The first undead knight crashed through Avalon's eastern perimeter with the subtlety of a drunken rhinoceros at a crystal shop exhibition. The ancient elven walls—reinforced with modern military engineering and druidic wards—crumbled under the assault of Seraphine's elite guard. Their obsidian armor gleamed with sickly green runes as they poured through the breach like a tide of animated malevolence.
Captain Alastair Reid was halfway through shouting an order when the explosion knocked him off his feet. He rolled with the impact, years of combat training taking over as debris rained down around him. Dust filled his lungs, and for a disorienting moment, he was back in Kabul, picking himself up after an IED had nearly sent him to meet his maker.
"Bloody perfect timing," he muttered, regaining his footing. "Nothing says 'successful ritual' quite like an undead army crashing the party."
The ritual circle lay at Avalon's heart, where Dr. Eleanor Whitaker struggled to maintain control over the fragments of Excalibur. The pulsing blue-white energy surrounding her flickered dangerously as the ground trembled beneath her feet. Maeve knelt at the center, her face a mask of concentration despite the chaos erupting around them, the ley-line markings on her skin glowing with increasing intensity.
"Don't stop the ritual!" Reid shouted to Whitaker as he sprinted toward the eastern breach. "Williams! Defensive positions! Concentrate fire on their rune markings!"
Williams was already moving, barking orders with the practiced efficiency of a veteran sergeant. Task Force Valkyrie soldiers scrambled to form a defensive line, their weapons modified with dwarven runes that disrupted the necromantic energy animating Seraphine's forces.
"Just once," Williams called over the din of battle, "I'd like to complete a magical ritual without undead interruptions. Is that really too much to ask?"
Reid didn't have time to appreciate the gallows humor. His mind was already calculating angles of attack, defensive positions, evacuation routes. The situation was deteriorating rapidly. Seraphine's timing was impeccable—striking precisely when the ritual had made Avalon's ley-lines most vulnerable.
Lance Corporal Parvati Singh appeared at his side, her medical kit slung over one shoulder and a rifle gripped in steady hands. "Eastern medical station is compromised," she reported calmly, as if discussing the weather rather than an existential crisis. "I've relocated the wounded to the western bunker. Okonkwo is coordinating evacuation of non-combatants."
"Good work," Reid nodded. "Priority is protecting the ritual circle. If Whitaker can't complete the first phase—"
"Then we're all enjoying an interdimensional apocalypse for dinner," Singh finished grimly. "Understood, sir."
As Singh moved off to organize medical support for the defenders, Reid caught sight of a familiar figure materializing through the dust and chaos of the battlefield. Tall and elegant despite the surrounding destruction, Lady Seraphine of the Blackthorn surveyed the fighting with the detached interest of someone watching insects scurry about. Her black armor, adorned with thorns that seemed to drink in the light around them, was unmistakable.
"Ah, Captain Reid," she called, her voice carrying effortlessly across the battlefield. "How kind of you to prepare such a warm welcome. The ley-lines of Avalon practically sang to me of your little ritual."
Reid raised his dwarven-forged rifle, knowing it would do little against her but unwilling to show weakness. "You're too late, Seraphine. The ritual is already underway."
Her laugh was like ice cracking. "Am I? Or perhaps I'm precisely on time." She gestured languidly, and the ground beneath Reid's feet trembled. "Your druidess is channeling enormous power through herself. Power that I can... redirect."
With that ominous statement, Seraphine raised her hands, and the corrupted ley-lines beneath the earth responded, erupting upward in tendrils of sickly green energy that lashed toward the ritual circle.
Reid didn't hesitate. He charged directly at Seraphine, firing as he moved. The dwarven-forged rounds struck a barrier of green energy that had materialized around the sorceress, dissipating harmlessly.
"Really, Captain," she sighed, sounding almost disappointed. "Haven't you learned by now that conventional weapons are useless against me?"
"Maybe," Reid replied, closing the distance between them. "But they make excellent distractions."
Seraphine's eyes widened slightly as she realized his intent, but it was too late. Reid had crossed the distance, drawing the combat knife Gareth had given him—a blade forged in druidic fire and quenched in ley-water. He slashed at her barrier, and to her evident surprise, the knife cut through, leaving a glowing wound in her magical defenses.
"Gareth's parting gift," Reid explained with grim satisfaction. "He said you'd appreciate the irony."
Seraphine's expression hardened. "That traitor. Always sentimental about his weapons." She gestured sharply, and a blast of energy knocked Reid backward. "But sentimentality won't save you or your precious ritual."
Across Avalon, the battle raged with increasing intensity. Singh moved among the wounded, her hands steady as she applied field dressings and administered emergency treatment. Despite the chaos around her, she worked with methodical precision, directing those who could walk to help those who couldn't.
"Pressure on that wound," she instructed a young soldier who was supporting an injured druid. "Get him to the western bunker, then return for the next group."
A shadow fell across her, and Singh looked up to see a massive undead knight looming over her, its rusted blade raised high. Before she could reach for her sidearm, a vine erupted from the ground, wrapping around the knight's arm and halting its strike.
More plants burst from the earth—vines, roots, and flowering tendrils that attacked Seraphine's forces with surprising ferocity. At the edge of the ritual circle, Maeve had risen to her feet, one hand still touching Excalibur's fragment while the other conducted this botanical symphony of destruction. Her face was pale with strain, but her eyes burned with determination.
"The nature spirits remember Avalon," she called, her voice carrying despite the din of battle. "This was their home before it was ours."
Whitaker looked up from the ritual, her expression a mixture of concern and academic fascination. "Maeve, you need to focus on the fragments! Dividing your attention could destabilize the entire process!"
But Maeve continued channeling energy into both tasks—maintaining the ritual while summoning nature spirits to defend Avalon. The strain was evident in the trembling of her hands and the blood that had begun to trickle from her nose.
"I can hold it," she insisted, though her voice wavered. "I must."
Whitaker turned her attention back to the fragments, which were pulsing with increasingly erratic energy. "Something's wrong," she muttered, adjusting her calculations frantically. "The energy patterns are shifting... as if something is siphoning power from the ritual itself."
Realization dawned on her face. "Reid!" she shouted across the battlefield. "Seraphine isn't just attacking Avalon—she's draining energy from the ritual to accelerate The Weaver's awakening!"
Reid, still engaged in a deadly dance with Seraphine, heard Whitaker's warning and understood its implications immediately. Seraphine hadn't come to stop the ritual—she'd come to hijack it, using the energy Maeve was channeling to further her own plans.
"Clever girl," Seraphine smiled, seeing the understanding in Reid's eyes. "Did you really think I'd waste resources trying to stop you? Why bother when I can simply... repurpose your efforts?"
She made a complex gesture, and the corrupted ley-lines beneath Avalon surged with renewed intensity. The ground split open in several places, venting sickly green mist that seemed to reach toward the ritual circle with hungry tendrils.
Reid pressed his attack, forcing Seraphine to divide her attention between him and her magical manipulation of the ley-lines. He fought with everything Gareth had taught him about Aeltherian combat—unpredictable footwork, feints within feints, attacks aimed at the gaps in magical defenses rather than the obvious targets.
For a moment, he thought he might be gaining the upper hand. Then Seraphine's patience evidently ran out. With a gesture of irritation, she unleashed a wave of necromantic energy that sent Reid flying backward, crashing through the wall of a storage shed.
"Enough of these games," she snarled, turning her full attention to the ritual circle. "The Weaver stirs, and I will be the one to control its awakening."
As Reid struggled to his feet, his vision swimming from the impact, he saw Seraphine advancing toward the ritual circle, her hands weaving complex patterns that pulled corrupted energy from the earth itself. Whitaker stood her ground, using Excalibur's fragments to create a barrier of blue-white light that pushed back against Seraphine's corruption.
But it was Maeve who faced the brunt of Seraphine's attack. The druidess was fighting a war on three fronts—maintaining the ritual, defending Avalon with nature spirits, and now resisting Seraphine's attempt to siphon energy through her connection to the ley-lines.
"You cannot resist me, little druid," Seraphine called, her voice almost gentle despite the violence of her magic. "Your body is a conduit for powers beyond your comprehension. Surrender now, and I may yet spare you."
"Never again," Maeve replied, her voice stronger than her physical state suggested. "I remember what you did to me, to my people. I will not be your tool."
With those words, she channeled a massive surge of energy through both fragments of Excalibur, creating a shockwave of blue-white light that pushed back Seraphine's corruption and momentarily disrupted the undead army's connection to their mistress.
Task Force Valkyrie seized the opportunity, launching a coordinated counterattack that drove Seraphine's forces back toward the breach. Williams led a squad armed with dwarven-forged weapons, their enchanted rounds tearing through undead knights with devastating efficiency.
For a moment, it seemed they might turn the tide. Then Maeve collapsed, the strain of maintaining so many magical workings simultaneously finally overwhelming her. The nature spirits she had summoned began to fade, their connection to this plane dependent on her will.
"Maeve!" Whitaker cried, abandoning the ritual to rush to her side.
The fragments of Excalibur clattered to the ground, their blue-white glow dimming dangerously as the ritual's carefully constructed energy patterns began to unravel. Without Maeve's guidance, the power they had been channeling threatened to destabilize completely.
Seraphine laughed, a sound of genuine delight. "Oh, this is better than I could have hoped! The fragments, unguarded and unstable. The ritual, half-completed and ready to be reshaped to my will."
She began advancing toward the fallen Maeve and the now-vulnerable fragments, her hands already weaving the spells that would bend their power to her purpose.
Whitaker looked from Maeve's unconscious form to the fragments and back again, her expression one of agonizing indecision. Complete the ritual without Maeve, risking catastrophic backlash? Or abandon it entirely, leaving Excalibur—and both worlds—vulnerable to Seraphine's corruption?
As Seraphine closed in, triumph gleaming in her eyes, Whitaker made her choice. She seized the fragments, their energy surging painfully up her arms as she attempted to channel power never meant for human hands.
"For Earth and Aeltheria," she whispered, and plunged back into the ritual, knowing that the fate of two worlds now rested on her shoulders alone.