing as he realized that his inattention on the Winter Queen's part of this battle was about to cost them. "Incoming! Protegos, everyone!" Raising his hands, he attempted to create a Protego all across the campsite, but he was too slow. His barely formed shield shattered under a blast from the Woodlands as another spell crashed into the Protego above the camp, destroying it too.

A third spell from out of the distant woods lashed out in the form of a massive cloud, which crashed into the camps. But Harry's shield had held just long enough that it only impacted Rias, the nearby Tonks, Mittelt, and Luna. Of them, Rias's magical resistance was high enough that she was able to throw the spell off. She staggered under its impact, but was not impacted by the spell's effect. The same could not be said for the other three.

Luna was the weakest of them and fell screaming, her bowels beginning to turn upward, intending to explode out of her mouth. But Rias grabbed her and teleported the two of them away in a single breath of the spell hitting them, landing next to Asia as she shouted: "Heal her!" Before popping away once more back to Mittelt and Tonks. The two of them were stronger magically and had Devil-given magical resistance, yet the weaker Mittelt was almost in as much distress as Luna. Even Tonks was busy throwing up everything in her stomach, but since the alternative was throwing up her actual intestines, she could count herself lucky.

"Retreat to the secondary wall!" Harry shouted even as he slew vampire dwarves.

Nodding, Rias concentrated, and one after another, everyone fell backward, appearing on the interior wall. This left the remaining Fae and undead who had attacked the outer wall almost out in the open, save for that outer wall, which shattered under a series of Bombardier attacks from Yubelluna, crushing or sending them flying. Worse for them, their conjured creatures, and the real creatures which were now beginning to make their way over the open ground, had yet to reach that first wall, and their fellows, too distant to shoot up at the second defensive wall where it stood away from the edge of the mound, had stopped firing. This left those who had broken the primary wall completely alone to face the wrath of the defenders.

Twice more during the next few moments another massive long-range spell lashed out through the magi-sphere at them, but Harry, not needing to divide his attention between a collapsing wall and defending this area of the magi-sphere, was able to batter them aside. At the same time, Rias continued her own long-range bombardment of the forest, moving around at the outer wall, and slowing the buildup of enemy troops began to ebb. The giants that were out there also fell to her long-range fire, their durability unable to stand the Power of Destruction.

As the last Fae who had made it to the outer fell, there was a brief lull in the attack, as whoever was in charge of the other side began to evaluate their options.

This didn't take them long, alas.

Soon arrows once more began to sleet through the air far heavier than the snow that was still coming down. Then, right across from Harry, on the entirely opposite end of the campsite from Rias, the Gwyn Ap Nudd appeared out of the wood carrying a spear, much like the versions which had been hurled at Koneko several times that night. He snarled something, then lifted a horn to his lips. From this distance, Harry, his eyes open now, couldn't make out any details about the horn, but when it sounded, it's almost like a cross between a ram's horn and a conch shell.

Hundreds, then thousands of black shapes faintly formed into the images of wolves appeared from all around him, and he snarled as he sent them forward to clear away the last of the magical traps. Behind them, the rest of the Wild Hunt appeared, riders and real wild dogs not spreading out, instead forming a wedge fit to batter down the adventurers.

Despite that, however, Harry smiled grimly, not shifting his attention away from the magical battle against the Winter Queen, knowing undoubtedly now that keeping those area-of-effect spells from impacting the battlefield was the right choice. This didn't stop him from shouting out, "Rias, I think we have an admirer over here that is just begging for your personal touch."

Twisting around from her current position, Rias snarled, and a teleportation circle appeared at the edge of the mound. She still couldn't reach out very far with her teleportation arrays, but that moved her attack a lot closer to her target regardless.

Again The Master of the Hunt had barely a second to widen his eyes before a bolt of unstoppable magical energy flashed towards him. Again he disappeared into a shadow to escape, the beam instead going deeper into the woods. And with him went the Wild Hunt, for now.

"Drat. Almost had him," Rias muttered.

At the same time, the crows and banshee once again began their aerial assault, forcing the defenders to divide their fire again.

But when they came close, Luna stepped to the plate. She leaped down from the wall, moving to the center of the now much smaller defensive area, and began to create salt. Several mounds of the stuff. Then, with a stamp of her feet and a roar, she shouted out a spell. "Ventus Ascendens!"

The spell created an updraft of wind that carried the salt up and over the secondary wall in every direction, as well as up into the air above them. When the salt-cloud hit the attackers, many of the attackers disappeared, proving they had been illusions all along. This was particularly true among the attacking crows, showing there were only about a dozen of them, not the horde that had been there a moment before. It didn't do anything for the banshees, though. But they weren't really a threat either, there being only a few of them, and everyone knowing the Muffilatio.

The arrows were still doing more damage, the accuracy and range of the fairy archers such that simply conjuring up shields often times simply meant you were simply hit from another angle. More than one of the defenders fell for a moment, before being teleported to Asia for healing. And with the losses they had sustained trying to get close in several battles now, the Fae seemed content to continue to snipe at a distance.

The main attack instead came in the form of beasts. The giant frogs bounded forward, accompanied by vampire dwarves and a new threat. Several thousand horsemen without heads came out of the woods armored head to neck in black armor, matching the barding their mounts wore. The horsemen, who formed up like knights, charged forward over the broken, blasted ground, their forms becoming ghostlike at intervals as they passed over the rough terrain, before coming close to the outer wall.

"Dullahans!" Luna shouted, sounding halfway impressed, and halfway incredulous. "They will have a high magical defense, and those weapons they wear will also be heavily enchanted."

"Oh good, I love a challenge!" Rias snarked as she prepared another Power of Destruction blast, grimacing as even she was starting to feel the strain. Then she gasped as a small handheld up a potion in front of her eyes, where she crouched behind the battlements on the second wall. "Lily! What are you…?"

"Pepper up potions! I know I can't fight, but that doesn't mean I can just sit and wait in the tent, darn it!" Lily interrupted quickly

Nearby, Koneko had also seen Lily coming out of her tent, and moved to intercept the girl, but paused as she had seen what the girl was carrying. Now she stood rather awkwardly behind her, shrugging her shoulders at the look of recrimination Rias shot her. Still, she took the potion, and with Koneko following, the girl made her way around the wall, crouching low and going on all fours using only one arm to carry the potion bottles close to her chest, only her tail appearing over the battlements.

Everyone took one as they waited for the assault to hit the outer wall. But the outer wall fell to a series of Fae who had moved forward with the Dullahan, the stone turning to sand in larger segments. When revealed by another salt-cloud, the Fae ran away, while the Dullahan army charged on as other Fae redoubled their arrow and magical assault. When they came to the second wall, many of the headless horsemen began to throw large grapples up, which clung to the top of the wall and turned away, intent on pulling the rickety seeming second wall down. They didn't have any luck given the wall had been fused into one large piece, and many of them died in the doing. But others had raised bows and began to fire up at the defenders, adding their fire to that of the distant Fae.

On their heels came the giant frogs, leaping forward, they tried to land on top of the wall or even clear it as they had before.

"I'll take out the horsemen, you concentrate on the frogs and the aerial attacks!" Rias shouted to Yubelluna and the others before proceeding to do so, the Pepper-Up potion working quite well despite her being a Devil. Whatever magical durability horsemen had was no match for a high-class of Devils magical powers, and most particularly not the Power of Destruction wielded by this particular high-class devil.

Worse for the attackers, Rias's now almost indiscriminate use of her powers also caught two groups of Fae who had been attempting to close with the second wall. With them down, and Harry keeping the long-range spells at bay, the attackers were left to basically batter themselves senseless against the stone wall unless the Fae in the woods or Gwyn Ap Nudd found their courage and closed.

Yubelluna took an arrow to her stomach as she was concentrating on a group of banshees that had just descended, screaming their deadly cries. With everyone else already engaged around the wall, it had fallen on her and Mittelt to deal with the aerial threat. Though she sent them off, Mittelt also collapsed, struck by an arrow that took her in the side of the neck. But Mittelt was right next to Asia as she went down, and Dawn healing did its work healing the damage within seconds before Yubelluna appeared next to Asia sent there by Rias. Grimly the healer continued her work, as more and more of the defenders began to take wounds before returning to the fight.

The defenders held and held out more, but still, the creatures kept coming. More of them came out of the woods, more of the headless horsemen, more of the frogs, and with them came more Fae. Several of them didn't even bother with disguises, racing forward out in the open.

"Everyone but Tonks and Harry," Rias said calmly, "And that includes you Lily, yes, Patronus charm."

Rias had been waiting for this almost since the battle had begun. The moment that the outer wall had fallen, she knew that the attackers would have to come out more into the open to attack the inner wall. And thus they could catch them all with a set in Patroni, following up with Tonks. Rather than simply surviving this battle, they could crush the enemy's attack utterly, just like how she and Harry had planned it out.

Hands flew forward as five voices spoke as one. "Expecto Patronum!" Dozens of glowing creatures appeared next to their conjurers, racing out and away in every direction to join the hummingbird, which was still doing a brisk business above the camp, guided by Le Fay's orders to seek out banshees and dispel them.

And like before, the effect of that much white magic caused agony to the creatures of the Winter Court. Only the frogs and the few remaining giants seemed to be immune to it, while the headless horsemen convulsed in agony, collapsing where they were. The Fae themselves screamed in agony, holding their hands in front of their eyes as they shrieked to the heavens at the very nearness of these light-based constructs.

"Mittelt, into the sky! Tonks, do it." Rias said even as she continued to fire Power of Destruction beams into the now quite distant woodlands.

With the number of other flying light creatures in the sky, the crows and banshees had swiftly retreated, allowing Mittelt to gain altitude. She sliced three banshees into pieces quickly, before the surviving crows and few remaining banshees closed with her, ignoring the battle on the ground.

"Finally! Eat Fiendfyre!" Tonks screamed at the top of her lungs, both hands thrust forward as she summoned up what could rightly be called the Black family's claim to fame once more. From her hands a torrent of fire appeared, flashing out and down into the attackers. Quickly it grew, and grew, and grew, the fire taking on the shape of fantastic beasts, griffons, dragons, chimeras, hydras, each reaching for the attacking Unseelie like they were living things, eager to feed on the flesh of their enemies. With each victim, the fire grew larger, more creatures appearing as the fire spread burning everything in its way to ash while Tonks grimly grit her teeth, pushing the fire away from herself and her companions.

The archers at the back of the horde had not been immune to the touch of the light-based spells, and now, convulsing on the ground of the forest, watched in horror as the spell which the black trees had sucked away once before went to work without any such impediment. Many of them still retained enough wherewithal to crawl away deeper into the woods, but few would recover enough energy to escape the ravening beast that Tonks had unleashed.

With their attempts to retreat, the Fae left their creatures and followers to fend for themselves. Which they couldn't do. Not a single one of the attacking horsemen, frogs giants, or the few remaining vampire dwarves were able to retreat. They all died where they had fallen, stunned by the white magic assault or just too stupid to run in the case of the giants.

With that, the battle ended for the night. Once more, the ability to create both a physical defense and a magical one, coupled with their individual strength, allowed the defenders to get through the night. And Asia's Dawn Healing saved the day for many of them, her healing ability such that she could literally negate almost any damage that didn't instantly kill her patient.

The Fae didn't even return to try any hit-and-run attacks, they'd been so badly broken. Luna had counted them, and she estimated the Fae themselves, the so-called nobility of the Winter Court, had lost at least fifty members in one battle, far more than they had lost heretofore.

On the other hand, Harry defended against the Winter Queen's magic via the magi-sphere throughout the night as his distant opponent raged, sending spell after spell after spell at them through the magi-sphere until finally, the attacks subsided as the sun started to rise. But he wasn't the only one exhausted. Everyone, from Lily to Rias, was utterly drained by the hardest fight they'd been in to date in this world. With that in mind, Harry decided that they would have to rest for at least half the day before going on.

With Lily and Rias sleeping, and Yubelluna and Mittelt talking quietly to themselves elsewhere, Harry found himself alone, leaning back against a bit of the interior wall, watching as the trio of Luna, Asia and Le Fay went around to each of the tree stumps, placing small flowers on each of the stumps as offerings to the dead. Luna had begun to do that almost as soon as the sun had risen, forgoing breakfast until she was called away by her husband sternly. Harry wondered idly what why that was so important to her but wasn't going to question his quirky friend, he was just happy that all of them had gotten through last night alive.

"That was far too close, don't you think?" Arthur asked as he moved over and squatted next to Harry, looking at him thoughtfully. Even now, the swordsman was dressed almost immaculately. The only thing missing was his outer coattail coat. His shirt and pants had been repaired many times over, and his glasses gleaming faintly in the light as he cocked his head to one side, staring at Harry.

"We are faced with a tenacious, implacable foe who has powers and abilities that we struggle to match, in particular their ability to bring numbers to bear, illusions and long-range magical assaults of horrible strength. One which has discovered that they can sideline me entirely due to defending against that last, and have I mentioned lots and lots of numbers? So yes, Arthur, I think it was hard. Was it enough for you?"

"What do you mean?"

Harry was in no mood to bandy words with Arthur and outright said what had been in the back of his mind for days. He'd come to like Le Fay, and she and Asia were fast friends by this point, so knowing what kind of shite the two Pendragons were involved in rankled. "I mean, was this enough to show that you don't have to be part of a terrorist organization to find challenging battles?"

Grimacing, Arthur looked away. "I suppose it was rather too much to ask that you wouldn't be aware of my activities with the brigade."

"It would indeed. Your sister, on the other hand, is an unknown. Although, given your devotion to Le Fay and vice-versa, I have to wonder if she followed you into the Khaos Brigade."

"She did. However, Le Fay has never, nor will she ever if I have any say about it, take part in any of the Brigade's more criminal activities. Le Fay is purely a researcher. In fact, I would prefer to have left her behind, as you would no doubt would have done the same with Lily."

"Perhaps, but your sister's a big girl, whereas, with Lily, there was literally no one around I could trust to watch her. Not anyone with the power needed to protect her." Harry had indeed thought about sending Lily to Hogwarts very briefly even after Fawkes-Brigid had explained why she was safer with the than without. While Harry didn't like many of the professors overmuch, the wards there were the best to be found in the Wizarding World, and he could have asked Hermione to meet her there and hole up behind the castle's walls. But against the power level of the threats in this new wide world, Hogwarts would not have been enough to keep Lily safe.

"So, what happens now? Will you try to take us captive returned to Ireland? I cannot deny that such is in your power. Although I would fight against such most unreservedly," Arthur warned.

"I doubt it will come to that. Do you have a magical oath, an ouroboros tattoo or something else holding you forcefully to the Khaos Brigade? If not, after all this, could you still say that you have a reason to be with them? I know you joined them simply to find challenging battles. But isn't it better to find those fights while serving a worthy cause?" With that, Harry stood up, patting the young man on the shoulder. "Just something to think about."

With that, he turned away, heading towards the tent and some much-needed cuddle and sleep time as Arthur stared after him thoughtfully.

"He's right you know. With Bikou captured, whom among the rest beyond Kuroka would you call a friend? Vali?" Le fay asked as she came up behind her brother, her arms going around his waist. Tensing slightly, Arthur looked around automatically but then sighed, nodding. "Yes, Vali would also be a friend. But beyond that, there is nowhere in this world or in the Underworld, we could hide that Ophis could not find us if she thinks we betrayed her purpose."

Le Fay smiled triumphantly, nuzzling into his side. "We don't have to betray her." As Arthur turned around to hug her more tightly, she asked leadingly, "What does Ophis want above everything else?"

"To return to the Dimensional Gap and to throw out the Great Red," Arthur answered instantly.

"Exactly. Now, we can't do anything about dealing with the Great Red yet. But this adventure has given me a lot of ideas about how to bridge the Dimensional Gap. I have a plan. If you want to leave the Khaos Brigade, I think we can do it, and even leave on good terms if we swing it just right…"

Arthur looked down at his sister, weighing Le Fay's welfare and future as well as his own, somewhat egocentric sense of honor against the friends they had in the Khaos Brigade. What would they do if he and his sister simply retire from the brigade? After a moment, he sighed. "Tell me more about this plan of yours."

At midday the next, they restarted their journey. During that time, the Fae had attempted to renew their wintry assault, but as before, the impact was minimal thanks to the magic and natural defenses of the interlopers.

Twice during the day, the Fae tried for one of their patented moves which they hadn't tried before: snatching away people when no one was looking. Asia, Le Fay and Lily were their targets, but Harry had been prepared for this and had put Koneko right by Lily as she had been since they adventure, with Arthur by his sister. Asia, he kept by himself, and when the attempts came, messenger imps coming out of the woodwork from every side of the party as they moved through the forest, they were met by Protegos, and then concussive force spells which blasted them away.

Their fifth night in this strange place continued that theme, with the attackers, even more physical attackers this time, all of which were creatures, their numbers distorted and covered by illusions so good they fooled everyone right until they entered the camp. They attempted not to attack the defenders, but to break through them to the tent that was at the center of the camp. In this, they failed miserably. Without Gwyn ap Nudd and the forces of the Wild Hunt, they just lacked the brute power necessary to get through the defenders in such a manner.

And thanks to potions and the tent, the defenders were able to get some decent amount of sleep and move on during the morning, where the Fae were the weakest. This continued lack of pressure during the mornings confounded Harry, especially after so many days fighting the Unseelie through their forest.

"I don't understand it," Harry confessed to Rias, as the two of them cuddled on the sofa of the suite on the second story of the house-tent. Yubelluna was there as well, leaning against Harry's other side, her feet propped up over the end of the sofa to one side as Rias did the same, with Harry between them. "Shouldn't they have more numbers than this? I mean, shouldn't they be able to rotate in troops, keep the pressure on us all the time rather than nitpick at us during the day and then toss their creatures at us in greater numbers at night?"

"Don't give them ideas," Yubelluna growled, reaching above her to smack Harry lightly on the side of the head, before leaning against his shoulder with a faint yawn. "What they are doing already is more than enough for most of us, thank you so much."

Luna hopped over from the breakfast table, flopping out onto a beanbag with a sigh of pure contentment, ignoring Lily's indignant squawk of, 'Hey, that's my seat!' "You forget Harry, the Fae are not human. They don't reproduce as quickly, and there was never all that many of them. Eight hundred, perhaps a little more scattered across all of the Fae lands, maybe as many as two thousand if you include Wales and Britain."

Arthur looked up from where he was working out with one of the swords, speaking quietly to Loup. The two of them had somewhat bonded since this adventure began. Both of them were physical combatants, who very much preferred to be on the front line when it came to the physical kind of fight, but who didn't have much to contribute to the mental. "I think we've killed about hundred-fifty, maybe two hundred so far."

"Exactly. And that will matter more. Because I doubt that winter court was able to entirely defeat the Summer Court without losses," Luna continued nodding his direction.

"So, you're saying they don't have the numbers necessary to keep rotating them in?"

"Even Fae will get tired," Luna nodded again, this time in Rias's direction at her question.

"Actually, I think that might be another reason they haven't come up with the idea of the troop rotation and physical pressure twenty-four-seven," Rias mused. "Warfare has always been more of a human thing, direct conflict and long term campaigns I mean. The Unseelie might only be slowly coming to the realization that this is a war, not a hunt. With the Seelie gone, they will never have had the opportunity to 'practice' full-on combat. Indeed, I would wager that's part of why they are so dead-set on fighting us: that they do want to capture us, instead of seeing us as an actual threat."

"And besides…" Le Fay paused when everyone there turned in her direction, stammering slightly before regaining control of herself, pointing at Luna. "To build on Miss Lovegood's…"

Luna pouted as she interrupted. "I told you to call me, Luna! And if you wanted to be formal, it would be Lovegood-Scamander, which is just too much of a mouthful."

"Um, to, to build on Miss Luna's point. We assumed that the Summer Court was defeated by the winter before trying to enter this realm. And we've seen nothing to indicate that we were wrong there, particularly, the um, the ruins of the trees from two days ago..." she trailed off, sadly shaking her head and continuing on gamely. "But defeat doesn't mean they were annihilated or wiped out. I think that with us here causing trouble, perhaps they will be facing trouble elsewhere as well."

"More power to whoever is fighting the Unseelie then," Harry said, leaning to the side, contentedly nuzzling into Rias's hair as she pressed her head against his chest. They hadn't had much time since they'd come here to be husband and wife rather than captain and commander or father and mother, and since they had been here in Tir Na Nog for more than a week now, that was beginning to annoy them both made worse by the continued mental assaults every night. "Anything that can draw off forces from the Winter Court from us is a good thing."

For another four days, they traversed through the forest, coming under attacks, which were increasingly more magic-based, and directed towards the trio of youngest bar Koneko: Le Fay Lily, and Asia. The other side had evidently easily understood that Lily was the weakest of the party, despite her skills with her own version of the light charm, which she had used occasionally during the nighttime assaults. Asia was most certainly one of the most important members of the party, thanks to Dawn Healing and her defensive skills. And Le Fay was the weakest of them in terms of combat experience, although she was rapidly closing the gap when it came to magical knowhow, learning spells faster than anyone Harry had ever met, even Hermione when they were going to Hogwarts.

But if you knew what the enemy was after, creating tactics to make certain that they never achieved that objective was simple. With Harry, Arthur and Koneko on close defense, and the others spread out around them, not even a messenger imp could get in to grab them.

Conversely, any attempt to throw the Unseelie off the trail failed miserably. Harry's illusion magic just didn't fool the Fae at all, even when Harry attempted to cover their creation via his enhanced invisibility cloak, trying to do what they had done back in Ireland: creating illusions going one way with the party hidden under the cloak going another. The Invisibility cloak worked to a certain degree, covering them for a few moments, up to a half hour, at any given time, but the illusions popped almost immediately.

The cloak in turn seemed to be like the fog it looked like as it spread over the party: hard to see through at first but able to be dissipated eventually by the Winter Queen thanks to her use of the magi-sphere. Worse yet, the fog itself seemed to tell the queen the party's general location up until she could tear through it. And unlike the spell which sucked away fire-spells, the Winter Queen didn't need a local medium to destroy the illusions or tear away the invisibility cloak. The magi-sphere let the Winter Queen do both easily, and unlike in her own attacks, which also continued sporadically throughout the day, it was very hard for Harry to stop her from doing so.

The pinprick attacks continued throughout the day and into the night but didn't do any more harm to the group as they continued on for several days. With Luna in the lead alongside Harry or Loup, they were able to avoid most of the traps, and everyone else had begun to figure out how to offset the skirmish-style attacks. Groups of snakes from Harry, conjured birds from Le Fay and Rolf, and the others ready with shield spells, along with Yubelluna and Rias in reserve, allowed them to deal with these attacks every time they occurred.

The Fae attempted to cast illusions to make them get lost, but Harry's connection to the magi-sphere was enough to keep them going in the right direction and not once did any of the group have to leave the sight of at least three others. They used the tent to answer calls of natures, which admittedly slowed them down a bit, but that was better than breaking off to do so. And despite how packed as the forest was, the trees couldn't be close enough to block them from seeing one another as close as they traveled. And the others would randomly use salt, throwing it around themselves to dispel any illusions. It helped numerous times on their trek, and not once were the Fae able to capitalize.

In this manner, the group came close to where Harry felt the third receiving stone lay. Ironically, the stone was scattered among other such stones, at the top of the cliff face of the area where the spirits of Asia, Lily, and Yubelluna had fought the shades of the Wild Hunt off when their spirits had been pulled there.

Staring at it from the nearby woods where he and Luna had come forward from the others, Harry examined the area. Like Harry and Rias had both figured, with two receiving stones having been taken over, the Unseelie, and more importantly, the one sentient who directed to their attention now knew the real threat that Harry posed. The Fae had moved swiftly, very swiftly indeed, to create a defensive stronghold around the third stone, knowing where they would go.

Their ability to track Harry and the others despite his use of invisibility cloak, charms and everything else they tried, annoyed Harry to no end. Although given the fact that the nearest alternative would be the one the Winter Queen is squatting on like a flipping chicken on single egg, I suppose they didn't really need to be able to track us, did they?

That defensive stronghold was incredibly intimidating in appearance. Groups of Dullahan patrolled through the trees. Trees that were almost uniformly beech trees, no doubt the carnivore trees which had been somehow transplanted here, covering all of the approaches to the slight opening along the cliff edge. They were mingled with a few black trees, the sight of which caused Harry to wince as he remembered the fiasco from the night battle and Tonks' casting of Fiendfyre.

Behind the Headless Horsemen, groups of Fae could be seen, shifting in and out of Harry's sight, but with Luna next to them, she began to explain where she was seeing them, scattering around, trying to hide their numbers despite not knowing that the two of them were there. But despite that, Luna counted a hundred and seventy-nine Fae warriors. All in one place. That was more than they had seen before, and they were covered with illusions to make their numbers seem five times that.

This was to say nothing of the numerous magical traps, pitfalls, snares, tripwires, and other things of that nature Luna also saw, which the Fae were spreading around. There were many of them but, Harry reflected, not enough traps like that or physical traps after having had three days to prepare this area for a battle. No, there's something else going on here…

He shook his head, and Luna looked at him quizzically. But instead of replying, Harry grabbed her hand and pulled her away as Harry felt that distant will reaching through the magi-sphere once again to tear away at his invisibility cloak. 'No time, let's get out of here."

The duo had barely made it twenty steps before the invisibility cloak was torn away, but by that time, they were deep in the woods, several trees between them and the defenders. With Luna on Harry's back as he raced away on all fours, through a series of other traps that Luna had guided them through to that point, leaving behind the suddenly on-guard defenders.

The two of them met up with the others, where they reported what the duo had discovered. As they finished, Rias and Tonks both saw the same problem that Harry had, and said as one, "It's a trap."

Harry laughed and nodded to them. "Exactly. I think that, just like we were saying a few days ago, the Unseelie are unused to think in terms of warfare. They still are thinking in terms of traps and ambushes rather than overwhelming defensive structures. It works for them because of their abilities, but if you know an ambush is coming, you can turn it on the ambushers, which means all the momentum shifts too."

"So it remains to be seen what manner of trap this might be?" Le Fay asked, frowning in thought as she sat next to Asia, the girls having become friends over the past few weeks.

"Exactly. And we won't discover that until we're in a position to attack, I think. I would wager the Unseelie have forces ready to somehow be teleported in like the Wild Hunt was able to do with the shadows during that first battle you all told me about. But if they expect that force on the cliff to do much of anything, I think I've got a surprise for them." Harry smirked at everyone's quizzical expressions, grinning even more wolfishly than his werewolf form would normally allow. "You'll see."

The group spent several minutes going over the map of the area as Luna pointed out where she had seen pitfalls traps and other such things. They would keep their advance a thin line rather than spread out, and the pitfalls would be filled in by transfigured stones, the traps tripped by conjured animals. Then Tonks and the other magic users would retreat, allowing Arthur and Loup forward. Rias and Yubelluna would have another task, while Harry would spring his own trap, and Le Fay, Asia, Lily and Koneko would be stuck in the rear.

As they made this plan, Harry once more fought with his fatherly instincts. Having Lily be on this battlefield, even if she wasn't going to take part – much – was a wrench to him. But given the way the Winter Queen was able to tear away illusions and suchlike from afar and given the propensity of both Courts to steal away kids; there was no other recourse but to keep her close. But this was a problem he had dealt with before during their time in Tir Na Nog and would no doubt do so again.

About fifteen minutes later brought them to the edge of the warded area, and their conjured creatures started to spring the traps ahead of them. The Dullahans moved in their direction instantly, clashing with the surviving conjured beasts, but they and the creatures were both attacked now by the carnivorous trees. Harry and Tonks started to destroy the trees and Dullahans both, with Harry using a Japanese spell to create a bear of fire that roared in, smashing trees and scaring the headless horsemen, while the Fae arrows began to multiply.

And as the battle at the front of the column began, the ambush was sprung, just as they had thought it would. From one side, the Wild Hunt started to appear, Gwyn ap Nudd blowing in his fell horn as his followers rose from the shadows all around them, man, beast and horse alike. They rode forward quickly, eager to cross the distance to their enemies.

Outside of the creatures of the Wild Hunt, the Fae didn't seem to be able to travel through shadows. Instead, the beasts and many of the Fae themselves traveled through the black trees. Le Fay was looking in precisely the right direction to see this occurring through several intervening tree trunks, and she shouted out a warning, "They're on the left too!"

One Fae warrior was followed by several dozen others, as they spread out quickly, going to ground covering themselves with illusions to ward off enemy fire. Each of them was armed with a bow, and they fired through the woods towards the interlopers, shouting at one another in their language. "Let them sing the song of pain! Fear our magic mortals!"

Harry wryly thought to himself that going by their war cries, it was very obvious that many of the common High Fae had yet to realize the fact that the interlopers, as they called Harry and his friends, were not at all normal mortals. They weren't even normal wizards, something that was shown as Le Fay used an overpowered Arresto Momentum, and Luna used conjured salt to both dispel the enemy's illusionary arrows and stop the real ones. A second later, a powerful shield from Asia thrummed in front of them blocking the next wave of arrows coming from that direction.

With the jaws of the trap closing, the Winter Queen once more exerted her strength through the magi-sphere. Spells once more scorched through the underlying magical matrix towards the interlopers, but Harry sensed them coming. He blocked them with far more ease this time, something that seemed to startle the presence on the other end of those spells, which Harry capitalized on as the battle raged all around him. Several minutes passed, but Harry was able to break the spell onslaught, sending the Winter Queen's consciousness reeling.

Freed from that battle, Harry began his own attack reaching out with his mind to the ocean beyond the cliffs, ignoring the magi-sphere to reach out mentally to the ocean directly. The ocean responded to his command instantly, and unlike the stones where he had to fight to connect in the first place and then deal with all the information contained within the magic of the receiving stones, the water had no such thing. It was simply at his command, as a part of him, almost like Fragarach in a way.

The forces between Harry's companions and the water turned at a sound from behind them, but not even the Fae could get away fast enough. Behind them a massive wave of water, the size of a skyscraper rose and fell, smashing and dragging everyone on the cliff edge and several hundred yards into the forest down into the water.

For a moment, the attackers on either side of them paused as one-third of their number simply disappeared, the Fae in particular shocked by losing so many of their brethren in one stroke.

"Yubelluna, Rias, go wild!" Harry shouted, just as Mittelt, who had been on air defense, shouting out a warning. From above them, she crashing down, followed by Rolf, who crashed to the earth and skidded along, his right side and face bleeding from claw marks from the carrion crows, and his ears bleeding from a close call from a Banshee. He had been up there to back up Mittelt, who was too often fighting on her own against the enemy's flyers, while also providing aerial bombardment in the form of cutting and bombarding spells.

But Harry and the others were prepared for this. As soon as their own flyers were out of the way, Rias swept the sky with her Power of Destruction, as Yubelluna finished creating two long rows of marked out space to either side of them with her Bombardier Sacred Gear. "Image Bomber!" She shouted, activating the spell.

The trees in that area and a few of the first unfortunate creatures to reach them from the flanks were enveloped by a mass explosion, sending shrapnel and bloody bits through the woods. The bits of wood impaled many of their attackers on the Fae side of things, slowing everything down dramatically.

From the other side of this new defensive berm, Gwyn ap Nudd and the Wild Hunt skidded to a halt, and Harry finished with the defenders on the cliff face, turned in that direction, howling out a challenge as he sent cutting and blasting spells towards them. Arthur and Loup too turned in that direction, leaving the Fae to the long-range fighters.

The Cu Sith at Gwyn ap Nudd's side leaped forward, faster and stronger than Harry had anticipated, but it bounced off a wall he transfigured from the ground, then was punted backward by a concussive blast which slammed into it. If it had been a conjured creature, that blast would've simply caused it to disappear. As it was, it was sent flying backward, crashing into several of the others.

The massive black dog got to his feet without any apparent injury, howling in rage and charging forward again, but it couldn't close fast enough on Harry, who easily blasted the dog backward again even as he dodged and ducked under various arrows from Fae who were trying to circle around the now denuded area Harry and the other had created.

With the aerial assault dealt with, Mittelt leaped up into the air, along with Tonks, and the two of them began to bombard the Wild Hunt, figuring, rightly, that they were the most dangerous of the opponents trying to close with the others.

However, this left the few Fae on the other side of the group unmolested from the air, and they were joined by still more enemies, coming out of a river the group had passed over before they hit the defensive zone. These were strange beaver-crocodile creatures the size of Le Fay's body laid out head to snout, which Luna called an afanc. "Beware their claws, they are poisonous, and if their jaws clamp onto you, even if you kill them the jaws themselves will remain locked on whatever they bite!"

There were hundreds of the creatures, and they were attacking from behind, closest to where Le Fay, Asia and Lily were. They fell back, and Luna broke off from the right flank to help them, while Koneko instantly smashed her fist down onto the ground beneath her, sending a blast of power out as she shouted, "Dragon's Smashing Quake!"

"Hmm, better, but you didn't need the 'Smashing' bit," Ddraig intoned in her head. But that was the only complaint he had of Koneko's latest use of his powers as it flared out, blasting everything in its wake with an overwhelming battering ram of magical energy.

The attack destroyed a wide fan-shaped area in front of Koneko, hitting and at least dissipating half of the Wild Hunt, allowing Koneko to turn and smash through a few more trees and get to the back of their group just as the first afanc did. Koneko yowled, smashing them back and shrieking in fury as she sent out bolts of power into the horde of biting, scratching creatures.

At the same time as the afanc began to spread out and wash around her position, Le Fay started to get involved with cutting spells and Stupefies, which worked quite well to push large groups of animals back, from behind them, the river changed. What had looked like a normal river previously now glowed a bright blue as the river water rolled away from the riverbank. It created a kind of tunnel there in the water, and out from the water came another kind of beast. These were equally odd otter-dog creatures, about half the size of the afanc, and there weren't as many of them either, despite the cacophony their barks started to make as they came out of the water tunnel.

Luna, hopping up over an afanc while exploding one and spiking another, saw them and her eyes widened. "Dobhar Chu!"

Rolf blinked at that, turning from where he had begun dueling magically with several Fae dodging around a tree to get some cover from their spells and Fae shot. "What!? The dobhar chu should never work with afanc, they are natural enemies, it would be like hyenas and coyotes getting along."

As the tree he was hiding behind grew several dozen arrows from the Fae Rolf watched, feeling somewhat smug as instead of helping them, the dobhar chu barreled into the back of the afanc horde. Every three otter-dog creature jumped on a single afanc, taking them entirely by surprise. "Hah, I knew it."

"…I want one," Lily said seriously as she stared through the biting maws of the afanc at the cute creatures that had just attacked the horde from behind.

With the dobhar chu came a man and a woman. The man seemed relatively-normal in appearance despite his ancient-seeming chainmail, with long black hair and a snarl on his face. The woman next to him, though, was different. She was somewhat short but possessed a chest that would have done a Devil proud, gleaming in a large bronze chest plate, a skirt lined with other bronze plates, and eyes of blue that were currently blazing with energy. In her hands, she also held a harpoon, with a small shield on the other arm.

The woman too piled into the afanc, cutting them down, her harpoon soon looking like the woman had dipped it in ochre paint. And the way she moved, it was obvious she was a lot stronger than she looked.

With the area cleared by Koneko and the afanc having lost their forward momentum, Le Fay and Asia went to work, creating defensive walls to slow this assault down. With that done, Luna switched back to helping her husband and Rias against the Fae on their flank, cutting down any of the afanc who moved to that direction as Koneko turned back in the other direction to re-engage with the Wild Hunt who tried to close. For her part, as Le Fay kept the wall intact, Lily hunkered down behind it, watching for a chance to use her overpowered Patronus or anything else she could do to help. A normal little girl might have been afraid of everything going on all around her, but not Lily Luna Potter.

A chance came when several of the banshees from above, which had been high enough to avoid Rias's earlier blast dove down towards the group around her. "Expecto Patronum!" Lily shouted as Koneko suddenly grabbed her from behind, twisting her around and lashing out with her other hand.

An imp that had just appeared from a root none of them had seen previously underneath them exploded on impact, sending green bits towards Arthur, who was engaged with Gwyn ap Nudd. Gwyn ap Nudd had closed via his shadow jumping skill, and the two of them had been dueling for several moments as Harry had destroyed the defense in front of the receiving stone, with Arthur matching the Wild Hunt's leader sword to sword and hunting dagger. Arthur had the skill advantage but was losing out in terms of strength, and when the mulch from the imp hit his back, Arthur twisted to look behind him, assuming the gunk had been some kind of attack, Gwyn ap Nudd pushed hard with his sword, sending the younger man stumbling to the side.

The hunting dagger came up seeking Arthur's heart, but Arthur somehow blocked it with his sword, interposing Excalibur Ruler so fast that even Gwyn ap Nudd had to blink in shock. However, the momentum of his thrust with the dagger pushed Arthur still further backward, his basic strength unequal to the task of facing a demigod.

On the other hand, Koneko did have that strength, and as Lily's Patroni slammed into the down-rushing banshees, she launched herself forward howling out, "You're mine antler boy!"

Ddraig's gravelly voice echoed her, shouting "Boost!" as the blow slammed into Gwyn ap Nudd's side, hurling him sideways.

At the same time, the dog had also been hurled away from Harry, and the two of them crashed together. Gwyn ap Nudd rolled, grabbing the scruff of the dog's neck as he did, hurling it off him, before glaring balefully at the battlefield only to see a blast of Power of Destruction sizzling towards him.

He disappeared again, reappearing elsewhere, well away from the battlefield, observing it quietly. With the other destruction of the mass of horsemen and Fae on the ridge, and the interlopers somehow able to see through many of the illusions of his Fae allies, Gwyn ap Nudd knew that this battle was lost. Once more, the earthers brute, staying power, and the fact that the group had their own healer of truly amazing ability had seen them through all the guile, force and cunning that Gwyn Ap Nudd and his fellows could bring to bear.

To say nothing of the bitch of the river coming out to play. Her continuing to exist, and appearing here like this, that was a dangerous sign that they were even closer to losing their control over things.

With a snarl of pure rage, he lifted his horn to his mouth. The scattered members of the Wild Hunt, about four warriors all told by this point in the battle, instantly disengaged, retreating into the nearest shadow where he called them forth to his own position. Moments later, he and they were gone.

With the Wild Hunt retreating and the creatures from the river caught between these new allies and Harry and his family, the battle subsided very quickly at that point, for which Harry was intensely grateful. Le Fay was injured, an afanc somehow having gotten close enough to bite her. Tonks looked to have a broken arm from another Dullahan charge. Loup had once more taken quite a lot of wounds, one of which had been silver when the Wild Hunt had been able to close with him, and Arthur had been knocked about by their leader. Rias had also taken a few Fae Shots, but as a high class-devil, the magic within them did nothing to her, and the physical impact was nothing much either.

With the poison the afanc carried, Le Fay was the worst wounded, but Asia was already working on her, with Koneko holding the other girl down for a moment. Asia barely worked on Le Fay for less than a half a minute, however, before she pulled away, smiling brightly at her friend, Dawn Healing gleaming with power on her fingers. "All done."

Rias laughed quietly, shaking her head as she leaned down to ruffle Asia's hair. "My dear, I doubt we could say it often enough, but without you around, we wouldn't be doing nearly as well as we are."

"Duh!" Lily muttered as she helped Le Fay to her feet while Koneko did the same for Asia. "Way to spot the obvious, Mum!"

While Rias giggled, Harry looked over at their unlooked-for allies. "What did Le Fay say? That there might be survivors from the Seelie or even the deities here? I think we're about to meet some of them."

"Possibly," Harry said with a sigh, running one hand wearily along his face. Even his werewolf endurance was being tested here.

Harry looked at the woman as she stuck her weapon in the ground behind her. Those weapons were simple things, a heavy harpoon of some kind of darkened oak and a shield. They were workmanlike items, and Harry could see where the grips on the spear were worn, the nicks and scratches of past battles on the shield. Altogether, they looked almost plain in comparison to the woman wielding them.

As she came closer, Rias cocked her head thoughtfully, her Devil senses telling her to be wary. "She feels almost like a demigod, or perhaps a local deity." To Rias, it reminded her of her first meeting with Yasaka in Kyoto. The woman certainly gave off the same aura as Yasaka did when using her powers, although this woman didn't feel as strong.

"Well, there is a river right there," Harry quipped, gesturing to the river she had come out of.

"Probably," Rias giggled, leaning into him as Lily moved out of her arms, heading over to Koneko and Asia. "Although she can't be very powerful if she wasn't able to keep those creatures out of it." Nowhere near as powerful as myself, or Harry for certain. Although I would wager that is because she has been cut off from Ireland and her worshippers, Rias thought, becoming more certain as the woman came closer.

It was a known fact that after a certain point, it was the number of followers a god had which denoted how much power that god could wield. Moreover, I have to think that most of the Tuathans would probably be demigods as we use the term rather than full gods. Lugh, Dagda, Brigid, Manannán Mac Lir, perhaps six of the other major Tuathans would be the real gods among them, while the rest would merely be local deities, extremely limited in power unless they were working together.

Harry grimaced at the point his wife had made aloud, nodding his head.

"Greetings, great conqueror! While it is odd indeed to favor the evil that you do not know over the evil that you do, the evil that we know is so dark and vile that we needs must be taking a chance upon thee," the goddess said in ancient Irish, bowing her head formally.

Harry blinked. "Is she really talking like a Shakespearian reject, or is your translation spell a bit off?"

"It can't be 'off' as you put since it's automatic, so she's honestly talking like that," Rias said with a sigh. "Hopefully, it's just because she's attempting to be ultra-formal." The two of them took a few steps towards the woman, while behind them, the rest of their party began to break out some of their food. "Greetings. And you might be?"

"I am Aibell of the river of the same name," the goddess said, bowing her head though she was looking a little annoyed. "Surely you have heard of me?"

"We have, but no knowledge of your appearance has survived in the human realm, my lady," Harry said, graciously bowing his head. "My name is Harry Potter, this is Rias Gremory-Potter, my wife."

Aibell nodded. If she was thrown off by Harry's mode of speech or talking to a werewolf who looked like Harry did, she gave no sign of it. Harry suspected this was because, unlike wizards, Tuathans had little to nothing to fear from a normal werewolf. "This is my man, the mortal Dubhalin."

"Mortal?" Harry asked, looking at the other man.

"As much as one can be having spent decades here in this strange place," Dubhalin drolly bowed his head. "I was a fisherman on the river named for my lady wife, and she decided she liked me enough to spirit me away," he teased.

Aibell smiled back at him before turning back to Harry. "I didst say that we remaining few of the Tuatha De Danan and the Summer Court, scant few which remain, would be willing to throw our weight behind ye, yet still would I know thy plans going forward for Tir Na Nog. And how you come to wield the power of the Man of the Sea."

"And you'll forgive us for asking about you in turn, but we are fighting the Fae, and they have long been known as tricksters and masters of illusion," Harry shot back, frowning as his own tone seemed to become ultra-formal in response to Aibell's own. "You wouldn't have any way to prove you are who you claim to be, would you?"

"And more, that you aren't on the side of the Unseelie regardless? Gwyn ap Nudd was thought to be a Tuathan as well, and he sided with the Unseelie in the betrayal that finished off the majority of the Tuathans. Or so we thought until you showed up," Rias added, scowling as she stared at the woman.

Aibell huffed. "While I can well applaud thy caution, the idea of me being a turncoat is one I wouldst challenge you to a duel for!" As Rias simply glared at her coldly, Aibell subsided. "But aye, you have the right of it. Nor twas it only Gwyn ap Nudd who betrayed us. The others, though, were betrayed in turn, slain in the crossing. Yet to prove mine words, I wilt give thee an agreement, my word of honor."

Rias scowled but looked over at Luna and Rolf then to Yubelluna. The first two nodded quickly, only reluctantly followed by Yubelluna, who was still standing between the newcomers and Le Fay and Asia. "One thing that has been true in every story of the Tuathans and both Fae courts is that they always follow the letter of any agreement. But word that agreement very carefully, as the other side of that is the Fae were notorious for searching for ways to get out of such agreements."

Speaking quietly for a few moments, Rias and Harry came up with an agreement to make certain the goddess was who she said she was, and that she would remain on their side, fighting against the Fae. With a bit of argument, Aibell even agreed with the wording, her husband smirking all the while before joining in. It was evident that while their marriage was a happy one, Dubhalin was rather having fun watching her being pushed onto the back foot this way.

Nonetheless, he raised his own harpoon along with hers and intoned, "I, Aibell, do vow that I am the goddess Aibell of the River of the same name. Further, I enter into an agreement with Harry Potter and his companions…" here she named them all, something that Yubelluna had insisted on, much to Aibell's annoyance but also her respect. "To stand with them in war against the Winter Court and all its members until the war is won and the Winter Court defeated by our hands combined. I do swear this on mine own name and soul."

As she finished speaking, there was a visible splash in the air, a ring of golden light flashing out from Aibell and her husband both. At the looks of astonishment on the Earthers' faces, Aibell laughed. "Tis a Splash of Truth. If mine words had been false in word or thought, twould not have appeared."

In response, Harry and Rias, as the leaders of their band, also swore to not betray Aibell, to stand with her and her husband against the Unseelie, and to battle to the end to free Tir Na Nog. For a moment after they finished speaking, they all looked at one another for a second, and then Aibell shook herself and turned to the nuts and bolts of everything. "Now, speak of your plans from this point on, Conqueror, and my question about the source of thy power."

Harry frowned slightly, thinking about the connection to the magi-sphere he had already forged, which was only forty-percent done essentially. "In truth, lady, in the long term, I might have plans for this land. But none of those plans entail enslaving or preying upon you and yours. You will have a say in what happens afterward. But first, we must win the day. As for why I wield Manannán Mac Lir's power, that is a longer tale, and one I doubt we have time for in detail. CliffsNotes version, he left a lot of his magic tied into three items, which he apparently gave into the keeping of followers of his before sending them away from his Isle. I brought them together, and combined, they gave me access to all the power contained within."

Frowning, Aibell nodded her head slowly. "I do not know what this note of cliffs is, but I suppose that will have to do for now. Yet tis passing strange for a mortal to wield more power than a goddess such as I. Enough power to contest access to the magi-sphere with the Winter Queen no less."

Harry shrugged at that, then asked bluntly, "Does that suffice to answer your questions, and if so, what kind of forces can you bring to the fight? Just the two of you?"

"I can call upon the good denizens of the river, those that have not been eaten by the wild afanc, given leave and protection to propagate far beyond their means. There are also other fairy folk still living that I can communicate with, and more than a few might come forward to fight thusly." Aibell's face firmed even as a smirk appeared on her face. "Yet for now, I do think I have a plan that wouldst allow us to steal a march on the Unseelie. If thou dost agree with it and believe in thine own strength of arms."

"Tell us more," Harry spoke for them all.

The water goddess's smirk widened as she waved at where Harry had cast aside the defenders around the receiving stone. "You can use some of the great Manannán's powers, but I take it that you don't know about water transportation? Using a river to transport yourself from one shore to another?"

Harry blinked, wondering what that would be like, before asking, "Are you saying that would work? I would have thought that such a spell wouldn't work so long as the Winter Queen was in control of the magi-sphere."

"Ah, it wouldn't have before," the brown-haired woman caroled. "But I wast able to get it to work in order to arrive here to do battle after thou hast claimed two of the receiving stones. There is no reason to believe that another such transport would not succeed."

It took barely a few minutes for Aibell to explain her plan. It was a bold move, but one with a major upside and Rias and Harry agreed that it was the best way forward. And with that agreement, Harry moved over to connect to the receiving stone while Rias called their band together, letting Aibell explain their plan once more to the others.

The fight for the third receiving stone this time was vicious from the get-go, and Harry hissed in agony as a bolt of pure pain slammed through his mind. The Winter Queen knew what Harry was doing, knew what he could do, and refuse to give, her presence now within the Undertaking's enchantment. It was like running into a stone wall, trying to use a rubber sword to smash it down. While at the same time, the stone wall was trying to smash you into pieces.

But Harry refused to yield, pushing, pressing hard, his teeth gritted as he bore down on the Winter Queen's will as she tried to keep him away from connecting to the receiving stone. All Harry needed was one moment, and when it came, he took it, pressing around or through – analogies failed when it came to purely mental/magical combat like this – the Winter Queen's defense of the stone, grabbing at the power within the stone via the enchantment laid upon it.

Suddenly, the fight wasn't to keep Harry out of the stone, it was for the power of the receiving stone itself, for the connection to the magical sphere of the world. And as he fought, Harry realized something. Manannán Mac Lir's magic wasn't just part of the enchantment that the Tuathans had called the Undertaking. It was also part of the magical sphere of Tir Na Nog, as Harry had known. But what he hadn't guessed, was that Mac Lir's connection was to the entirety of this world's magical sphere, and that world encompassed a great deal more than just the fairylands. The receiving stone here was part of several other stones around, and while they were not part of the Undertaking, they were examples of Manannán's power.

Here, on the lip of Tir Na Nog, staring out into the wilds of the ocean beyond, the power of the magi-sphere that was part of that ocean flooded into Harry. His eyes glowed, and he roared aloud, a shout of pure joy as he grasped that power, using it to smashed aside Winter Queen's will that was trying to keep him from controlling the stone. Her presence skittered away through the web of the magical sphere deeper into the very lands with a cry of agony, audible only to the two of them, although Aibell did look up in shock and growing grim humor as she seemed to feel a portion of what had happened.

Ignoring that, Harry continued, binding himself to the receiving stone and vice versa. Once he was done with that, he went on to repair the runic enchantments in the stone.

Back on earth, seven more sending zones, areas where the magical fog had been created, were slowly repaired as the group of government officials, both magical world, and continually worked together to stop the non-magicals from discovering what was going on. It had been a tough few hours, everyone running around from this point to that, using magic to travel from place to place.

But they were doing it. The government officials were keeping ahead of the curve, gathering in the non-magicals, removing their memories of the fog, and slowly, Wales, Ireland, Britain and portions of Scotland were being cleared of the magical phenomenon.

As Harry slowly removed his sense of self from the stone, there was no bout of weariness as there had been before. Instead, Harry felt almost rejuvenated, the ongoing impact of the exhaustion spell he and the others had been laboring under disappearing entirely. In fact, I wager I can do something about that… With a snarl, Harry concentrated and sent his will outwards through the magical sphere with as much power as he could manage.

This battering ram of power shattered the exhaustion spell that that had been dogging their steps for so long, set in place before Harry had known what to look for. As he did, he felt the Winter Queen screaming in pain once more in the distance, causing a vicious smirk to appear on his face.

Lily and Rolf were the first to feel it, blinking at one another, then turning as one to Harry, as Harry whooped, thrusting his hands into the air. Soon the others started to feel the difference, a strain that had been growing within them all this time disappearing. It wasn't enough to put them back at 100%, not after the battle earlier, but it certainly put them closer than they had been moments ago. "Pepper up potions all around I think, and then…" he said turning to Aibell, who was staring at him in delight, gripping her husband's hand tightly as he too grinned "You can perhaps show us what this water transportation you were talking about is like?"

Nodding, the goddess moved over to the river, running her hands down into it. As she did, the water swirled around her, a portion beginning to glow with inner magic. This bit dipped suddenly, becoming hollowed out almost. "This is water transportation. It isn't teleportation per-se, more simply traveling as fast as the water can carry thee. If thou were as weightless as a feather and hidden by the river all around thee at any rate. That part, the hiding, is inviolate. Tis how I was able to keep mine self and my husband safe all these eons in mine grotto. None couldst find us there lest I willed it so."

"Hmmm, you have a hidden grotto too?" This instantly grabbed Harry's attention, and his eyes, and indeed the eyes of Rias and the others, shifted to Lily.

Lily took a moment to get it, and she scowled. "Now wait a minute, daddy, I…"

"Lily, you know I've never been happy about how close to the fighting you've been. During the day is fine but at night? What if the Fae had been able to get inside the tent? No, if we have a place where we can leave you protected and hidden, I'll take it." Seeing his daughter's mulish expression, Harry sighed and knelt in front of her, placing his large paw on her smaller shoulder. "Lily, I am proud of you, never doubt that. I am proud of how you've taken the Patronus spell and made it your own. But you're still a child Lily, you are only eight years old, no matter how precocious you are, or how high your basic intelligence."

"But, but I hate seeing Koneko and Asia and everyone fighting when I can't," Lily said distraught. "A, and at least with my Patronus I can help out."

"You can. But not as much as having you safe and away would give us all peace of mind, dear heart," Rias said, piling in as she knelt behind Lily, hugging her gently. She, too, had been anxious about how close to the fighting Lily had been in practically every clash so far. The number of times her heart had nearly leaped out her throat when she saw Lily racing along to help Asia with the wounded or cast her Patronus made her sick to think about. "Please?"

"Umu. We've told you before, you have to wait until you're at least as old as Tou-san was when he went to Hogwarts before looking for your own adventures, okay?" Koneko added, with Asia wordlessly joined in the hug.

"…Fine," Lily said with a sigh. "I, I guess I am a little too young for battles and everything else, aren't I?"

"Exactly, lovey. And enjoy your childhood as much as you can. Adulthood comes far too fast, and it doesn't just bring excitement with it either," Harry teased gently, watching his daughter scrunch up her were-puppy face in disgust as she thought about some of those other things.

Watching all this, Aibell smiled. An odd family to be sure, but a close-knit one for all that. I quite approve. Yet, even so, she had to pop this bubble a bit. "As much as I agree with thee about hiding the gearrchaile away where the Fae cannot find her, heading to mine grotto would take two hours to travel from here. If we do be wishing to strike while the iron's hottest…"

Now it was Harry, and Rias's turn to scowl and Lily perked up. Sighing, Harry nodded. The idea of claiming the fourth receiving stone, right on the heels of the third, was too good to miss out on, something his 'leader mind' knew but which his father's soul railed against. "Fine, lovey. One more fight, then, when we move on to the fifth receiving stone, you will be hidden away in that grotto without any arguments, right?"

After a few seconds of pouting, Lily nodded at that. "Okay, Daddy."

With that major decision out of the way, Harry turned back to Aibell and gently waved toward the river. "Shall we?"

Aibell nodded, and everyone moved into the glowing dip in the river, finding the water solid underneath them. Once they were all within, the goddess had them all lay down, and they slowly sank down into the river, the solid segment of the water closing over them with the rest of the river above that. A few seconds later, they were away, racing along the river, the solid segment of the water carrying them along like an underwater roller coaster ride, a comparison Lily and Le Fay both made as they began to whoop in delight.

OOOOOOO

Screaming in a mix of rage and agony, the Queen of the Winter Court stood up from her throne, smashing one hand down on top of her armrest, cracking the wood as she moved, pacing around her courtroom. Her courtiers stayed silent, as she thought furiously.

Then she gasped as she felt something else through the magical sphere. Although almost utterly inhuman, her thoughts did resemble a human's for a brief moment, as she thought, 'Oh, what now!?' as she felt the river goddess's power and the presence of the interlopers disappear. And without the accompanying shadow of nothingness that the Winter Queen had been able to track before when their leader had used that power that made the Winter Queen think about the Man of the Sea.

OOOOOOO

As the water goddess had said, the fourth receiving stone was set into a large piece of rock overlooking a turn of the river. The crag, one of several, stuck out at the foot of a massive mountain, heading deeper into Tir Na Nog and away to join a series of other mountains, the only real range of such there was in Tir Na Nog. And thanks to how short a time it had been since the assault on the third receiving stone, the Unseelie hadn't begun to reinforce this position.

But that didn't mean it was without defenders. As Aibell had warned them, this stone was near the area of Tir Na Nog the giants called home, a tribe of Unseelie that the adventurers had only seen a few representatives of before this. They had already begun to prepare for war on orders of the Queen, and their tribe was several hundred strong. They had also been joined by other creatures who made their homes nearby. Yet there were no Fae warriors among them. None of them were available, not after having lost nearly two hundred of their number in the earlier battle.

Surprise was on the side of Harry and his allies for the first time in this dimension as Arthur and Loup burst out from the water, Lily and Le-Fay's whoops of delight still ringing in the twosome's ears as they leaped out onto the riverbank.

Excalibur Ruler cut this way and that as Arthur found his footing between into two giants fishing by the river. Idly wondering what kind of game giants would fish for, Arthur creating tiny cuts on each, the tip of his blade glowing yellow as it disappeared into their bodies for a moment, before he moved on, taking a third sitting behind the other two through the throat, thrusting upwards to do it despite the giant sitting down. That time his blade did not shift into its magical form, the giant simply gurgling as the holy sword took it in the throat.

Nearby, Loup had rushed forward into a group of giant frogs, a type of enemy they hadn't seen in the last two battles but seemed quite plentiful here, dominating the riverbank beyond where the trio of giants had been. His spells smashed into pieces or cut them to ribbons before he was in among them with his claws and fangs howling his warcry. Which, while not particularly warlike, was certainly to the point. "Gonna make you all into roadkill, you overblown frogs!"

The two giants that had been cut by the glowing tip of Arthur's sword immediately began to come under Excalibur Ruler's control, their magical resistance no match for a holy blade. And as giants from the nearby village moved in their direction, Arthur barked out, "Attack your fellows," as he pulled his sword out from the throat of the one he stabbed.

With the two giants joining them, the two of them moved forward, clearing the side of the riverbank for the next group. This was Rias, Harry, and Tonks, along with Yubelluna. The four heaviest hitters, magically speaking.

Power of Destruction blasts sizzled out, crashing into and through the hordes of giants as Harry and Tonks started to cast fire and lightning spells at them. At the same time, Yubelluna concentrated on the sky, but behind them from the tunnel in the river, Lily was already casting her overpowered Patronus spell, eager to take part in her last fight here as much as possible.

"Get the banshees!" She ordered her human-shaped Patroni into the air. They were accompanied by Le Fay's tiny hummingbird, which flashed like a bullet through the air.

Gasping at the drain of using that spell for the second time that day, Lily almost fell back into the tunnel, but Koneko grabbed her up, hefting her onto the Nekoshu's shoulders as she leaped forward, her fist gleaming red and gold. She hammered it into one giant who had been knocked over by the initial rush from the other two that had been taken over by Arthur.

The giants had been slow to react to this threat within their midst, and now were caught entirely on the back foot, retreating for a few moments, letting the attackers get situated on the embankment and sweep away most of the giant frogs. But now, as Aibell charged forward to join the rest, the giants roared with anger, rushing towards these interlopers.

With the banshees now cleared from the skies above them, before they could even use their screams, Mittelt led Luna and Rolf up into the air. The two wizards started to cast cutting spells down at the Giants, not doing much damage at first. The Giants did have a large amount of magical resistance, just like those found in the Wizarding World, even if it was nothing to the power of the Devils and Harry.

But magical resistance ceased to matter when they began dropping giant boulders on their heads, the two wizards having carried aloft shirt-fills of tiny pebbles to enlarge and use as projectiles. Though this level of transfiguration began to tire both of them out quickly, on top of their earlier exertions. There was only so much that a Pepper Up potion could do, after all especially after so many days of using the potion every so often. In contrast, Mittelt's holy spears, being holy magic, was able to bypass the giants' physical and magical durability almost entirely.

But the giants weren't going to simply go down without a fight. Dozens of them began to grab up anything to hand hurling it up at the attackers above them and over their fellows heads towards the rest of the group by the river, while others charged forward with roars, clubs the size of trees in hand. One giant seemed to be in charge, backing away from the others as he roared out commands, thumping his feet on the ground in a strange kind of pattern.

Tonks, having joined the other flyers in the air, did see this and was about to attack him when something grabbed her attention. At the edge of the battlefield, another massive stone outcropping shot out from the side of the mountain, looking almost like a horn sticking out from between several dozen trees set well away from the giants' primitive village.

A crack grabbed her attention from the rock, and Tonks watched as the bottom of the horn shattered, raining down to the ground in tiny gravel-sized pieces. This revealed a tunnel out of which trooped dwarves. Superficially they looked like the vampire dwarves they'd fought before, but there was no real comparison in Tonks's mind, especially since these all had full beards and didn't look as pasty-white.

There were hundreds of them, forming up into orderly rows, before charging forward into the back of the giants. Not to get through them and throw themselves against the attackers, Tonks was amazed to see, but to attack the giants. Hell yes! I'd not thought we'd see other allies so quickly, but more power to 'em!

Quickly, she twisted around, flying back down towards where Rias and Harry were directing the battle, Harry using transfiguration and conjuration, as well as Japanese spells and cutting spells of massive strength, now somewhat worried about injuring his allies.

The sight of her friend dual casting entire spell chains for a moment took Tonks's breath away. Spell chains fine, dual casting, okay. Doing both of those silently and with simple little gestures, while also barking out commands to Arthur to pull back slightly and for Asia to throw up a shield around Lily and Koneko as a hurled giant's spear came a little too close for his comfort? That was something else altogether.

Alighting between Harry and Rias, Tonks nodded to Rias, who had turned her head slightly to look at her, one eyebrow rising even as she smashed aside another giant with a negligent blast of air magic. "Keep aiming your shots slightly upwards, not along the ground!" Tonks shouted over the roars of the giants. "We've got help coming that are of the short variety."

Nearby, Aibell heard this and barked out a laugh. "The dwarves! Hah, I shouldst have known thy warlike hearts would urge them forward so!"

"Looks like it," Tonks replied with a shrug, then took the two the air once more.

The giants were tenacious. The giants had a large amount of natural magical resistance. The giants had numbers.

None of that mattered.

Rias, Harry, Tonks and Yubelluna overrode their magical resistance, killing giants by the handful as they crowded in, getting in each other's way more often than not. Arthur and Loup were just too fast to be hit as they moved amongst the horde, and Koneko was actually a good deal stronger than the giants, with Lily deposited by her father by this point.

The others, most of whom had taken to the sky, rained down destruction on them, and could easily dodge anything tossed up towards them. And Asia and Le Fay provided a defense that the giants couldn't get through. Many a blow was blocked at the last instant by a shield snapping into place around Arthur or the other close-range combatants.

However, like the battle earlier today, Harry and the others had not prepared this battlefield. That meant there were a lot of black trees around. A few of them had even been by the river and had been destroyed by Le Fay after they tried to send out their little messenger imps, in an effort to grab Asia or Lily. But there was one by where the giant's chieftain was shouting orders, trying to shift his warriors' attention in two different directions using the body of a dwarf he'd crushed as a pointer. Other giants soon began to smash the dwarves into paste, gleeful to fight someone they could actually get to grips with rather than the attacking humans and their allies.

But even so, giants were falling to the dwarves too. Their odd ax-hammers struck with far more power than any human their size could have boasted, and some of their armor was enchanted. Not many, but enough to ignore hammer blows from the giants.

Out from that tree stepped Gwyn ap Nudd, snarling up at the giant, and he was not followed by more of his Wild Hunt or even more Fae. Watching them from above, Tonks couldn't make out any of what was said, but the giants, who had lost more than half their number so far to the blitzkrieg assault of Harry and his fellows, started to pull back, first in twos and threes, then more. They each touched the nearest black tree, and were away, disappearing to reappear elsewhere.

Soon enough, the giants were in full retreat, the last few dying before they could escape, or being turned by Excalibur Ruler and attacking their fellows. Arthur had made full use of his sword's special properties in this battle, something he had only rarely done up to this point, figuring that the giants would make better long-term cannon fodder than any of the other monsters they had previously seen or fought.

Now those selfsame giants began to pick up the bodies of their dead fellows, growling angrily under their breath, but unable to disobey his commands as they slowly started to pile them up in massive mounds. Those that hadn't been completely immolated by spellfire, anyway.

When she reported this to Harry after the battle faded to a halt, he shrugged. "I think that the Winter Queen knew that this battle was lost. They had no time to set up the battlefield, they had no other allies here other than the giant frogs and Giants in any numbers. And we were already cutting them down to size. Why throw good money after bad?"

"I agree," Rias said with a nod. "Indeed, that was probably an easy choice for them to make. Save what giants they can for another battle, while sacrificing the remainder.

Harry looked around, noticing that even with the pepper up potions, everyone bar himself and Rias were looking on the edge of collapse once more. Two hard fights after half a day of hiking would do that. "That's good then. We'll be able to rest here for a while, talk to these dwarves, and maybe…" he looked over at the wet water goddess. "Maybe, just maybe gather some more allies?"

When he joined them the dwarf leader, whose name the dwarf did not share, had a heavy black beard and deep set eyes, much like the other dwarves Harry could see nearby. And like they, he was clad in heavy plate mail with small, equally well-made helmet and shield. All of the dwarves wielded a weapon with a hammer end on one side and a axe-head on the other and hefted the weight of their weapons as if it was so much straw, moving far more nimbly and quickly than any human could have armored in such a fashion over the battlefield, retrieving their dead comrades, and, with some awe and no small amount of trepidation, watching as Asia moved from one wounded dwarf to another, healing them just as she had her friends.

When he spoke, the dwarf's voice was gravely, like he gargled with glass and rocks, but thanks to the Devil magic, it was understandable. He also seemed pleased to be asked what had happened to his folk and explain how they had survived. Yet the tale that the dwarf told was as damning to the Unseelie and Gyn Ap Nudd as the tale Aibell had told Harry mere hours ago, made worse by the amount of bitter anger the dwarven leader showed in his face.

"There used to be more than fourteen-thousand in my clan, allied with the Seelie. We, on the Oak King's wish, traveled to Tir Na Nog through the Undertaking. Yet was a trap. We were set upon at once by the Wild Hunt here, at Baile Samhraidh. The Ash King burned out our carts, slew our young and many of our womenfolk , burned them in his dread rites! And with him were the vampire dwarves, in numbers we had not thought they had."

Harry nodded slowly, remembering the battle around the ancient Seelie city. Their ability to phase through stone had been immensely troublesome. "And you were forced to retreat?"

"Those of us who survived that night retreated, coming together slowly, while the winter court joined in the hunt, picking us off. The Giants too, they took delight in killing us. We had long fought them for control of the mountains, twas their time of revenge. Twas a dark time for my people. Many a deed, heroic and horrible, was done then."

He shook his head, seeming to sing a song under his breath for a moment before shaking his shaggy head. "My great-grandfather was among the survivors and led many deep into the mountains. There we started to fight back." The dwarf's grim expression cracked into a wide, vicious grin. "With our powers over stone, we created drops, avalanches, traps and tricks that slowed the Ash King and his allies down. Many a Fae met their ends in those mountains. Many a giant too."

The dwarf chuckled darkly. "Then we retreated into the ground to secret caves, warding and protecting ourselves there. Occasionally over the years giants or Unseelie, they try us underground. And many a battle have we fought against the vampire dwarves. Yet we survived, we grew." He looked up at Harry sharply now. "But we could never have gathered the strength necessary to fight back, to come back above ground if not for the fact Aibell brought word of your battles to us. She appeared to us from one of our underground streams, speaking to us of your fights, and we decided to grasp this chance."

"And you don't mind being completely cut off from the human realm?" Harry asked shrewdly.

The dwarf nodded instantly, showing no hesitation whatsoever. "We do not wish to return. No one alive today can remember what the Emerald Isle was like."

"And you will follow our orders? During battle I mean," Rias questioned.

The dwarf nodded, much more slowly this time, watching her warily. Like Aibell before him, he didn't know how to react to the Devils, although he didn't seem to hold as much of a grudge towards Asia either. "So long as you're not using us as shields or disposable troops in any manner, and we continue to have access to your healer, we will fight under your orders."

"Good. But realize we won't be leaving just yet. Aibell implies there might be other groups out there who survived the purge of the Summer Court, and we just had two pitched battles after a half day of travel. I want to let my family and friends rest for a time." Harry's lips quirked into something that even the most charitable would not have called a smile, for all that it showed a great number of teeth. "And then too, the Unseelie know we are coming. They are going to have to fort up to defend the last receiving stone. If I can bind myself to it, their leader will not have access to the magi-sphere of Tir Na Nog any longer, while I will gain total control over it. At that point, this war will be over."

The dwarf, and even Aibell looked confused by that, but Harry explained how he would be able to use the magi-sphere of the land in various ways. He would be able to banish any illusion instantly, as the Queen of the Unseelie had done numerous times to them. He would be able to detect the use of magic, maybe even track enemy movements, as, again, the Winter Queen could. Certainly his awareness of his surroundings and the movement of people nearby had grown exponentially since taking the third stone. He jerked his finger up to the fourth stone nearby, which he had yet to connect with, deeming speaking to the dwarves more important. "I have no doubt that will go up when I bind myself to that receiving stone."

After looking at one another, Aibell and the dwarf both agreed, although Aibell warned, "While the Queen and the Ash King will no doubt be aware of what you just said, the Unseelie are like all the Fae: slow to change. They might follow orders up to a point, but if they start losing this battle we envision, many of the Fae will retreat, thinking to escape to either make peace later once you win out, or to keep the war going."

"PEACE?" the dwarf roared, startling many nearby to look at the gathering, and when he went on he hissed. "No peace! No peace for the dam-slayers, the vampires, the giants who ate us, the Fae who tortured us, who drove us away from the surface for so long!"

Rias and Harry exchanged a glance, and with a shrug of her shoulders, Rias said the decision on this point was Harry's. He sighed heavily, but after a bare second's thoughts, nodded. "No peace. The beasts can be let alone once their numbers are cut back enough. But as for the rest… if they sided willingly with the Unseelie in this betrayal, if they joined hunting down those of you who were part of the Summer Court, they will have a chance to surrender when we break the Winter Court's power. If they just retreat, unwilling to make any agreement with us… then I will help you all in hunting them down. No second chances."

The dwarf bowed deeply from his waist at that, and Aibell agreed vehemently.

When Harry claimed the fourth receiving stone it was somewhat anticlimactic after the third stone, it's revelations and the power Harry had accessed from the rest of this world's magi-sphere. The Winter Queen was too tired apparently from their earlier contest to face him again and instead only made a token resistance. But this time, Harry did see Brigid, somehow hiding within the magi-sphere, siphoning off the thread that was her power within it as he touched the stone, using his access as cover for her own actions. It was evident that Aibell wasn't willing to chance a confrontation with the Winter Queen. Not that Harry could blame her, the Winter Queen was a bit of a bitch.

The only real change physically though was that the wintry weather they had been plagued with broke entirely at last, and Harry, using the magi-sphere of the land, started to bring back the summer they had arrived in slowly over the rest of that day.

The cheers this garnered from the dwarves, who had continued to arrive in small bunches, was a bit surprising but Aibell explained it, a broad grin on her face. "The seasons have been so long under the control of the Winter Queen, and she has been as self-serving and cruel with that as with anything else. And up in the mountains, where she knew the dwarves survived, it was much worse."

Nodding at that, Harry decided to spend a few more minutes talking to her about her experiences before moving over to join Rias and the others for an early dinner. They then started to build up their nightly defenses, with the help of the dwarves, who basically took over creating the outer and inner walls, while Harry and the other wizards concentrated on the magical defenses.

To Harry's carefully hidden surprise, they weren't attacked that night, however. He had thought that the Unseelie would try another overwhelming night attack as they had before. It wouldn't lay to their strengths as much on the surface, but it would have actually been a better idea, given Luna's abilities to see through their illusions.

But Aibell put it in perspective when she, her husband and the dwarven leader joined Harry and his family in the tent that night. After exclaiming about what she called the 'Internal dimensional subspace' of the tent and being amazed about some of the magical appliances she coughed self-consciously, and then answered Harry's questions. "The creatures of the Wild Hunt will need at least a night to recover their numbers, a process that greatly weakens the Ash King, who was forced to retreat earlier today. He will also want to, to gather more power before facing you once more."

"Me? I barely had anything to do with his fleeing like a beaten cur," Harry said mildly, reaching out a hand to gently work his fingers along Koneko's ears and hair, causing the Nekoshu to purr and lean into his touch. "Our Koneko here did that."

"Well, regardless, he will want more power before challenging you once more," Aibell replied, smiling at this bit of interaction.

"And that will mean more sacrifices?" Asia asked, her face pale. "We, we know how, or at least we think we know, um, our research suggested that…"

"Oh, yes. There will be many a wicker cage created in the next few days. Perhaps even some of the Fae," Aibell's husband spoke up for only about the second time since they had met earlier that day. "My wife's already brought word to the dwarves and the few other groups of survivors we know about, told them to go into hiding. But I don't know if that will be enough. We can only hope that he will be forced to prey on his own people."

There being nothing they could do about that, the group turned their attention to other things, trying to keep the conversation light that night, amused by the reaction of the locals to the food prepared in the modern, for the Wizarding World anyway, kitchen, as well as some of the Asian foods on offer. And later that night, everyone but Loup and Harry slept deeply, protected not just by their camp's defense but their allies. It was the first real, full night's sleep that any of them, even Lily, had since coming to this world.

Over the next two days, the group from Ireland rested, recovering as they waited for more allies to step forward. They were rewarded the next day, making this seem to indeed be a viable strategy.

Four dozen male leprechauns came forward early in the morning. The little creatures told a tale of woe similar to the dwarves, except in their case, it had been the winter Fae who had led to the attacks on their tiny kingdoms, the Queen in particular. Like the dwarves, they retreated deep underground, living among the roots of ancient trees, never returning to the forest at large.

The leprechauns barely stood more than 6 inches, and they were certainly no warriors like the dwarves, but each of them had a tiny hammer at his belt, which, though small, was as well-made as the dwarves' larger weapons. They also had ropes tied all around their bodies and with tiny hook studding the ropes here and there, making them look quite nasty. They also, the leprechauns confessed, used magic in battle. "Once the battle be joined, we be pulling more than our weight, never you mind manling! Tis more guarding our gold we leprechauns can be doing."

Two more groups came forward, although their direct combat ability wasn't very high in Harry's estimation. One was a group of fairies. Much the same size as the leprechauns and nowhere near as sturdy, they all were actual survivors of the Great Betrayal, as they thought, being immortal. They were also the most emotionally scarred. As Aibell had said, the Fae were very slow to change, and part of that was memories that remained so good they couldn't forget even if they wanted to. They did however say something that Rias found rather intriguing: that it had been the Oak King who led the Seelie Fae to join with their Unseelie counterparts and betray the Tuathans.

That was a surprise, as until that point, Harry and the others had assumed the Unseelie had been behind that entirely. But they hadn't been. The Seelie had hoped to lock out the Tuathans from Tir Na Nog. "The Oak King, he wished to rule coequally with the Winter Queen. He hated being beholden to Dagda, loathed the fact the Tuathans continued to look for Titania."

"So, the Seelie Queen really was named Titania? And she was missing?" Rias asked intently, looking at the one fairy who seemed to act like a leader. She looked like a perfectly normal college-aged woman dressed in a sun dress. Except of course she was six inches tall, had wings, and was hovering in the air in front of Harry and Rias's faces. The rest of her colleagues were dodging a happy Lily and Koneko, who, along with Luna had been very happy to see the tiny Fae.

"Indeed. The great Titania disappeared soon after Lugh's folly, though none knew where she went. Rumors abounded of her having travelled to Britain, while other tales said she was seen in battle with some of our heroes against the interloping followers of the God of Canaan."

The fairy ignored Rias's scowl at the use of the g-word to glare over at Asia. The sight of Asia's rosary and Sacred Gear had been an issue among the Fae who had joined them, although nothing much had happened beyond talk about it. No one wanted to annoy a healer of such strength or her looming lupine guard, Harry keeping the girl close to him or Loup at all times.

"Regardless, she was not with us when the Undertaking was finished. The courts aided in hiding the sites the magic of the Undertaking then mid-spell, the Oak King and Winter Queen joined forces with Dian Cecht, Gobinu, Gwynn ap Nudd, and two others whose name I never learned to betray the other Tuathans, disrupting the spell as it became their turn to teleport away. Aibell was not the only survivor among the Tuathans, but none of their strongest lived and those like Abcan, the dwarven poet, were hunted down and slain by the Wild Hunt, glutted on the blood of their victims. They killed many of the Hunt in turn, including many of its strongest, but was all in vain. Even the Oak King couldst not stand against them."

Harry and Rias questioned the tiny fairy closely on what had happened leading up their fleeing the rest of the Seelie court, then learned that none of the Summer High Fae had lived through the battles around their city. The Oak King, for all that his ambition had marked him like a villain, at least died like a hero. Or so the fairies thought. Harry had his own opinion, as did the others, particularly Luna, Rias noticed, who was staring rather unnervingly at the fairies.

Later that day, another group of magical creatures came forward. Cait Siths were not trained to follow orders like the dobhar chu, but they were intelligent enough to be convinced to join the fighting. The Cait Siths instantly fell in love with Koneko and vice versa, but frankly they didn't really add anything to the gathering forces in terms of combat ability against the Fae. Harry though was very pleased, figuring a few of them could keep Lily entertained.

The one group that Aibell had hoped to see however, the gryphons, did not appear. "I know that a few families of them didst survive, retreating to eyries high into the mountains, beyond where even Fae could survive. But they lost many of their number to the Banshees and the Wild Hunt before that."

Harry noticed how Lily had overheard that statement, but since his own attempt to call in Tiamat- after all, there was no such thing as overkill – failed didn't think much about it.

By the end of the second day of rest by the fourth receiving stone, it was clear that no one else was coming forward. Harry, in consultation with Aibell and Rias, decided that waiting served their enemies more than them at this point. With that in mind, they began to march out, sort of.

Aibell would transport them via her water transportation for a time, after which they would be forced to march. With the amount of the magi-sphere already under Harry's control, he would then be able to feed coordinates to Rias, who would teleport them further forward.

The only ones who weren't going into this battle was Lily and Rolf. With Aibell offering sanctuary in her grotto, Harry had determined that bringing his daughter along would be ridiculously stupid. In fact, he had attempted to send her back home along with Rolf, who, despite all of his experience with fighting beasts and the wild, had found that he did not do so very well against thinking enemies. Numerous times over the past few days he had hesitated when fighting the Fae, or the other intelligent creatures under their thrall.

Early that morning, Harry and Rias created a defensive cordon within the grotto, which would negate and completely defend it against any threat that somehow was able to find the grotto. Koneko had volunteered to stay and watch Lily but decided after talking about it with Harry and Lily herself, that she could be of more use in the actual battle.

As their allies moved off from the edge of the river on the other side, Lily hugged Koneko and her father and then Asia and the others, wishing them Good luck before waving at Rias, not willing to take the chance that hugging her would break Rias's concentration. "I'll see you all back here when you're done."

"Be safe lovey, and don't exit Aibell's grotto!" Harry admonished, watching as she stepped back into the swirl of water with Aibell and Rolf next to her. Seconds later they were gone, disappearing into the water and then away.

By the time Aibell returned, Rias was nearly done her calculations, and the runic array for a teleportation tunnel, much like the one that linked Kuoh to Kyoto, was appearing on the ground in front of her. After bonding Harry had bound with the fourth stone the Winter Queen had no longer been able to stop Rias's teleportation ability, and between him and Aibell, they had given Rias enough of an image to use of an area around the Winter Court as a teleport point.

"I hope everyone is ready to go," she said through gritted teeth, sweat pouring down her face. "I'm going to have to teleport all of us at once, the enemy is aware of what I'm doing, and is trying to stop me from being able to finish the teleportation spell on the other side! I don't think they have any forces in the area I am teleporting us to, but…"

"Right. Everyone better be ready!" Harry shouted.

He was answered by a roar from their new allies, and the others grimly hefting weapons as they moved to stand within the teleportation tunnel's array, the Ankhsera runes glowing underneath their feet. Many a dwarf and leprechaun looked leery at them, but there was no hesitation in their movement. This was a chance to live free again, without fear of the Unseelie. They were going to take that chance, whatever the cost and no matter how unusual their new allies were.

As the last dwarf stepped into the area effected by the teleportation tunnel, Rias finished the spell, and all of them were catapulted several hundred leagues north and northwest, to the edge of the territory that was the home of the majority of the winter court. Harry and his original group came out of the teleportation ready for anything, while the rest of their small army, eight hundred dwarves, two hundred leprechauns, Aibell and assorted others, didn't take the mode of transportation nearly as well, lurching to their knees cursing, stumbling into one another and in more than a few cases, vomiting. Alas, that reaction tended to spread…

As Asia and the others looked to the dwarves – all of them had been dwarves – who were having stomach issues, Harry, Arthur, Loup and Luna moved out and away from the rest, spreading out with the leprechauns who hadn't had much trouble with the Devil's version of teleportation to create a cordon around the rest.

Contrary to what he had been expected, there wasn't a tremendous change in terms of the forest itself to the area where the Unseelie Fae made their home. They were surrounded by the same forest, touched here and there by magnificent natural beauty. There were the same scattered trees that looked as if someone magical it come around to mold them into certain shapes. One in particular, an oak tree whose branches had been shaped into hundreds of natural nests of various sizes, grabbed his attention. There were more black trees of course, and he had no doubt that many of the beeches he could see were actually the carnivore trees that had made their presence known so often.

Yet amidst this beauty there were signs of life. Horrible life. Trees, not the black trees, but normal trees, had been should shifted into looking like gibbets where the skins of people, almost translucent due to how long they had been there, hung. They were not just human skins, but dwarf, Fae, leprechauns and more. Harry could see other trees, taller trees, blackened and twisted further into living torture devices. They at least were not occupied at present but that was small mercy to those who were now seeing their ancestors or even family members so disgraced.

Nearby Harry heard one of the leprechauns hissing in anguish. "Ach, bad cess to them, the feckers! They defile our kin even after death for their pleasures!"

There was an acrid odor on the wind, one which Harry recognized: seared flesh and bone, the stench coming from the north of where they had appeared.

"To the north we will find a tree, a Great Tree. It was once the sight of the Hall of Disputes, where the Lords of the Courts would meet with my fellow Tuathans to settle disputes. Mostly twas Dagda who made his words known. If he had survived to become part of the Undertaking, I doubt that the Unseelie and the Ash King would have had a chance to work their evil." She shook her head briskly. "Regardless, it is now home of the Winter Queen, the leader of the Unseelie. You can see her markers across the land here, far more numerous than elsewhere in the great forest. Beware of them. Here, the spells hung upon those trees will be worse and more powerful by far than any spells you have seen previously."

Rias stood up from where she had been crouching, regaining her breath from her exertion the teleportation spell. Mittelt held out a hand to her, and she leaned on her pawn for a moment, smiling at her then over at the others. "In that case, might I suggest we start by destroying every one of them from long-range as we head there?"

This was answered by a chorus of laughter, although none of the locals were prepared for Yubelluna, Rias and Harry stepping forward from the rest of the army, many of whom were still getting their bearings. They spread out past the leprechauns, and soon the deformed trees were shattered, exploding with concussive force that the rest could hear from here or simply disintegrating to ash.

"Foolish! We could have snuck up on them," growled a leprechaun, as it sat on Harry's shoulder.

"No, we couldn't. The Fae know we're here already, or did you not hear Rias saying that she was getting some pushback as she tried to teleport us?" Harry looked around at the others, gently lifting the leprechaun off his shoulder and setting him down the ground before straightening back up, not breaking his glare from the other leprechauns nearby. "Understand this. Misdirection, illusion, trickery, long term debilitating spells. Those are the strengths of the Fae. We cannot fight them on those terms, we have instead been forcing them to fight on ours. A direct assault might seem foolish, but is also playing to our strengths, not their weaknesses."

Aibell frowned but nodded, and after a moment, the chief leprechaun, who had a small circlet of gold on his brow, also nodded. The dwarves simply grunted to a man, hefting their hammers and shields.

"Let's go," Loup growled, accompanied by a yowl of agreement from Koneko as Harry shifted back into his werewolf form. "It's past time to finish this."

With Harry in the center, Yubelluna and Tonks pushed out through their allies, taking up positions where they began to destroy the black trees and the carnivorous beeches as they moved forward. The rest of their party formed a phalanx in the center, with Rias, Le Fay and Asia at the back, Rias providing long-range fire through the forest to any black tree she could see, destroying her target and anything between them.

The dwarves split into two groups, moving to the flanks, trying to form lines, but failing to put more than a few men together given the forest nature of the battlefield. No formation would survive here for very long in any case. But the dwarves, to Harry's pleasure, seemed to have worked this out. They worked in squads of four that kept within sight of one another, and attempted to remain on a line.

The leprechauns could have formed a battle line as small as they were. But they didn't bother. Instead they stayed clumped together, behind the other main combatants. But more than one of them was now twirling the ropes that they had, as their main weapons, while others were speaking darkly, patting their hammers at their sides as they stared to where the gibbets had stood moments before.

The Fairies on the other hand were slowly fading into the background even as Harry tried to watch them out of the corner of his eye. He was worried that that group was going to bolt first thing. Of all of the people that had come forward, they seemed to be the most broken and traumatized.

As a horn sounded in the distance Harry turned his attention away from them, magic beginning to glimmer from his eyes and hands. He felt a spell flash through the magi-sphere, a blinding spell that would have left them all in darkness, but he snuffed it with almost contemptuous ease, such was the power up he had taken from the third receiving stone. "Luna, you're up!"

"They have made several knew pitfalls that I can see, and they are trying to put up more illusions. Tonks, Le Fay, on my mark…" Luna intoned.

The three of them stepped forward and began to conjure salt into being. Soon all three had massive piles of the stuff around them. And a moment later, Luna shouted, "MARK!"

The the three of them started to cast the salt forward through the surviving trees and once more, when the salt intersected the illusions of the Fae, the illusions faded. Now the army could see the pit falls, the snares, the hidden magical traps that the Fae had created in the past two days, imitating the work Harry and his party had done every night in Tir Na Nog, only with the magical traps being even thicker on the ground. The next second Rias began to let loose with wider angle beams of fire as Tonks joined Yubelluna and Harry, destroying the forest in front of them. The shattered remnants of their trey victims were dumped into the pits, creating some more ground to fight on.

This destruction of the outer fortifications did not go unnoticed. Soon a few Banshees and summoned crows began to attack from the sky. But the banshees were truly few in number and seemed almost hesitant to attack. They had lost hundreds of their number in the battle by the cliffs and the previous battle around the former Seelie city.

"Mittelt, Le Fay, offense, Asia, defense," Harry commanded calmly, as Rias turned her attention upwards without prompting. A single blast of Power of Destruction disrupted the aerial attackers before they could hit the allied forces, and then Mittelt's Holy Lances were flashing upwards with Le Fay's cutting spells. Here and there, the crows got through, but Asia was fast with her shield spells, and the fairies lashed upwards as well downing the crows by the dozens with their tiny arrows.

A worse danger than the banshees or conjured crows was the giant stones and tree trunks that began to be hurled in their direction from their distant target. But Yubelluna, Tonks and Harry destroyed them long before they could land and were quickly joined in this by Rias as she moved forward.

Within moments the trees came alive with the forces of the Unseelie. At their head were groups of Dullahans, their black armor gleaming in the sun as did their lances. With them came Grim, shadow beasts, and the huntsmen of the Wild Hunt, led by Gyn Ap Nudd, who blew his horn furiously, summoning up more conjured dogs to race into battle with him.

Behind them, the Fae of the Unseelie were beginning to disappear and reappear. Every one of them was armed with a quiver of arrows, short swords and javelins on their backs. They came close, their faces grim as they started to launch arrows. Arrows which multiplied as they flew thanks to their magics. They were accompanied by still more conjured beasts, massive trolls this time that Harry figured either the queen had conjured before the battle, or groups of lesser Fae had worked together to bring into being.

But Luna was on guard for this very thing, and she began to move like a whirlwind, lashing out with clouds of tiny salt particles, which dissipated the illusions of the Fae arrows. The trolls however, were not illusions, but they were targets almost as much as the giants for Yubelluna and Rias and several of them died as the illusions covering their approach faded thanks to Luna's effort showing where they really were rather than where the Fae had hoped the attackers would see them.

At the same time, the queen herself got involved once more, having overcome her seeming-shock at how easily Harry had dealt with her earlier attempt. Spell after spell after spell was launched the short distance through the magi-sphere from her current location to the attackers. And these were not misdirection or blindness spells. These were mass death spells, fire spells of awesome power, and more Dark spells than Harry had faced since his final duel with Voldemort.

Harry pulled back, kneeling down on the ground and thrusting his consciousness into the magi-sphere. He beat back this overwhelming assault with similar ease to when they arrived at this battlefield and once more, the queen recoiled. But this time, Harry wasn't willing to simply wait on the offense. As the physical battle rose all around him, Dullahans crashing into dwarves and Gyn Ap Nudd dodging a Bombarda from Tonks only to nearly run into a Reducto from Loup, he cast his own spells through the magi-sphere for the first time.

The first was a massive Finite Incantatum, which washed out over the forest, dispelling everything in its path from the distant enemy outward. A shriek of pure rage echoed through the woods at that, but Harry wasn't done. I don't think that any direct attacks will get through her defenses, and I don't want to be stuck here in a magical duel via magi-sphere. But that doesn't mean that I can't make things uncomfortable for her over there.

Sending out a series of Onmyodo-style element spells through the magi-sphere, he took up the queen's attentions for a moment, and then as she beat them down, banishing each element in turn, he sent forth a mass-conjuration. A conjuration of Snorkacks. Harry had noticed how the Fae seemed afraid of those before and decided to take a page out of Luna's book. From the ground all around the massive tree Aibell had told them about snorcacks appeared, and then began to rush at the nearest Fae.

From the shriek that once more echoed through the forest, it sounded as if Harry's attempt to discommode his enemy had succeeded. He grinned at that, standing up and taking in the battlefield directly around him once more.

At the same time, the Fae all began to use their own spells, their illusions being utterly flummoxed now by Luna's salt defense, although they were two far away for their conjured beasts to have been affected by Harry's Finite Incantatum..

Many of them were defensive spells, protecting their position, visible to Harry's Manannán given senses now that he controlled much of the Magi-sphere, as flashes of dark energy wrapping around them. Others were offensive, and even with that, there was a difference. Many of the spells coming towards them, indeed hundreds, were simply attack spells, the type which created an effect that would not be too dissimilar from the spells that wizards are witches could use. Others were element based, flashes of lightning and wind for the most part. Still more were casting spells to create warded areas in front of the attackers, hoping that it would trip them up, further separating the groups even more than the forest was already doing.

"Tonks, Luna, Le Fay with me!" Harry shouted, as he cast a Transfiguration spell on the ground of the forest. Between them the four of them created hundreds of bounding lions and crumple horned snorcacks. One of the latter appeared underneath Luna, lifting her up like a steed as she had been using all along in this world. These were accompanied by birds from Le Fay, everything from a massive goshawk on down to more of her favorites, the hummingbirds.

These creatures sprang into the few remaining warded zones in front of the attackers, as well as soaking up a lot of the spells and arrows from the Fae, while the dwarves, the huntsmen, Loup and Arthur crashed into their opposite numbers. The leprechauns also made their presence felt, having disappeared somehow from behind Harry's group and the dwarves to reappear among the Fae. Wire thin ropes lashed out, choking, tying down, and in a few cases catching fingers or ears, and literally twisting or pulling them off. Tiny hammers with a lot more force than would be expected hammered in, dealing as much damage to the admittedly physically weak Fae as the dwarves.

The Fae began to recoil where the leprechauns appeared, a small area of the forest battlefield but a significant one, which Aibell somehow sensed. She led her husband round the dwarves and in a charge towards that area, leaving the makeshift frontline behind, and skirting the edge of the Wild Hunt, which continued to make straight for Harry and the others.

"Rias fall back further. More Long-range artillery time I think. And if you can, emergency teleports as well for both us and our allies. Asia you too." Harry frowned thinking for just a split second, as if it was all the time in the world, and then said "Loup, in among the shadow beasts, but when they start to fall back, you do too to the guard position on Asia and Rias."

With Rias alongside Asia, they really didn't need all that much protection, but the Wild Hunt at the very least had a few members that could take them on physically. Gwyn ap Nudd and that massive black dog in particular could be a threat to either of them, although he doubted the Cu Sith could kill Rias.

However, the Unseelie still had other resources. Behind the Wild Hunt, the Dullahans and the Fae, Harry caught a glimpse of something rising up out of the ground. Soon, giants, more than four dozen of the monsters appeared, thrusting through the trees as they came towards Harry and the others, howling and roaring.

But Rias simply laughed wickedly from where she had fallen back from the others. "HAH! You're just bigger targets to me you ugly FUCKS!" she hissed as she started to lash out with Power of Destruction beams that cut into the giants, immolating them in groups of two.

The Winter Queen had apparently decided to ignore the snorcacks conjured up all around her, leaving them to the Fae that had stayed back in her court with her. More attacks spells flashed through the magi-sphere, forcing Harry to once more contended with her. Their contest went on as the battle was joined in front of Harry, the conjured up creatures having slamming into the incoming attackers from that direction, while the dwarves and the others all battled against the Dullahans and the huntsmen, along with the first of the giants as they reached them.

But then, with an almost audible snap, Harry's willpower and sheer magical strength once more overcame the pressure from the winter queen. And then Harry turned his attention to the battle all around him just in time to dodge a giant's massive club. "Oh shite!"

"The bigger they are, the better the target!" Koneko howled, racing forward through the forest to one side of Harry. Using her wings she flew up into a rising uppercut on the first giant. For a moment, just a moment she was tempted to shout out 'Rising Tiger' or something as the move was so much like something she could pull off in a certain arcade game, but she refrained. The giant's head whipped backward, it's chin shattering along with its neck under the impact of the blow, although Koneko had put enough force into her blow so it should have destroyed the head entirely, and she shook her head once more at how physically durable the giants were.

Nearby a dwarf had been felled by a giant's club, but two more raced forward, slamming their hammers into its legs. It didn't even seem to feel it, but when it raised its club, the giant found that it couldn't move its arms. They had been tied to its' side by leprechauns, the magic rope of the leprechauns proving to be unbreakable by the Giants.

An instant later, the giant's face disintegrated under an explosion from Yubelluna, who shouted out something that Harry couldn't make out over the tumult of battle. Then around them, several of the trees started to come alive, not under the direction of the Fae, but under Yubelluna's command and her near ecstatic glee on her face made sense.

They reached for the Fae, for the shadow beasts, and for the giants, ignoring the dullahans as not a real threat at this point.

Spells were still coming fast and furious, and more than a few of the Fae turned their magical attention on these new constructs of the enemy, having already wiped out much of the first wave of constructs that Harry and the others had conjured into being.

But this shift in attention cost them, as Aibell led her husband and a large band of leprechauns into their flank from out of the woods. The Fae began to retreat, now totally thrown off-balance mentally. They were the ambushers, not the ambushed! This in turn left the rest of their forces more exposed to magical assault.

With Koneko and Yubelluna helping the leprechauns and the dwarves against the Giants, Harry attempted to pick out through the woods where Gwyn ap Nudd had gone. Then he turned with a grunt of agony as a blade caught him in the back, already feeling the telltale searing pain of silver as Gwyn ap Nudd appeared out of a shadow behind him, Arthur crashing to the ground nearby. But his fast turn brought Fragarach around, smashing into the blade of Gwyn ap Nudd, and the two began to exchange blows, Gwyn ap Nudd pressing Harry too hard for him to be able to use a spell even as the Ash King's weapon began to show nicks and cracks.

"You wield the blade of Mac Lir!" The Ash King hissed through his carnivore's teeth, his odd face, the horrid human-deer amalgam, twisting into a sneer that somehow made it even uglier. "I will have it from you!"

"If by that you mean the blade will be stuck in your innards, then yes, I think you will," Harry replied coolly. This seemed to infuriate Gwyn ap Nudd, and he redoubled his efforts to cut Harry down, the Master of the Hunt's own weapon taking the worst of his assault.

The attack ended abruptly as Arthur got up dispatching the shadow beast that had attempted to take a bite of him on the ground, before cutting towards Gwyn ap Nudd. Gwyn ap Nudd twisted, taking the blow on a buckler on his forearm staring angrily at the user of the Excalibur Ruler just as another massive black dog, the same Cu Sith that had nearly killed the Loup in the first battle attacked Harry, knocking the werewolf off his feet.

Slathering jaws met slathering jaws, and claws ripped and tore as the two of them were sent tumbling through the woods, Fragarach knocked out of Harry's hand and dissipating in the air, returning to its place in his mind. And for the first time in a long while, Harry found himself completely overmatched in terms of speed in a purely physical contest. In strength they were about equal, Harry thought as he rolled and twisted, but this particular Cu Sith was fast, faster than Harry, and he started to take injuries across his body.

But the black dog was nearly mindless, and Harry was still able to think. And while he wasn't as quick as the dog, Harry was quick enough. He grabbed the front leg of the animal, pulling it to one side and off his body before biting the dog behind the neck even as it tried to twist away. His teeth was barely able to tear into the thing's fur, but then Harry stood up and hurled the beast through the forest to slam spine first into a tree.

It rolled as it hit, coming up on all fours, and then Harry intoned Snape's cutting spell, which smashed into it. Again the things durability was incredible. Even a full powered Sectumsempra, the same spell that had turned Fae into chum before this nothing but make a small scar on this side of the black dog which quickly began to close.

As Harry readied himself for the thing's charge, he was hit by several spells coming out of the woods to his right side from the Fae. These were not direct assault spells, instead these were spells to make him give into his primal werewolf side, as well as to turn the ground against him as well as animating the trees all around him. The Wolf leaped for him just as Harry used a Finite Incantatum on the roiling ground beneath his feet and by the time Harry turned, Fragarach in spear form thrusting forward, as the Cu Sith leaped at him, the dog having been caught in the area impacted by his spell.

The black dog, dodging the spear thrust like it had seen it coming a mile away, knocked Harry off his feet once more. But instead of trying to maul him once more, the massive dog rolled off him, it's eyes suddenly no longer red rimmed but almost human. It nodded at him once, then gave loose a thunderous howl, turning and racing through the woods away from the battle.

"What just happened?" Harry blinked staring after it, amazed at the reprieve. Then he shrugged, sent a mass of conjured salt followed by a Bombarda sent towards the real position of the Fae that had attempted to attack him once they were revealed, and turned, racing back to where Arthur and Gwyn ap Nudd were dueling.

Back in that battle, Arthur's sword thrust forward to smash point first into the armored chest of Gwyn ap Nudd doing nothing. Gwyn ap Nudd's ash armor seemed invulnerable. 'FOOL!" the ancient evil demigod shrieked in Welsh, grabbing Arthur's wrist before he could pull back from the thrust, faster than Arthur had expected. "Your sword's power is but a shadow of the real Excalibur's greatness! DIE!"

Arthur released his hold on the sword, backing up and dodging the next blow adroitly, but couldn't' dodge the kick that took him in his shin, breaking the limb. He grabbed up Excalibur Ruler from where it had fallen, blocking four slashes and returning one which got through his enemy's paltry defense, attempting once more to cut through the ash armor that covered Gwyn ap Nudd from head to foot.

It failed, and he had just enough time to realize that Gwyn ap Nudd's other hand was suddenly holding a spear which was aiming for his throat before Harry launched himself forward from around a tree with Fragarach appearing in his hands again. The spear shattered under impact with the Longinus-tier weapon as the werewolf smashed Gwyn ap Nudd backward bodily.

Even as Gwyn ap Nudd righted himself Fragarach shifted into a chain with a mace on the end, whipping through the forest canopy to wrap around Gwyn ap Nudd's arm tying it to a tree. The tree shattered as Gwyn ap Nudd flexed, but it had held him still long enough for Harry to intone a series of spells. A water dragon appeared to one side, conjured into being by a whispered "Mizu," and flashing forward with all the power of the ocean behind it, blasting Gwyn ap Nudd off his feet and through the woods.

The water dragon caught Gwyn ap Nudd up in its claws, raking at him furiously, biting at its head, as Gwyn ap Nudd attempted to stab the thing to death, or smash it to pieces with his fist. But Harry had chosen water for a very simple reason. Unless you could boil it away, water would stay water, and reform. Soon the dragon encapsulated Gwyn ap Nudd in an egg of water under his direction, as Harry readied his next spell, keeping Gwyn ap Nudd from using the shadow traveling ability which had made him such an annoyance for so long.

That spell lanced forward, impacting the dragon turned water egg around Gwyn ap Nudd. Gwyn ap Nudd howled in agony as the egg and the superheated fire spear collided. Another Onmyouji style spell it hit and the egg exploded with such concussive force that it knocked Harry off his feet, as well as hurling Arthur to his knees nearby shattering trees through for dozens of yards all around.

Gwyn ap Nudd had been hit twice before this by Yubelluna's bombardier power and come through it unscathed. He had even been caught in a direct explosion once. He had faced Boosted punches from Koneko, losing bits of his outer ash armor. But this was orders of magnitude more power, creating a massive crater in the forest as if a battery of artillery shells had exploded around him.

Still Gwyn ap Nudd lived, pushing himself out of the ground, much the worse for wear. His ash armor was now flaking off his body in a few paces, revealing the red skin and black tattoos underneath. One of his antlers was gone, and several more were broken. He howled in fury but then Harry was on him again, smashing the broken portion of Gwyn ap Nudd's sword out of his grip with a blow from Answerer. Harry then twisted around a punch from Gwyn ap Nudd, the sword shifting forms, into a short stabbing sword which he thrust upwards, sinking it deep into our Gwyn ap Nudd's side. "Pierce, Fragarach."

The ash armor was actually only the outer shell of Gwyn ap Nudd's armor. His tattoos were also a kind of armor, strengthened as the ash armor was by the pain of his victims, burned within the Ash King's whicker cages. Even without the ash armor, Gwyn ap Nudd could have traded blows with Ddraig and Koneko through at least five Boosts, maybe more. And even without the tattoos, no human should have had enough power to punch a weapon even through Gwyn ap Nudd's normal skin. He was after all, a demigod and one who emphasized the physical skills over everything else.

But Harry was one as well, and he wielded Fragarach, perhaps the greatest weapons of the Tuatha De Danan, worthy of being a Longinus Sacred Gear. The short sword Fragarach had become stabbed deep into Gwyn ap Nudd's side through his ash and tattoos, and he crumpled to his knees, bringing his head level with Harry's.

A blast of magical lightning took Gwyn ap Nudd in the chest, exploding out the back, entering through a wound in his ash armor as Harry backed away slightly, allowing the giant Gwyn ap Nudd to falter to his knees. Yet still he was alive, his hands filling with the spear and sword he had been using, the weapons recreating themselves under his command.

The next second, Fragarach disappeared from where Harry had stabbed it into Gwyn ap Nudd's side, and as Gwyn ap Nudd made to rise, reappeared in Harry's hand as a spear. This spear flashed forward, up into the bridge of Gwyn ap Nudd's mouth, straight up into his brain.

Elsewhere, Asia had been busy, healing two dwarves at the same time, one hand on the thigh of one who had taken arrows to leg and chest from the Fae and another one who had nearly been flattened, squashed by a giant. She looked up as several howls of wounded agony and pure shock were heard. "What in the world was that?"

"That, I believe, is Harry taking out Gyn App Nudd," Rias yelled out as she teleported another few wounded back from the front of the battle. "Good riddance too. That creature was like a cockroach, always scuttling back into the shadows."

A second later, she cupped her hands and sent out a blast of Power of Destruction. It ravened through the forest, destroying a giant and a group of Fae, visible through the shattered, broken stumps of trees surrounding them all.

At the same time, the spirits of ghostly riders, horses and dogs, and the huntsmen which had made up of majority of the Wild Hunt disappeared from the battlefield. They had all been completely tied to the life force of Gwyn ap Nudd, all of them having long since ceased to exist as separate entities. With Gwyn ap Nudd, the brain and soul of the Wild Hunt dead, everything else that had made up that phenomenon disappeared.

This removed at least a third, perhaps as much is a half of the remaining defending forces of the Unseelie. And the Fae, unlike the near mindless giants, were not known for their courage.

As the giants continued to fall to her Power of Destruction blasts, Rias could see dozens of Fae beginning to retreat through the woods. But they were ambushed in turn by the leprechauns and the Fairies. After centuries of being preyed upon, forced into hiding, none of them were in the mood to let anyone escape from this dread battlefield.

The giants on the other hand stayed and fought where they were, despite their rapidly dwindling numbers. Koneko had made a point to seek them out, bringing down the big guys with a certain amount of glee, allowing the others to concentrate on the Fae and scattered dullahans.

As they retreated though, several dwarves died as the Fae switched to using more magic again, pushing back against their cousins and the leprechauns.

But those Fae were ambushed in turn by Mittelt from on high while Tonks and Luna danced across the battlefield still, sending out random charms and attack spells in gleeful abandon.

Once more the Winter Queen made her presence known. Thousands of conjured animals appeared, wolves and trolls, smashing into the dwarves and Loup, who howled as he found himself in a battle with three trolls, dodging around and slashing at them with spell, claw and fang. At the same time the few living trees in the area and hundreds more away from the battlefield started to move, attacking any ally near to them.

This ended an instant later, as Harry pushed his own influence back into the magi-sphere. The conjurations remained, but the trees fell back, the consciousness which had moved them gone now. "Push forward!" he shouted. "Push forward! It is time to end this!"

Rias, Arthur, Aibell and the dwarven leader, his head still ringing from an arrow that had clipped his helmet, took up the shout. "Push forward!"

How long it took to finally break the Winter Court's forces, Harry couldn't tell. The Fae who had retreated kept on trying to come back, sniping at them from behind, and more than once Asia had again been forced to save one of her friends from their poison, while the giants fought tenaciously, if stupidly. The Queen also kept up the pressure, forcing Harry to fall back from the rest as he did battle with her on a nigh-constant basis. She seemed to have become inured to having her connection to the magi-sphere broken and she defended herself well against his own attempts.

Once they were within the shadow of the giant tree Aibell had told them about, Rias began to launch Power of Destruction blasts of greater size and magnitude than previously used in this battle, the High-class Devil having husbanded some of her strength for this final push. Whole chunks of the tree disappeared under her attack, while the remaining Unseelie attempted to defend themselves in the glade around it.

The winter queen was there as well, standing in front of behind a set of wooden doors set into the base of the tree. Like the other Fae, she was most decidedly inhuman, despite standing nearly as a human being would. She also had a long white hair falling down back almost to her waist. She wore black armor, which showed off a bit of curve to her, but that was about all that looked human on her. She moved wrong, just like all the Unseelie Fae, her bones sticking out at angles on her arms and legs, her ears were large and expressive, almost like that of a goblin, while her teeth were shown to be pointed as she grimaced at them. Her eyes were also deep set, glowing white dots in her blue-skinned face.

She gestured with both hands, and suddenly, Yubelluna's growing tree army halted in place, turning black and then shifting to attack their allies despite all that Harry and Yubelluna could do. The very ground opened up in places, dispelling hordes of messenger imps. At the same time, another spell flooded the minds of their allies, who began to scream and fall backward, each of them faced with their greatest fears.

However, Rias and the others, had learned the first thing about fighting the Fae: never immediately believe what your senses tell you. While Harry was engaged in their contests of wills all of the other magic users who could, which was everyone in the party bar Koneko who had yet to learn conjuration spells, conjured up salt and hurled it forward.

With a cry of anger, Harry slammed his paws together as he concentrated, breaking the enchantment that had begun to take hold of his allies while the salt shattered the illusions that the winter queen had created. With the conjured imps revealed among the illusions, Tonks led the other wizard style magic users in a massive cancellation charm, which washed over the imps, dispelling them like the illusions entirely.

The trees remained, imbued with enneagrams, a trick the Winter Queen hadn't used since that first night. Alive with the tortured souls within now, those trees would remain fighting for the Unseelie until destroyed.

Now the Winter Queen continued to use the concept of enneagrams in a truly horrifying manner. Undead rose from several dozen gibbets, moving like Infreri for a moment before each of them were imbued with enneagrams. Very specific enneagrams, the souls they were images of contained such power that the physical bodies of the Infreri shifted. Or perhaps somehow the Winter Queen retained enough mental acumen to cover each in individual illusions, Harry couldn't tell.

The first to finish changing was, oddly enough a giant brown bull. It was nearly as large as one of the giants, its horns sharpened like spears.

Next was a man wearing a crimson cloak, his skin, almost as white as snow, making his freckles on one of his cheeks stand out. Like Tsubaki, he was heterochromatic, one blue eye and one black. Blond hair that was as bushy as Hermione's fell to his shoulder. A gold-hilted sword in his hand, and a blood-red shield, dotted with rivets of white metal hung on his other hand. Both weapon and shield started to glow with yellow light, a sign of some kind of enchantment.

Two more men finished coming into being next to the first. Not nearly as physically impressive, they were obviously brothers given the similarities in appearance. Both wore crowns and wielded swords at their sides and spears in their hands.

Another King came next, taller than everyone else in the clearing, even the two werewolves. His hair was brown, falling to his shoulders, and a full beard was visible on his face. His shield was a massive tower shield covering him from head to neck. In his other hand he held an equally large claymore. The claymore started to glow yellow as well.

As these men started to hack apart the dwarves around them, the bull instantly charged, scattering more dwarves before crashing into Koneko, who held it back with both hands, her feet skidding backward as she held it at arm's length. "Bad bull," She intoned calmly, before rearing back with the fist encased in the Boosted Gear, sending it crashing into the bull's forehead. The bull stumbled, but to Koneko's surprise it simply shook it's massive head and charged again.

The other living memories of past heroes were making short work of everyone around them, shouting ancient battles cries and mentioning old battles the enneagrams within were fighting once more. Arthur found himself beset quickly by the man with the red cloak, dueling viciously with the man, while Loup found himself facing the two brothers.

Before the last man, the giant, could finish off the dwarves around him,, Rias interrupted the winter queen's magical assault through the simple expedient of hurling a Power of Destruction blast directly at the woman. This allowed Harry to act against this new threat.

One aspect of the Hallows that Harry had never enjoyed even having access to, much less using, was the Resurrection Stone, since, of course, that wasn't what it did. The stone called forth the asked for spirits from beyond to answer questions posed to them.

But this only represented the bastardized version of the original power. The ruby was the physical representation of Manannán Mac Lir's power to convey people from the land of the living to the dead, which itself was simply an evolved form of his power to move from one dimension to another, which was at the heart of the Undertaking. The older the spirit, the more painful it was for them to be so summoned.

The enneagrams in front of him were, essentially copies of the spirits of dead people. So Harry wondered what would happen if he used the image of those the Winter Queen had conjured up to summon up the original spirits, which appeared around him. As he did, he shouted to them, "You all have been copied, made into the playthings of the Fae! What do you all think of that?!"

The spirits did not like that at all, and the shades launched themselves forward, crashing into their cloned selves. As they passed, the enneagrams, the imperfect images of those souls, were absorbed, erased from the physical plane. As they did, so too did the spirits Harry had brought back from beyond, disappearing back into the land of the dead.

Scowling Arthur looked over at him angrily, but before he could say anything Harry raced forward on all fours towards the Winter Queen. "Complain about not getting your precious duels later, finish this battle now!"

Elsewhere, the lesser enneagrams in the trees fell too as Yubelluna quickly shifted tactics, destroying the trees one after another or in groups as Loup tore them apart. As swiftly as the battle's momentum had swung away from the attackers, it swung back in their favor.

She dodged to one side hissing in anger, snarling in the Fae tongue, the words lost in the tumult of the battle as she coiled her hands around one another, and sent back a bolt of black and dark blue energy.

Contemptuously Rias met it with her own, her Power of Destruction easily overcoming the attack, as Harry also began his own magical assault.

Without illusions or time to set wards, and with so many among the attackers who could simply conjure creatures into being to absorb what wards there were, the last of the Fae knew they were beaten and broke completely. Many of them tried to retreat, others ran for the now quite distant tree-line, the battle having churned up at least a few leagues of forest. But the leprechauns and fairy flung themselves forward, the peaceful, timid fairies now filled with bloodlust of their own, eager to wipe out their oppressors, root and branch.

At Rias's barked command, her entire peerage rose into the air, spreading out as they began to truly rout the enemy. The last giant fell to a positively giddy Koneko who smashed its chest so hard that the thing was hurled back onto his rear. It tried to stand up Before realizing that its chest had been caved in and Koneko, landed feetfirst on his face, crushing it's skull and brain despite its physical durability.

As her defenders began to abandon her, the Winter Queen saw Harry Potter rushing towards her over the shattered, broken ground. He hurled a desperately conjured troll aside roaring out a spell as he held up a hand towards her. But then Fragarach changed into a heavy metal sword as wide as he was which Harry used as a shield from several dozen arrows from one side coming towards him from the last few Unseelie Fae who had remained with their Queen. They then charged forward while she almost languidly dodged around his spell, silver in their hands rather than stone or bronze weapons.

Aibell took this opportunity to charge forward, shouting a challenge. "For all my brethren slain by treachery, I will have your blood, Winter Queen!"

Watching this, Yubelluna decided she was in no mood to allow some last minute vainglorious contest of champions. Besides, I'd wager Harry has had his fill of that with this last clash Gwyn ap Nudd. A Bombardier-created spell caught the Winter Queen's arm at the shoulder and blue and green blood flew everywhere as the Winter Queen shrieked in enraged agony.

But like Gwyn ap Nudd, the Winter Queen was almost a god, even if she lacked his durability. She hurled back a lightning spell that forced Yubelluna to dodge and then whirled around in time to catch Aibell's spear shaft with her other hand. Using it she hurled Aibell backward, followed by a spell which caused Aibell to cry out in pain. A quick twist, and the spear was stabbing downwards. "Die, River Bitch!"

But then, from out from the shadows of the tree came the giant Cu Sith that had given Loup, Arthur and Harry such trouble. It leaped atop the Winter Queen, tearing and raking at her back, as it is jaws clamped down on the back of her neck.

It couldn't quite get its jaws through the winter queen's skin and armor, but it had completely taken her attention away from the unconscious goddess, who was teleported away by Rias.

With Harry still entrapped within a slowly diminishing group of Fae as they attempted to use spell and silver sword against him in equal measure, it fell to Yubelluna to keep the winter queen's attention for a moment.

Concentrating, she created a box around the winter queen's head and shouted out, "Image Bomber!"

The spell faded, showing the Winter Queen still staggering under the weight of the dog, who had twitched his head back as the spell ignited. Both of her ears were gone, her eyes peering out of a mass of blood running down her face, much of her face's skin seared away. But she was still moving, and a spell lanced out towards Yubelluna, nearly catching her in turn. A Protego from Asia got there in time, and the next instant, the black dog leaped away as a beam of ravening power from Rias slammed down into the Fae from above, Rias having teleported herself forward and into the air above the battlefield.

Whatever durability the Winter Queen had wasn't up to stopping the Power of Destruction in such an amount. As the blast of red and black faded, nothing was left but a vague outline on the ground where she had stood.

Cutting down the last Fae around himself, Harry took in the battlefield. What few Unseelie Fae he could see were in fast retreat, but the way they were being harried by a surprisingly bloodthirsty Luna, and the leprechauns and fairies, he doubted any of them would escape. It was odd seeing Luna racing after a retreating foe, but Harry decided not to question it right now. Instead, he looked on as Asia, and the last few of the wounded that she had been dealing with came out of the woods, moving towards the others, guarded by Tonks, who had been wounded in the press somewhere.

Like in the battle against Kokabiel's legion, Asia hadn't been able to keep their allies from losing people. There were many dead, especially among the dwarves. The losses they took against the special enneagrams were about half what they had taken in the running battle before that point. But most of their allies were still alive thanks to Asia, Harry saw, as around thirty leprechauns began to do a wild jig. One which included a lot of pelvic thrusts towards the enemy's corpses. The dwarves, too, were raising their bloody hammers in the air as they began a very bloodthirsty victory song.

As he felt something nudge his side, Harry turned his attention away from them to look at the Cu Sith, cocking an eyebrow. "Why do I think that you are not just some normal black dog?"

The dog yipped, nodding his head rapidly.

"Right, we'll be looking into that minor mystery after I take control of the last receiving stone," Harry announced firmly to no one but the dog at present. The dog had, after all, been nearly as deadly in close-range combat as Gwyn ap Nudd and in a way more skilled too.

Around him, their new allies began to gather the enemy, dead moving them into a single giant pyre. When asked why by a curious Tonks, one of the dwarves grimly answered with, "Gwyn ap Nudd was so enamored with fire and death, we all figure that sending his allies to wherever they go when they die through the same means is poetic justice."

With the black dog padding beside him, Harry headed into the hall. Normally he would be interested in the surroundings, in the bits of orange here and there against the darkened wooden panels, the hints of past artistry removed in favor of paintings of winter scenes and other, less appetizing sights. Must clean this place up before I let Lily or Asia explore it.

He found the stone in the main hall of the place, the area where Aibell had told him Dagda would pronounce judgment in disputes between the various Seelie and Unseelie. It was right beneath a wooden throne, built onto the top of it, in fact. In this manner, the stone was almost mounted like the receiving stone itself was a trophy of victory in some bizarre manner.

Smashing the throne aside with a single blow from a hammer-transfigured Fragarach, Harry settled down on the floor, noting absently that it was almost fastidiously clean. Once sitting down, Harry touched the stone.

Instantly Harry felt the connection, the roaring power of the magic of the Undertaking, the connection between this magical plane and its magi-sphere, and the dimensional doorways on Earth roaring into him. Runes began to appear more sharply on the stone, pushing out from it, more delineated, more real. At the same time, the magi-sphere that powered the Undertaking became Harry's, there to call upon even as he firmly and very definitively shut the door between the realms. Now only Harry could choose who could pass from one realm to another. He even figured out how to create his own doorways, rather than use the ones from the Undertaking.

The connection to the rest of this worlds magi-sphere, which had never responded to the Winter Queen, responded to him fully now, even more so than the first time he felt it's magic, the power of it filling him. But beyond that, he felt more. The myriad magics of the Tuathans who had died during the Fae's backstabbing were released now, the last embers of their magics which had so empowered and broken the Undertaking, was removed.

Harry also felt Brigid, able to at last reclaim the final vestiges of her power from when one of her aspects had died during the Fae's great betrayal. He doubted she would ever regain her full powers, certainly the other aspects, the other two parts of her personality were gone forever. But Brigid would survive.

At the same time, Harry sensed other traps, a dozen of them, all of them designed for this or that Tuathan, should they have somehow survived on the other side. There was even one for Albion, as there had been for Ddraig. But all of them were geared, like the enneagram of Y'Ddraig Goch, to fight someone or something that had the soul of the Tuathan within them.

As Harry only had Manannán Mac Lir's power and not his soul, Harry had bypassed the trap meant for the Man of the Sea. And none of the others bar the Boosted Gear carried a soul that these traps would react to. Damn good thing though that the Winter Queen couldn't call on them at the end there like she could the enneagrams of those past heroes. I wonder who they were?

Regardless, Harry began the arduous task of dissipating those traps, helping the copies of the ancient souls pass over to the other side or simply destroying the enneagram as he did with the one designed to fight Albion.

Once he was finished, Harry lifted his hands away, standing up slowly to head back outside.

The first thing he saw as he walked outside was Yubelluna, standing in the opening of the double doors, her form gleaming in the sunlight of the day beyond. The overcast sky which had covered this place had dissipated with the death of the Winter Queen. When she saw him, she smiled, and bowed from the waist to him, moving slightly out of his way. "Blessed Be! Justice is served."

Harry chuckled wanly as he put a tired arm around Yubelluna's waist hugging her for a second before moving away. "I suppose it is, though that wasn't exactly our goal when we set off on this trip, was it? Still, that objective's been seen too as well. The egress points have all been repaired. There won't be any more magical fog to worry about. And the connection between worlds is fixed too, even if only I can use it at present." The implications of that and the power Harry now had access to, as well as the ramifications of the 'water transportation' and Manannán Mac Lir's power over the ocean bore thinking about. Yes, indeed.

He smiled as he saw that Rias had already sent off for Lily. His daughter raced up the steps to him, and Harry leaned down, lifting her into his arms as Lily nuzzled into his neck, before moving to one side, sitting down on the edge of the stairs, leaning against the giant root that marked out its edge.

As he leaned against the side of the root to one side of the stair leading upward, with his daughter nuzzling into his neck and shoulder, Harry breathed in the earthy scent of her, smiling wearily. That last stone had taken it out of him. Beyond everything he had to do to truly 'clean' the magi-sphere, as his consciousness had moved from the Undertaking into the wider magical underpinnings of this world his mind had spread outwards too. Harry had seen everything within Tir Na Nog and beyond, and when he came back to himself, he felt as if his mind had been turned into a rubber-band, stretched taut then released back to his normal shape.

Lily nuzzled into his neck. "So daddy, I take it you won?" Her tone, despite the near-desperate hug she was giving him, seemed to scream that of course he did, and only a silly person would believe otherwise.

Harry chuckled at that, as Rias came over, sitting down next to them, exchanging a beaming grin with the little redhead. "Yes, lovey, you can say we won." He looked around everyone else, then blinked as Brigid appeared. He had felt her presence earlier, but given everything else Harry's mind had been trying to tell him at the time, he hadn't given any thought to how she would react now that she could create her physical form once more.

Brigid's body was no longer ghostlike, but not quite solid yet either. Certainly, more color had been added there, even though one of her three faces had now faded until only a vague outline could be seen, and the other seemed to be in the process of doing the same. Yet when she strode forward, her feet left dimples in the remaining grass of the battlefield, and you could no longer see through her body at all, like color water almost.

Before Harry could ask her how she was feeling or any of the other dozen or so questions that were now bouncing around his head though, Brigid spoke, her voice a trumpet call carrying for leagues throughout the forest. "All hail Harry Potter, wielder of Fragarach, heir of Manannán Mac Lir and conqueror of the land of Danan!"

Rias looked at her quizzically at that. "Danan? I thought this place was called Tir Na Nog?"

"This island is Tir Na Nog, the planet is called Danan. And by right of conquest and heirship, it is now yours, Harry Potter. What that could mean for you, you will discover eventually, I'm sure. Allow a woman some secrets," Brigid said with a laugh, both gay and earthy at the same time, an odd juxtaposition.

What was odder was the looks Harry looked saw that he was getting from the other locals. None of them had heard about his connection to Brigid in the days leading up to this battle, Harry being more concerned about questioning them and getting to know his allies combat abilities – which had not been easy - rather than going into more detail about how he and his group found themselves in Tir Na Nog.

Aibell of the Rivers came over, staring at Brigid, then to Harry Potter, her eyes narrowing. "Now that you have taken the last stone, are your plans for this land changed?" she asked harshly as if she anticipated fighting Harry now in turn.

Harry shook his head as he continued to look at Brigid, his eyes narrowed while more of his family began to gather around. "No. My plans for this world have not changed. Those who live here now can continue to do so in peace and I will help you hunt down any Unseelie who refuse to surrender." In the midst of the final battle, no one had thought to ask for such, so Harry felt asking any survivors who ran off to do so would be a good idea. Certainly it would salve his conscience a bit.

"If you wish to interact with the human realm, you will have to do that through me. Beyond that…" he shrugged. "I've connected this world now, so I suppose that we might have to think about a more formal arrangement in the future, or perhaps more. An entire island, an entire planet, to call my own? That's got possibilities, I'll admit that. But I have no intention of interfering with any of you."

"Will you not lord it over us, force us to bend the knee?"

"No," Harry barked out, turning away from Brigid to almost glare at the other goddess. "The oaths we shared should be proof enough of that. I want no followers. Only people who are willing to stand beside me, not kneel before me."

Aibell stared at him, recalling those oaths and that they only covered what would happen until the Winter Queen and the Unseelie threat was dealt with. But then she began to laugh, holding up her harpoon, wet with the blood of Fae, giants and other Unseelie. "In that and in your largess to allow us access to the believer in the so-called Holy Father, you prove yourself worthy of fealty. Let me be…"

She was interrupted then as Luna skipped up past her. Somehow since the battle had ended Luna had changed her green leggings and long-sleeved shirt to a white and bright yellow dress, complete with daisies on it for some reason in various places. It swished around her, as she knelt, her hands out to either side of her as she bowed from the waist while sitting. Robert knelt next to her, smiling cheerily at Harry in a 'what can you do' sort of way, as Luna intoned, "All Hail King Potter, Lord of Danan! I, Luna Lovegood-Scamander, of the blood of Titania, last Queen of the Seelie, do give thee my fealty."

Aibell looked at her querulously for a moment, while Harry spluttered, and Rias's eyes narrowed in sudden understanding, followed by a snicker as she put this together with Luna's odd reaction and actions in the former Seelie city. Then as Brigid began to laugh, the demigod nodded firmly and laid her harpoon at Harry's feet, taking up a similar position to that of Luna. "All hail Harry Potter, conqueror and King by right of conquest of Tir Na Nog."

His eyes widening, Harry realized what they were doing, and the importance of it. Harry was already tied to the land via the connection of the spell that Manannán Mac Lir helped create, which was powered by the magical sphere of this world. Now that connection was also directly empowering him, making him far stronger than he had been before, something he had felt since binding the third receiving stone to himself. But this, what Luna and Aibell were doing, would also tie the people of this land to Harry. He would not only be connected to the land but responsible in some fashion to the people who lived there.

He looked to Rias, wordlessly asking what she thought of this, but she simply smiled. "if you're asking what I think, my love, I think they could do a lot worse than you as their King."

The leader of the dwarves came over, staring at Harry intently. "You'll swear on your oath and magic you will leave me and mine to our own devices? To spread throughout the mountains of Connachtor?"

"I swear on my life and magic that the dwarves of the fairy lands will govern and rule themselves so long as they do not prey upon others of that land or humanity, and agree to my oversight of any dispute between them and their neighbors," Harry stated firmly.

Just as when he, Rias and Aibell had exchanged their oaths before on the cliffs, a visible ring appearing around him to the shocked exclamations of some of the dwarves, although their leader simply grinned. "Heard and witnessed by the land itself," he bellowed, and then he too knelt, slamming his hammer into the ground and placing one hand on the pommel while the other one remained on the handle. "With this oath, I, Bail of the line of Stonebreaker, swear thee fealty! All hail Lord Potter! High King of Danan!"

Behind him, the dwarves all knelt and did the same, some of them going so far as to sweep their helmets off their heads as they intoned the oath. The Leprechauns too came forward, and finally, some of the Fairies staring first to Harry, then to Luna as they too intoned the oath, almost surrounding Luna and Rolf.

Harry looked at them, then up at the blue sky above again before nodding his head. "Well, I never wanted to be a king. Nor anything else beyond a family man and a teacher. But if I have to be one, becoming a King by conquest is the right way to go about it, at least."

The Fae all laughed at that, as did his friends, drowned out by Lily letting out a howl of victory. She was joined quickly by Loup and the Cu Sith that stood silently by watching all this. As Rias kissed his cheek and she and Yubelluna cuddled into his sides, Harry reflected, My life just really can never be simple, can it? But at least it can also be rewarding.

End Chapter

So I obviously took liberties with the Celtic lore and Irish lore in particular. Biggest example would be that I had the vampire dwarves and dwarves. Apparently in Irish lore dwarves are just regular dwarves rather than a race themselves. I also probably overuse the Patronus spell, but I figure it is one of the best spells to use against undead. Beyond that, I hope everyone enjoyed the Fae War.