As soon as I left the portal with my last two Knights, it slammed shut behind us. I must admit, I was very happy that The Ancient One had ensured it was impossible for them to be closed while some of us were inside.
If not for that, I am sure I would have lost a few Knights, and while I personally wasn't afraid of getting stuck, the same couldn't be said for the others.
"My king, what now?" Lucan asked as we stood there, countless dead demons covering the ground before us, as well as a thick layer of ash, which represented countless more demons who had long since turned into nothing but a dark demonic ash layer.
"We will go back home, and deal with whatever the situation is there. I'm sure our absence hasn't gone unnoticed, or at least, that our opponents tried to take advantage of it."
"Truly?" Sir Bedivere asked. "We haven't been gone for that long, so I doubt much could have changed."
To his words, I could only shake my head. "If only it were that simple." My words were heavy with the knowledge of what our current situation truly was.
"What do you mean, Father?" Mordred asked as she came rushing over. Now that there were no more demons to bash in, she was eager to return home and boast about her victories here.
The other Knights followed behind, more orderly than her, but no less eager to leave this cursed place behind.
"This place," I stated, pointing toward the ruined landscape around us. "It is a chaotic area of time and space, forcefully linked with other dimensions, some that have no sense of time at all, and others that have a distorted sense of time."
"A distorted sense of time?" Sir Palamedes asked.
I nodded. "Yes, dreams and nightmares... sometimes you have a dream where you might feel hours or days pass, but in reality, only minutes might pass," I explained. "And the same can be said for the other side, a minute in that realm might be a day here."
My Knights looked at me with a mix of awe and fear.
"The Ancient One has put in as many safeguards as she could, but it isn't perfect," I said, a grim look on my face. "For us, a few hours might have passed, but on Earth... I'm not so sure."
This was one of the greatest risks of this plan, one that The Ancient One had admitted to. It was one thing to ensure no demon could get past here, and another to ensure nothing else slipped in.
But to distort and twist the laws of reality so much here, to protect Earth, to ensure that even if a Dimensional Lord passed through, he wouldn't be at full power... all of this came at the cost of a messy connection between Earth and here.
Time was one of the biggest victims.
My knights understood the gravity of my words. We had been here for hours upon hours, and even here, the distortion of time was enough that I wasn't entirely sure how long we had been fighting. I was pretty sure it had been around ten hours, but I couldn't be sure if it hadn't been much longer.
After all, someone like Mephisto would gladly have tried to further mess with time, to buy his schemes more time to work, and he had had a fair few hours alone where he could have done who knows what.
So to be safe, I had to assume that days, maybe even weeks, could have passed.
Which wasn't a good thing.
It meant we had been gone for far longer than we had planned, and that our enemies could have taken advantage of our absence.
There were many who would want to do that, not just demons.
"Then what are we waiting on!" Mordred was the first to respond. "I gotta check my socials! I bet my fans are heartbroken without me! Those fools have zero discipline; without my daily workout vids, they will all get fat and lazy!" she declared, striking a pose.
It was a stark reminder of how much she had changed; not that long ago, the only thing she would have cared about was training. Now she had fans, a brand to maintain, and responsibilities she had taken upon herself.
My Knights looked at her with a mix of amusement and exasperation, but they understood the urgency of the situation.
"She is right, my King," Gawain said. "We have been gone for too long. We must return to our duties."
"I agree," I said, "Wong!" I shouted, my voice booming like thunder across the silent domain.
We waited a few moments, long enough that an angry, impatient expression appeared on Mordred's face. Then a golden portal finally appeared.
"I'm sorry," Wong apologized as soon as he appeared. "I was busy, we had a large uptick in cultists and other mortal servants of the Hells, who were spurred to action while The Ancient One dealt with the Dark Dimension," he explained. "They caused no small amount of trouble, but it has been dealt with."
"It's fine," I said with a sigh. "Thankfully, we are done here and ready to head home."
My words caused Wong to look around the place, the great portals to the Hells were long gone, and the remaining demons were slowly turning to dust and ash.
The look in his eyes as he turned back to us was one I recognized, a mix of shock and awe, bordering on worship. "Amazing, I couldn't have believed you would be able to deal with the Lords of Hell if I didn't know better."
"It was no big deal," Mordred couldn't resist starting to boast already, "It was pretty easy, really, no sweat at all."
Lionel shot her a look. "Speak for yourself," he grumbled. "I am still recovering from the psychic assault of Satannish's realm. I feel like I've spent the last week in a cage with a starving tiger."
Mordred just shrugged, completely unbothered by his suffering. "Then you should train harder, you wimp."
Wong looked at the two of them, a troubled expression on his face; he was clearly not sure what to think. Both of them were beings who had done the impossible, faced the Hells themselves, yet acted like normal people.
Or close enough to it anyway.
While this was a legendary feat, my knights were long since used to such; while they hadn't done something like this before, they had long since grown used to doing things others believed impossible.
So for Wong, they all seemed unbelievably casual about the whole thing.
"Sir Wong," Galahad asked, "How long has it been since the war started?" He asked the question that was on all our minds.
The look on Wong's face turned grim. "It's been almost seven weeks," he said.
The casual atmosphere among my knights instantly vanished, as if a bucket of ice-cold water had been poured over their heads.
Mordred, who had been about to say something else, just stared at him, her mouth agape, not even a joke or a witty remark coming to her.
Gawain, on the other hand, cursed. "Seven weeks... I could have sworn it hadn't even been a full day..."
"The Ancient One suspected something like this might happen," Wong said, "And even as she fought, she worked to stabilize the connection as much as possible, but she could not fully do so. The distortions were too great."
"I see," I said, a grim look on my face. "Just under two months... That's a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong." I couldn't help but sigh.
"And they have," Wong said. "While The Ancient One and I dealt with the demon cultists, we didn't have the chance to deal with other problems. The Illuminati have been doing their best... but it's still pretty bad, they don't have your kind of power."
Those words only caused our expressions to grow even grimmer. After all, the Illuminati wasn't just limited to the Avengers; it was made up of multiple powerful groups and individuals. Few threats on Earth should really trouble them.
And still, they were stretched thin.
I suspected it was because they still hadn't grown into their role just yet, and were too slow to take decisive action. Allowing small problems to grow big.
"Let's go home and see what we can do to fix things," I said as I stepped through the portal. "Wong, I will be needing your help to get my army back home," I added as I glanced at the countless Enforcement Knights, who were currently standing perfectly still, waiting for orders.
Despite the large portal behind them, they couldn't simply march through. It didn't exactly connect with the most accessible location.
After all, should any demons get past us, we didn't want them to appear inside Camelot or near any innocent civilians.
And even if it had, I didn't want to openly march my army through; these 100,000 Enforcement Knights were still a secret, while I had no doubt many nations had counted up the numbers of Knights seen across Albion.
It was something else entirely to see such a number gathered together. It would only make them more afraid, and there was no need to stoke their fears.
"Of course, Your Majesty, I will arrange for them to be sent back to where they came from. Shouldn't take too long, though, given the time difference, it might take a bit longer for you," he warned.
To that, I could only nod. "That will have to do, I doubt anything out there would require this kind of force," I said lightly, though my eyes watched his face closely, checking his reaction to my words.
Though I saw nothing, which reassured me slightly.
Clearly, whatever awaited us wasn't enough to cause him any concern.
Which likely meant that it was normal forces causing trouble and nothing from space or the magical side of things. The Ancient One was doing her job.
"To my throne room, if you please," I asked Wong, who bowed his head slightly, and opened a new portal leading back home. As we all stepped through, I couldn't help but notice how different the air felt after so many weeks away.
The scent of my castle was one of peace and comfort, a smell that calmed my soul and cleared my mind, even after the battle. The warmth from the magic of Camelot wrapped around me like a comforting blanket. After the oppressive, malevolent energies of the demon realms, it was a balm to my spirit.
(End of chapter)
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