Days quickly turned into weeks; time marched on mercilessly. Days might feel like they stretched on and on, but they were no longer than the peaceful days before them.
The battle between humanity and the Sentinels never stopped.
Though it had changed.
And many times at that.
When the Sentinels first appeared, it was a massacre. They were overwhelming, unstoppable, an apocalyptic force that humanity was utterly unprepared for.
Now, after a month of fighting, they were no longer an unstoppable force.
Instead, they had become a kind of natural disaster, like a hurricane or an earthquake, a predictable, albeit destructive, phenomenon that people had learned to live with.
Every morning, the people of the world would wake up, check the news, and see where the Sentinels were attacking. They would see the red dots on the map, the symbols of the ongoing war.
They would see the heroes fighting, the explosions, the destruction, the loss of life.
But they would also see the victories, the moments of triumph, the signs of hope.
They would see the Enforcement Knights standing as a bulwark against the tide, their arrows of pure magic a beacon of defiance.
They would see the X-Men, their powers a rainbow of light, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
They would see Iron Man, his suit a blur of crimson and gold, a one-man army against a legion of steel.
They would see the mutants, ordinary people with extraordinary abilities, standing shoulder to shoulder with the heroes, their courage a source of inspiration.
But while this was beautiful, humanity wasn't all kindness.
Humanity held within it the capacity for great goodness, but also equally great evil.
While the mutants stood up to defend themselves, many kept reminding people that the reason they lived in fear was those very same mutants.
Voices kept saying that those mutants who sacrificed their lives weren't heroes; they were villains, the cause of the Sentinel disaster.
Though that hate did nothing to change the facts, it did nothing to shield even normal humans from the wrath of the Sentinels.
Because while their main target was indeed mutants, one couldn't simply draw a line between mutants and humans.
The Sentinels themselves were proof of this.
With all their advanced computing, their mechanical logic, and the collective intelligence of their network, the Sentinels never separated the two.
Which meant that when one used logic, when one thought with science and not emotion, humans and mutants weren't that far apart; they weren't two different species. They were one and the same.
A fact the Sentinels didn't fail to make use of.
After all, they might have been programmed by human hands, but they were ultimately tools of destruction built upon logic.
They saw the truth: that all mutants were born to human parents, so as long as there were humans, there would always be mutants.
To completely eradicate mutants, they must also destroy all of humanity.
That was the true purpose of their programming.
Or at least that was the conclusion they came to when running the numbers.
Something that wouldn't change just because someone kept blaming the mutants; no amount of hate would spare them should the Sentinels turn on them.
The only thing standing between them and their deaths was the very mutants they hated; that and everyone else who wasn't blinded by hatred and still fought for freedom and righteousness.
An effort spearheaded by the Illuminati.
And their efforts weren't for naught.
Firstly, they had dealt with the first wave of attacks and saved countless people.
Then, they destroyed the Sentinel production facility using a nuclear barrage, ensuring that this fight would end in victory for humanity, making it merely a question of how costly that victory would be.
Thirdly, they kept major cities safe, allowing people a chance at life, even if countless smaller towns and villages around the world were suffering greatly.
An ugly truth that was rarely mentioned was the fact that heroes couldn't be everywhere.
For every person a hero saved, another person's cry for help would go unheard.
It was, sadly, inevitable.
Thankfully, so was the end of this conflict, and it was getting closer day by day.
Over the last few weeks, much progress had been made; new ways of dealing with the Sentinels had been developed.
Stark, Reed, Banner, and others never gave up trying to use science to beat science.
Using the magic of Albion, they made good progress; a combination of the two allowed them to overcome the alien nature of the Sentinels' network.
Now that they were in, it was just a matter of time before they managed to use the Sentinels' own network against them.
Taking control of them, or forcing them to shut down.
That was the end goal now.
-----
That part of the war effort was far removed from Lancelot; he was a far simpler man.
A knight of chivalry and swordsmanship, a man still struggling to come to terms with the guilt that continued to torment him over his affair with Guinevere.
His days weren't spent thinking about how to end the war, how to turn the enemy's own network against itself; instead, his days were spent fighting.
He fought to protect the innocent, to atone for his sins, to find a measure of peace in a world that had none to offer him.
He moved from one battle to the next, a lone warrior against an army of steel, a ghost of a forgotten age in a world of futuristic nightmares.
He found a grim satisfaction in the rhythm of combat, in the clarity of purpose it offered, in the simple, brutal honesty of the fight.
There were no moral ambiguities on the battlefield, no shades of grey. There was only the enemy, and the need to destroy them.
Still, these were grim days. The once-pristine coastline of Albion had become a blackened and scarred wasteland of twisted metal.
Broken Sentinels had rained down here for days, and they had done everything they could to deal with the Enforcement Knights; their weapons had rained hell down upon the land.
And it showed.
But that was not the worst part of it.
Far from it.
Nor were the tragedies that covered the land.
Because a war wasn't something easily ended in a day; it wasn't a conflict confined to the streets of New York.
Even the Chitauri invasion, which had happened through a single portal in New York, had laid waste to half a dozen American states.
The fighting had been brutal and lasted days, even though the portal itself had only stayed open for an hour or two.
That was the reality of war. Heroes could win them, but they couldn't save everyone.
The same was true for Albion.
For all its noble defenders, it too suffered heavily in this conflict.
Entire towns were reduced to scorched ruins. The once-thriving fishing villages, with their colorful boats and bustling markets, were now nothing more than smoldering craters, their inhabitants either dead or fled.
The beautiful, rolling hills of the countryside, a landscape that had inspired poets and artists for centuries, were now pockmarked with the impact craters of Sentinel weaponry, the vibrant green of the grass replaced by a sickly, radioactive brown.
And the people... the people were the worst part of it all.
Lancelot had seen things that reminded him of the old days, when war was common in these lands, before his King brought them all peace.
He had seen a mother, her body broken and bleeding, cradling the lifeless form of her child, a look of unspeakable grief etched onto her face.
He had seen an old man, a veteran of a forgotten war, standing defiantly in front of his home, a rusty shotgun in his hands, facing down a towering Sentinel with a courage that was both inspiring and heartbreaking.
He had seen a group of young mutants, children, really, hiding in the cellar of a bombed-out church, their faces pale with fear, their eyes wide with a terror that no child should ever have to know.
He had tried to save them all. He had fought with a fury that bordered on madness, his blade a blur of motion, a whirlwind of death and destruction.
No Sentinel could last a single second before Arondight.
In his presence, not one citizen of Albion was under threat.
But it was always before he arrived that the suffering happened, and so he arrived only to see the devastation left behind.
Every ruin he saw, every broken body, every field left untended or burned, every broken tree.
It filled him not with rage nor fury, but with shame.
His King had entrusted her kingdom to him in her absence, trusting that he would protect it.
This was the second time his King had trusted him like this.
The first time was when the King went to collect the Grail, and back then, he had failed spectacularly.
Now, he had no wish to fail again, yet the reality of war was that no matter how strong he was, no matter how fast he was, he was but one man.
And he could not be everywhere at once.
He would arrive and find a place in ruins.
He would find a Sentinel that had just taken down a brave mutant who had given their life to defend their home.
And every one of those was a failure on his part.
A failure that he knew would bring shame not only to him, but also to the very name of the Round Table, to his King.
He knew not when his King would return, but he feared that day as much as he longed for it. Because he didn't know how to face his King.
His King and brothers-in-arms had been fighting a brutal war; they expected to return home to peace, to the lands they protected.
Instead, they would return to a broken kingdom.
It was a heavy burden to bear, a weight that pressed down on his soul, a constant, gnawing reminder of his own inadequacy.
He had fought for honor, for glory, for the love of a woman.
Now, he fought for redemption, a redemption that he knew, in the deepest, most secret part of his heart, he could never truly achieve.
Still, he had to try.
He had to continue to fight, to protect, to atone.
It was the only thing he had left.
-----
Deep beneath the castle of Camelot was a great, empty chamber; it was no smaller than the great treasure vault holding the wealth of a nation in gold and silver.
And its purpose was to hold wealth no less valuable.
This room had a single purpose: to house the vast army of Enforcement Knights prepared for the war against Hell.
For seven weeks, it had stood empty and unused.
Yet suddenly and without warning, the silence of the room was broken as a ring of golden sparks appeared in the middle of the chamber, grew into a ring of golden light, and then became a portal.
A heavy scent of sulfur broke through from the other side before an armored figure stepped through.
(End of chapter)
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