The Rebel army was getting closer. Four narrow columns of massed humanity advancing under the cover of mage conjured wind barriers and heavy cannon fire from the siege line. Ranks of half pikes glinted in the morning light, pikemen and musketeers marching through the dust and gun smoke beneath the shadows of the airships over head.

Between the advancing columns of foot soldiers, mage officers bellowed orders and field guns were wrestled into position to challenge Newcastle's outer wall. Teams of foot mages supported by Golems at their lead, moved forward in support of the commoner formations.

Mage Knights rode atop what might have been horses, once. The creatures were enormous, bigger than any horse had a right to be, and it was distressingly unclear whether their glistening black armor was fitted, or had simply grown over the bulging muscles and corded tendons of their bodies. Their riders were clad in enchanted armor heavy enough to deflect musket balls and wielded massive spell-lances to help breach the fortress from close range.

Ahead of the main army, commoner sappers crawled through mud and rubble or took cover in shallow indentations in the earth, doing anything to shelter themselves as they inched forward to lay smoke bombs or lob mortars over the fortress walls.

And the most insane part of it all, Klein thought, was just how little progress they were making. Slowly, almost painfully, the foot formations were closing the gap between the front of the army and the walls, but they were doing it over the broken and burned bodies of their own comrades. The columns were less lines of advance and more lines of slaughter that started in front of the siege line and ended at the walls of Newcastle.

A flight of four Cait Syth Dragoons sped in from the North, kite-like wings catching the wind as they banked. Musketeers and mages took aim and fired, their spells and musket balls bouncing off the ancient grade armor worn by both the Dragons and their riders.

Jaws opening wide, each of the Dragons spit out a jet of flame that washed over the advancing ranks and barbecued anyone unlucky enough not to be protected beneath one of the wind barriers. They were gone as fast as they had come, having pushed the front line back by another twenty meters. Another twenty meters that the Rebels would have to retake, dying the entire way.

Damn this was ugly!

"Magic Roghnú Dóiteáin Magic," Enya chanted fervently to Klein's left. "Roghnaigh Fo Ball Dóiteáin Iarratas!"

The last runes faded as an unearthly glow enveloped Enya. The Salamander Mage held her staff forward as a sphere of fire inflated from its tip before shooting off like a cannon shot to crash against the wind barriers of the approaching army. The resulting explosion was repeated again and again as the Salamanders along this section of the wall concentrated their fire on a single point. The wind barrier along a small section of the front was beaten down, exposing the soldiers taking shelter beneath to murderous fire from the armsmen and Royalist mages.

Klein whistled softly, no matter how many times he saw it, he couldn't get over just how much raw power Enya and the other mages could wield. It blew his own anemic magic skills out of the water. But it did have a price.

Enya shivered softly, the small girl looked pale, paler than usual. When the call came for the mages to fall back and the cannons to move forward, Klein placed a hand gently on Enya's shoulder to lead her away, a massive Gnome taking her place with an equally massive swivel gun taken from the deck of one of the Tristanian Frigates.

Klein waited as she drank greedily from an offered canteen. Salamanders might have liked it hot, but they still had to sweat. Casting a constant stream of fire spells while grounded was not too different from working inside an oven. Wiping her mouth with the cuff of her gold and red robes, she gave the canteen back to Klein.

"Enya-chan, are you alright?" Klein fretted.

The girl glared at him with a little of her normal contempt, but it lacked the usual bite. "I'm fine. It's just . . . In the last salvo. One of mine got through, I think."

Klein winced. It might not have made a whole lot of sense, but more than the thought of dying, the killing was taking its toll on a lot of the Faeries, and the mages were taking the worst of it.

During the SAO incident, there had been an extermination campaign against the murderers guild known as Laughing Coffin. Even hardened clearers, people who had risked their lives daily on the front lines, had been unable to bring themselves to kill.

Now, people like Enya were being asked to incinerate soldiers in mass with magic that they'd originally learned for fun.

Klein made Enya turn to face him. "Listen to me Enya-chan. Don't watch where your spells hit, okay? Just aim and fire, got it?"

She stared at him, frozen for a moment, lips parted, then she began to nod. "Okay." She breathed.

Good. Klein patted her on the shoulder. Enya was tough, a lot tougher than she thought. She could do this, and when it was over he'd make sure she worked through it.

"Klein, hey Klein!"

Klein looked up to see Kindjal waving to him and Enya from the inner wall before turning back to speak heatedly with Lord Mortimer. He and Enya traded glances as they stood back up and conjured their wings. They set down on the inner wall to find Mortimer giving instructions to the rest of their squad while General Gramont barked orders at a section of armsmen and mage officers. Mortimer hardly sparred them a glance as they arrived late.

"Dragon Knights have bypassed the battle line and committed to a deep strike. That explosion above us a moment ago was a strike on the signaling ship Zeol. " Mortimer nodded to Kindjal.

Klein looked up anxiously to where the airships were trading shots. One ship at the rear of Tristain's formation was billowing smoke as dark shapes swooped about and exchanged magic blasts with a handful of green winged Sylphs. Kirito was up there, somewhere, and knowing him, he and Asuna would be making a straight line for the biggest concentration of trouble.

Klein touched a hand to the parcel he still carried on his back. In the confusion, he hadn't been able to meet up with Kirito like he had planned. His squad has been assigned to support the wall, and the melee troops would be essential to hold the line when they were finally forced to fall back to the inner defenses. Klein understood this, more importantly, he knew how important it was to stick to the plan. He still had half a mind to ignore his orders and head up into the skies.

"Squad Commander Kindjal, I am re-tasking you and your skirmishers with supporting the Zeol's defense squads." Mortimer said.

"Right." Kindjal grunted. The stolid man turned to his gathered squad. "Klein, Calcifer, Enya, Zippo, Yamashita, Wilder, let's go!"

"Lord Mortimer!" A short, pale, silver haired Salamander in high grade, lightweight body armor was running along the wall, followed by a straw haired boy in a beanie and suspiciously Aincrad-ish clothing.

"Lydia, what do you have to report?" Mortimer asked.

"Sir!" The swordswoman saluted. "We've reports of a suspected breach in the defenses. The hidden docks have been infiltrated."

General Gramont's head spun about. "What? The dock! Prince Wales was . . ."

"We know General, that is how we discovered the infiltration, one of his escorts is keeping watch on him as we speak." Lydia answered.

This was bad. Klein thought. He'd seen enough old movies to know how it panned out once the baddies got inside the castle defended by the plucky . . . rebels . . .

Lord Mortimer's eyes blinked rapidly in a pattern not unlike the status light on an old disk drive. "Lydia, Kindjal, I'm splitting your squads. Lydia, take the swordsmen troops and a support mage and head for the hidden docks immediately.

"Lieutenant Burroughs! Gather a musket and half pike section and go with them." General Gramont shouted to one of his subordinates.

Next, Mortimer turned to Klein. "Vice Squad Commander, take the remainder of the mages and your squad's crossbowmen and assist the airborne squads." Mortimer's eyes narrowed. "If those Dragons are left loose . . . they'll be a problem."

"You don't have to tell me twice." Klein waved for half of the squad to follow him, the elite mages of Lord Mortimer's personal guard falling in with them as they took to the skies.

"Good Luck Klein!" Enya shouted from the ground before following after Kindjal, Lydia, and the straw haired boy, staff swaying with her gate as she ran for the Citadel doors.

Yeah, 'Good luck'. They were all going to need it.

The crazy thing about this fight was that it was actually two battles going on at the same time stacked one on top of the other. Hugging the ground, the Salamanders, Cait Syth Dragoons, and other Faerie volunteers were throwing everything they had at the advancing Rebel Army. At the same time, the skies above were dominated by the Sylphs, Dragon Knights and Airships in an ongoing struggle by both sides to win enough breathing room to support their ground forces. And now Klein and his squad were punching through the invisible ceiling that separated the two very different battles, it was nuts!

"Woah!" Klein shouted as the air around him was suddenly full of hazards. A Sylph spun past, narrowly dodging a pursuing fireball and shower of Wind Arrows. A dragon shot by with its wings folded in a dive, spreading them to convert its downward flight into forward speed to keep pace with its target. A second dragon followed a moment later, its rider trading spells with two pursuing Sylph mages.

A flash of light caused Klein to turn his attention upwards to where a Sylph had gone into an uncontrolled free fall. Gritting his teeth, Klein changed course and then, cutting his upward flight, switched into a powered fall to match velocity. He grabbed the woman, holding on tightly as she slammed into him.

"Oy, are you alright?" Klein grunted as he supported the awkward and surprisingly heavy load. "Hey, speak to me!"

She was breathing at least, thankfully, though the breaths came raggedly and with disturbing spasms that caused her wings to twitch faintly. Her skin, what he could see beneath her helmet, was turning a faint shade of red like someone had tried to boil her like a lobster, or like a serious electrical shock. The flash came again accompanied by a loud buzzing -crack-, and this time Klein turned his head fast enough to just catch the afterimage of brilliant blue white light arcing between one of the dragon Knights and a fast moving Faerie.

'Asuna!' Klein nearly shouted out. But Asuna wasn't bug zapped like the unfortunate Sylph, a blue-green barrier surrounded her just in time, cast by a Sylph mage who was keeping his distance.

Asuna flourished her sword, and as the shield spell vanished, shot off after the Dragon Knight.

"Here, take her!" Klein shouted to an approaching Sylph, handing the stricken woman off. He grabbed hold of his Katana and powered up into sky, thinking fast. The Rebels had a flying bug zapper up here, and unlike their own Faerie mages, he could snap off shots like a gunslinger in an American Western. What was worse, his nine buddies were all pretty good too and were keeping the Sylph Artillery and Support Mages tied up while Mister Lightning kept the sword fighters and more nimble battle mages at bay.

"Oy, Flamberge. I want you to stick back and keep ready to buff me with shield spells, got it?" Klein shouted to the only member of Mortimer's guard squad that he knew by name. The stoic battle mage gave him a thumbs up, falling back a bit to keep his distance from the crazy lightning mage that Klein was about to pick a fight with. "Everyone else, stick together and concentrate on one dragon at a time. Focus on helping whoever needs it most."

Cries of "Affirmative!" were carried on the wind as the squad split up.

The Dragon Knight that Asuna was fighting continued to trade blows with her. That lightning spell either took a lot of juice or wasn't quite as fast firing because he'd switched over to throwing wind spears and clouds of arrows.

Asuna dodged around like a dragonfly, and at first, Klein couldn't quite believe she'd only been using her wings for a few days. She must have just been a natural. She struck, once, twice, tearing at the mage's wind barrier, on her third strike she pirouetted away like a ballerina as a black buzz saw dropped in from above, Kirito spinning down from on high to deliver a brutal double strike to the Dragon's spine.

Kirito's swords bit down, blades glinting, they struck . . . they shattered. Kirito was thrown back, staggering in midair as if he'd struck a wall.

A second mage who hadn't been there a moment ago was standing balanced on the neck of the dragon, sword held in a guard as he cast a wind barrier over himself. For one moment, Kirito was left still and exposed.

The Dragon's rider reached out in his saddle, his chant already complete. A flash of light that went on for far too long, a buzzing crack. Kirito went stiff, his wings splaying wide. He staggered, he fell.

What did you do when you woke up and you found that your best friend had become a zombie?

Caramella had had a nightmare with that premise once after an all night horror movie and cookie dough eating marathon with her dad. This . . . was nothing like that.

Arguile might have been dead, but it wasn't slowing him down much, and the big guy still had one hell of a sword arm. Caramella wasn't so much beaten back as thrown off of her feet by a blow that she was pretty sure would have a cut a normal person in two.

"D-damn!" She cursed, struggling to keep her footing.

"Why do you resist, Caramella?" Arguile asked soothingly. "Allow me to wash you of your sinful life so that Cromwell-sama can redeem you in the eyes of God and the Founder."

She parried another blow, again taking a step back. "Sorry, but I sort of like this sinful life." Eyes not leaving Arguile she shouted over her shoulder. "Wales, I can hold him here, you think you can hoof it well enough to make it back to the top of the citadel?"

"Nonsense!" Wales barked. "Am I to flee even the place I am to flee to?"

Arguile batted at Caramella again, knocking her sword out of position before delivering a punch that slammed her against the wall with a rather unpleasant popping noise. With her out of the way, he didn't even bother to retrieve his sword, making a straight line for Wales.

The Price was still too weak to fight for long and the mental and physical toll that his near death had taken on him left him struggling to conjure up enough willpower to defend himself. Arguiles first blow imparted enough force to the Prince's wind barrier to nearly brake through on its own, the second would have skewered him where he stood if Caramella hadn't managed to return to the fight.

The swordswoman plunged her sword through Arguile's back and leverage her own not inconsiderable strength, bodily lifting him onto the hilt before turning to heave him down the stairs. The meat puppet might have been able to keep fighting, but he stumbled and fell down most of the flight before catching himself near the bottom.

"Wales, this is not up for debate." Caramella growled. "He's after you!"

Now then, how the hell did she kill this thing? Cut off the head maybe? Maybe. Seemed a little cliche but it was certainly worth a shot. She just had to keep him here for a few minutes.

The Prince grit his teeth, Caramella could practically see the cogs turning, it was against every instinct in the bishounen pretty boy's head to run from a fight. Hell, that was part of what Caramella liked about the dumb sonofabitch and she wouldn't be alive today without it. But sometimes he needed to be called out before he did something stupid.

"Wales!" Caramella roared. "If you die, then every single person whose died protecting you, Lucane, Bart, everyone, it will all be for nothing! Now stop being selfish and move your Royal Ass!"

That kicked him into gear. Wales turned, reluctantly, to run, but didn't get far as two more red and white shapes came running up the stairs, first overtaking Arguile and then splitting, one slammed into Caramella while the second briefly ran along the wall before kicking off and twirling to a stop right in Wales' path.

"Oh hell, not you again!" Caramella shouted as she came face to face with a horror that she'd been hoping had been blasted to smithereens back in Wallsend.

"Hi Caramella!" Aki smiled. "That was really dirty trick you played on me back in Wallsend," she pressed forward with literally superhuman strength until Caramella's back was against the wall. "And letting those boys touch my body like that! I thought we were friends!" Aki pouted.

"Caramella." Wales called as he took a step back from his own abomination, narrowly deflecting a vicious kick using wind magic.

The second one was also female, and also dead, a lean, red head that Caramella hadn't know very well at all, though she thought the girl had probably been slightly lower level than Aki, a ninja build if she remembered right, she definitely looked and acted the part. A small silver blade licked out, slashing narrowly past Wales' left ear before returning to its owner's hand with a small tug of its attached chain.

The Zombie Ninja lashed out, again, and again, while Wales struggled to block and parry, she was going to run down his reserves of stamina real quick.

Worse, with these two in the picture, Caramella and Wales had been distracted long enough for Arguile to dust himself off.

"Really now Caramella-chan. This behavior is unbecoming of a young woman." The damn fatherly expression was really starting to piss her off. "Thankfully there is room in the Founder's heart for everyone."

"That's right." Aki chirped. "Just let us cleanse you Caramella-chan, and then we can all be together forever!"

That was it. "Piss off! No we can't!" In hindsight, a headbutt probably wasn't the best way to deal with a walking corpse, but the sound of the zombie girl's nose being crunched into a misshapen mess had been pretty satisfying. "And like hell would I spend eternity with a freak like you!"

"But I'm Aki!" The zombie chirped with obscene cheer, voice distorted as vibrant red blood spilled from her nose. Caramella barely noticed how the droplets dried and turned to dust before they even reached the floor.

"No you're not, you're just a thing that stole her corpse!" Caramella next delivered a solid kick to the girl's sternum, slamming her back into Arguile and stumbling to stand back to back with Wales.

Looking past Arguile, Caramella saw another two Zombies approaching. Not good, even if they were just 'civilians', Wales and Caramella weren't winning this fight as it was and they couldn't retreat either. Arguile was faster than Caramella, and Wales didn't have the strength to keep up.

"Any ideas?" Caramella asked, the sounds of battle were still coming from below, as fierce as ever. Someone was still alive down their, and they were putting up a fight.

"York?" Wales asked suddenly.

Caramella groaned, not this again. "York!" She nodded.

Just as Arguile lead in with his sword and the ninja build threw her chain knife once more, Caramella grabbed Wales and threw them both bodily into the wide chasm that lead from the top of Newcastle Citadel to the underside docks. Unfortunately, although Caramella had discovered how to use her wings, it turned out that they had a lot of limitations, one of them being that she couldn't use them underground. She wanted to smack whatever dumbass thought that would be an interesting game mechanic.

The fall was short, but had the potential to be a lot longer if Wales wasn't quick with his wand work. The already wide hole began to widen even further until they were falling into the docks themselves, a wooden landing sitting directly below them.

At first, Caramella didn't think they were going to make it, she was about to scream when suddenly her stomach pancaked and she felt the strange sensation of gravity going in the wrong direction.

They didn't touch down gently, Wales had waited a little too long for that. But the landing was definitely survivable, plus a few bruises, more or less.

"I've decided." Wales panted.

"Yeah, on what?" Caramella staggered to her feet.

"I will make it a Royal Decree, that we not do that again." Wales replied, receiving a bark of anxious laughter from Caramella.

"Now you're learning blondy."

The crack of muskets cut off any further conversation as they surveyed the docks. Caramella did not like what she saw. She'd wondered, she'd wondered ever since seeing Aki and realizing what she was, just how many of these things Rebels had made. Well, now she knew. Counting the five upstairs, the quartet of familiarly garbed corpses, and the dozen in varying states of being whole or physically dismembered, it looked like the Rebel Necromancers had themselves a nearly full set.

The dock was littered with bodies, most of them commoner airmen, but a few mage officers, their corpses surrounded by scorched deck planks where it appeared they'd realized too late what they were fighting. For all intents and purposes, it looked to have been a slaughter, and judging by the pile of bodies near the stairs, it had started by killing anyone who tried to sound the alarm.

The musket shots came again, and the mystery of how anyone not a mage could have survived down here revealed itself. The HMS Eagle sat in her birth, sails folded against her sides and a half dozen of her gun ports propped open.

One of the zombie Fae tried to make a brake for cover only to be torn to pieces as a blast of shot was fired from one of the cannons. Other attempts to circle around were met by a similar lack of success from musket or swivel gun fire.

These things might have been powered by magic, but they seemed to need a more or less intact body to keep going. Unfortunately, they had ways to take care of that too. One of the formerly . . . dead . . . undead began to rise. Caramella saw the gaping hole in his head and grimaced. Nope, head shots weren't going to cut it.

"Okay then, brake for the Eagle?" Caramella asked.

"That's our best chance. So long as they don't shoot at us." Wales answered.

"Couple of faces like ours?" Caramella helped Wales to stand and then without much ceremony, hefted the crippled Prince up onto her back. "Pretty sure this wasn't what my dad was thinking when he said I'd be the one giving the piggyback rides one day."

Wales's reply was lost as she broke into a run across the docks. As soon as they were spotted, they were going to have every zombie in this place homing in on their assess.

One saw them, but before it could raise the alarm, Wales shifted his grip around Caramella's neck and severed its head with a wind whip. That should have left the way clear, but as seemed to be normal, they weren't that luck.

"Ca-ra-mel-la-chan!" Caramella felt herself paling despite the physical exertion as the sing song voice came again. "Ca-ra-mel-la-chan!" Aki was running along the opposite side of the docks, jumping from birth to birth and balancing gracefully along the Eagle's moorings to cut them off before they could make it to the safety of the ship.

It was going to be close! Caramella bounded the last few steps and then leaped, she felt a hand closing around her leg. She threw Wales free before she collided with the deck herself and came rolling to a stop. She felt hands closing around her wrists and something straddling her waste.

"I gotcha!" Aki cheered childishly as the ninja build girl dropped onto the deck behind her. Aki released her grip on one of Caramella's hands just long enough to throw a punch that left her head spinning. "Caramella did a bad thing, so now she has even more reason to be cleansed." Aki said as she rose up and fished for her saber, it seemed she'd lost it in the tussle, well too bad. "Ah, Caramella-chan, let my borrow this please!" Aki said as she took Arguile's sword and raised it in preparation to run her through.