Nergal spoke to Klaire and he spent the entire time bludgeoning her with blunt facts. "Now, Girl, tell me what really weighs on your mind."

"I'm a banshee, love is important to us, if my newfound desire to experience intimacy with Kyubi costs me my love... Does that mean I was never supposed to be with Carl to begin with, or does it mean that I was simply born to follow in Faylorna's footsteps and live through eternity as a loveless monster?"

"So that's it..." Nergal realised she was still struggling to understand her own feelings. "...Klaire, are you really concerned about that, or are you actually concerned that you don't know Carl as well as you used to?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think back, when have you ever doubted him? From what I've learned, when he broke up with you, you still knew without doubt that he still loved you and would come back to you."

"I guess that is true. I knew him better than himself for a long time, but now I never know what he's thinking. When I saw him on the elf world, he seemed distant..."

"Well, I think it's obvious to be honest. The reason why you don't know what he's thinking is because he isn't, he is thinking about everything as much as possible and as a result he isn't thinking about anything at all and quite frankly you're all making it worse."

Klaire rose to the antagonisation. "What do you mean? Please, kin-killer of the elder gods, tell us how to be a supportive family!"

"Exactly that. You're all so desperate to protect him and ease his burden, you've all stopped talking to him about anything." Nergal laid back on the ground and smiled smugly, taking a little bit of pleasure as the painful revelation struck her. "From what I've seen, even his first creation has abandoned him in pursuit of power, his mother is angry at him for wanting her safe and you are so scared of losing him you're pushing him away."

"When you put it like that... It's no wonder that he would rather face enemies than us..." Nergal stretched before clambering to his feet. "Are you leaving?"

"Yeah, I've said all I need to. I have things to do."

"Such as?"

"I'm a god of death, I have creatures to kill and souls to tend to."

"Right. Thank you for speaking to me, you're right, a friend would never have been able to make me see things that way."

"Don't thank me, I did it to make sure I don't need to worry about the two keys to the best future losing their way. Personally, I look forward to watching you suffer for the whole "kin-killer" comment." He disappeared before she could respond.

As he left, the ground shook violently. "Mum, The Carrion are on the move..."

"Thank you, Sweetie... Please let me be the one to tell Dad everything."

"Of course.. For what its worth... Never mind."

The onslaught didn't come from the existing tunnel like all the others, this one came from everywhere, the war in the depths of the hive had come to an end.

[ FACTION MESSAGE RECEIVED FROM KLAIRE: THE WAR FOR LUNELIA HAS STARTED IN EARNEST, I'LL TAKE FIRST SHIFT... SWAP OUT IN ONE HOUR. ]

Klaire had Levi put practicing her howl control to good use, noting a battlefield is about as hard a place to control it as it gets. Advice which Levi put into action, growing immediately and starting to sing as her eyes snapped open.

Majesty pulled all her royal guard back to the surface, which thought their way through to form a perimeter around the tunnel entrance.

Klaire had her soul-form cleaving through the bulk of The Carrion forces while she herself bombarded them with comets and gunfire.

Klaire knew she wasn't fighting efficiently, it was a war of attrition and she was unleashing powerful attacks and relentless gatling fire without pause. She figured she actually only had about fifteen minutes at the pace she was going, but if she slowed down for a second, their position would be overrun.

To her surprise, she hardly felt any depletion when her fifteen minutes were up however. 'What the hell? Is this because I fed on Kyubi, or was it something else?'

"Did we forget we are a banshee? We feast on souls and take their strength." It was her soul-form talking to her, the words making her physical form realise that she was consuming any souls that Levi ripped away when she lost her control and howled.

Thanks to that Klaire was actually able to hold out for fifty minutes without difficulty and as an added bonus, Levi made great progress, though for the last ten she decided to stay silent in case their relief suddenly appeared and Klaire couldn't guard them in time.

When her hour was up, Tiamutael swapped in alone. "Sweetie, no! You are not fighting all these alone."

"Relax Mum, I know... Dragon Sibling Unite!" He shouted as he moved his arms around in a way that filled Klaire with second-hand embarrassment.

When he finally finished the clearly choreographed sequence of movements, the other three dragons appeared, once more in poses and clearly just trying to keep Tiamutael happy.

The dragons arrival was a complete game changer and they tore through legions of the improved warriors with every attack, alternating between breath attacks and physical ones.

"Thank you all! Stay safe Sweetie! Thank you for obliging Tiamutael!"

Tiamutael then sent Klaire home, when she got back she headed immediately for the bath and as she sank into the water her head felt clearer than it had in days.

The next team heading to Lunelia was Squidge, Gillian, Blanc and Alysse.

Klaire used the downtime to speak to everyone again and share what Nergal told her. Everyone agreed that he made sense, the only one that had even kept in touch with him on a personal level to a significant extent was Gillian.

"Wait, does that mean it wasn't fighting? Could it simply be because we were talking to him like the old days when we were trying to help his inversion? How did we not realise!?" Gillian's sense of failure was apparent.

Alysse was fairly normal, she was under no delusion that she was the type of person to pay particularly close attention to people, though she did feel the unavoidable sting any friend would feel in that situation.

Blanc was somewhere between the two of them, the worst part was that Leanna and Alisha realised they had both been doing the same thing and started to go into a "I'm a terrible excuse for a mother" spiral.

"Guys, we can't beat ourselves up about it, we need to beat Carl up for it..." Klaire paused whilst everyone looked at her like she lost her mind. "...Think about it, Kyubi and I are going to be dropping a pretty massive bombshell. He needs to know that at the very least nothing with you guys has changed."

"Got it." They all answered immediately, they all had different ideas of what would happen when Klaire and Kyubi spoke to him, but it was obvious that the longer they put it off the worse it would be and that meant his friends needed to step up.

The fourth group was Kyubi and Faylorna, who also took Blaine so Orm could take over for Levi.

For the fifth group Lillim led a group of her top twenty picks from the faction that she had been training.

Tiamat led another group of faction members that Lillim had trained for the sixth group.

Lastly was Noah, leading a group that consisted of those he had shortlisted for his hunting expeditions.

The battle of attrition lasted twelve hours in total, there hadn't been any casualties amongst the faction, but there had been dozens of injuries.

Lydia had set up a hospital on Haven with her authority as a householder, but never dreamed that the faction members with medical training would be put to work on such a scale so quickly.

None of them were horrific, but many had chemical burns, cauterised slashes and lacerations. All of which would have been horrific and permanently scarring if not for the skills of Lydia and her team.

The one thing they lacked was the facilities to perform complex surgeries, but that would be rectified before long and thanks to Healy, they were capable of adequately treating all of the injuries sustained and would only need to be kept for observation to watch for lingering signs of injury.

By the time Kyubi and Faylorna returned from their second turn, The Carrion had withdrawn in the wake of losses that left everyone completely horrified, as they wondered exactly how The Carrion had even amassed such numbers.

---Message from the author---

Weren't sure how many people read author's notes, so wanted to put a thank you to everyone reading along in plain view. The adds, power stones, golden tickets and every other bit of support is truly appreciated, I'm having a lot of fun writing and hope you are reading.

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