Elsewhere, Sir Dagonet stood in the middle of what had once been a roadside service station.
The place had been abandoned in a hurry.
Cars remained scattered across the parking area, several with their doors still open. Food and personal belongings lay forgotten inside the building, left behind when the evacuation order had come.
Now, the empty station had been transformed into a trap.
Not an impressive one to look at.
There were no towering magical illusions, no false armies stretching to the horizon, and no thousand phantom knights waiting for the enemy.
Dagonet had tried such things before.
They had worked.
Once.
The Sentinels had been confused for several precious minutes, long enough for Tony Stark to introduce foreign data into their network and slow their central intelligence.
Then they learned.
The next group of Sentinels that encountered one of Dagonet's illusions did not attempt to sort through it. They simply withdrew, redirected themselves toward another target, and informed the rest of their network that the area was unreliable.
It had been a victory of sorts.
Edinburgh had been spared that day.
But the Sentinels had simply attacked elsewhere.
Dagonet had learned from that failure.
Now, he no longer tried to convince the machines that an army stood where none existed.
That was too large a lie.
Instead, he gave them small, believable ones.
A damaged evacuation vehicle traveling along an exposed road.
The heat signature of several wounded mutants hiding inside an abandoned building.
A distress signal transmitted over an unsecured frequency.
Small pieces of information, each one carefully prepared using technology supplied by Stark and Reed, then wrapped in Dagonet's magic until even the Sentinels struggled to distinguish them from reality.
The machines had learned to doubt miracles.
They had not learned to ignore easy prey.
Three Sentinels descended from the clouds, their attention fixed upon the service station.
Dagonet watched them approach through a pair of modern field glasses.
He disliked the things.
Not because they were ineffective, but because they reminded him that his eyes were no longer good enough for the kind of war he was fighting.
"Three incoming," he reported.
A tired voice answered through his earpiece.
"Confirmed. The new cloaking mesh is holding."
Dagonet glanced toward the supposedly empty parking area.
Beneath the illusion lay two portable Stark cannons, one of Reed's energy projectors, and sixteen soldiers who had spent the last four days traveling alongside him.
Four days.
Seven engagements.
Barely six hours of sleep between them.
Dagonet could no longer remember where they had started.
A fishing village, perhaps.
Or a mutant settlement farther north.
Every battle blurred into the next.
They arrived, drew the Sentinels away from civilians, destroyed what they could, and then left before another group adapted to their methods.
There was never time to celebrate.
Another report always arrived.
Another town.
Another road.
Another group of people who would die if they were too slow.
The Sentinels reached the edge of the station.
Dagonet waited.
Their red eyes moved across the buildings, scanning the false signs of frightened mutants hiding within.
One Sentinel raised its arm.
"Now."
The illusion vanished.
The Stark cannons fired first.
Two concentrated beams struck the nearest Sentinel in the chest, burning through armor already weakened by weeks of improved ammunition and accumulated battlefield data.
Reed's projector followed, releasing a burst of vibrational energy that tore open the damaged metal.
Soldiers rose from beneath the cloaking mesh and opened fire with enchanted rounds manufactured in Albion.
The Sentinel collapsed.
The second reacted immediately.
A pulse erupted from its body, scrambling the electronic targeting systems of the weapons around it.
The Stark cannons fell silent.
Reed's projector flickered as it rebooted.
The soldiers continued firing manually.
Though they were backed up by the heavier weapons mere moments later; when the smartest people in the world designed weapons of war, the quality was just that good.
The attack quickly resumed at full force, which indeed caused this to be a victory, one without any casualties, but the third Sentinel did not engage.
Once it realized this was a trap, it launched itself back into the air.
"Damn," Dagonet muttered.
The machine had understood the trap.
Worse, it had undoubtedly transmitted everything it had seen to the rest of its kind.
This tactic was finished.
They would need another before the next engagement.
The Sentinel turned away from the service station and accelerated toward the west.
Toward the evacuation route.
"Stop it!" someone shouted.
Sir Dagonet was reluctant to give chase; he could easily catch up and cut it down with his sword.
He knew that, but so did the Sentinel.
And the machines were by no means foolish; they had long since learned the risks of giving chase and leaving equipment and mortal soldiers behind.
Without a knight to protect them, they quickly became targets.
Still, he figured it likely wouldn't be too big of a risk right now.
Yet just before he pushed off the ground, a silver flash cut across the sky, severing the fleeing Sentinel into two pieces that fell helplessly to the ground.
Dagonet froze for a moment because he recognized that flash and the person who had just unleashed it.
"Sir Bedivere!" he exclaimed, much to the shock of the mortals behind him.
"What?"
"Did he say!?"
"It's Sir Bedivere!"
They all exclaimed in shock and excitement.
Because Sir Bedivere had been missing for a long while now, and everyone had long since been informed about the truth behind their King's absence.
So if Sir Bedivere had returned, didn't that mean...?
For the first time in what felt like weeks, Sir Dagonet cracked a small smile. "It looks like it, perhaps; this fool may soon take a long-needed intermission."
-----
Farther inland, Captain America crouched behind the remains of an overturned transport.
The vehicle had once carried replacement weapons toward the northern defenses.
Now, its burning hull provided cover for Steve and what remained of his team.
They had not stayed in Plymouth.
They had left the city the moment the Sentinels there were destroyed, traveling wherever the defensive lines were weakest.
Plymouth.
Brighton.
Small towns whose names Steve had never known before arriving in Albion.
Roads, bridges, evacuation centers, and hastily fortified villages.
They fought until the Sentinels were destroyed or driven away.
Then they moved.
The team had changed over those weeks.
Not in purpose.
But in how they fought.
Scott no longer fired blindly at Sentinel armor. A small Stark-built attachment upon his visor tracked structural weaknesses identified by the Illuminati, showing him precisely where his optic blasts would cause the greatest disruption.
Jean wore several thin silver bands around her wrists, each engraved with Albion's runes. They could not increase her telekinesis, but they helped stabilize her mind when the Sentinels attempted to interfere with her powers.
Bobby carried compact devices that released clouds of purified water into the air, giving him material to freeze even in dry conditions.
Ororo no longer wasted her strength summoning storms large enough to cover an entire city. She created smaller, sharper changes instead—sudden downdrafts, concentrated lightning, and walls of rain that appeared exactly where they were needed.
They had become better.
Faster.
More efficient.
But they were tired.
Scott's uniform was torn in several places, and dark circles sat beneath his eyes.
Jean had suffered a headache for three days without relief.
Bobby's movements had become slower, his jokes fewer.
Even Ororo's posture had begun to bend beneath exhaustion.
Steve himself could barely feel his left arm.
None of them had truly rested since Plymouth.
There had always been someone else who needed them.
"Two approaching from the north!" Scott called.
Steve looked over the ruined transport.
The Sentinels were different from the ones they had first faced.
Additional armor covered the weak points Stark had identified.
Their sensors were spread across several redundant systems rather than concentrated within the head.
One carried an external device designed to generate a localized anti-mutant field, while the other remained outside its range and provided covering fire.
They had learned teamwork.
That worried Steve more than any new weapon.
"Scott, hit the one in front! Keep it turned away from Jean!"
Scott rose and fired.
The red beam struck the lead Sentinel's shoulder, forcing it sideways but causing little real damage.
Jean seized the second machine with her telekinesis.
It resisted immediately, engines roaring as it fought against her grip.
Ororo sent a bolt of lightning through its damaged propulsion system.
Bobby froze the joints in its legs.
Weeks earlier, that combination might have brought it down.
Now, vents opened across the Sentinel's body, expelling heated air that shattered the ice before it could take hold.
The machine broke free of Jean's grasp.
A wave from the anti-mutant device struck the team.
Scott's beam vanished.
The ice around Bobby's hands crumbled into water.
The clouds Ororo had gathered began breaking apart.
Jean gasped and dropped to one knee.
Steve charged.
He could not destroy the Sentinel, but he could buy them time.
His shield struck its knee.
The machine barely moved.
One metal hand closed around Steve's body and lifted him from the ground.
His ribs screamed beneath the pressure.
"Captain!"
Jean tried to reach him with her power, but the anti-mutant field smothered it before it could form.
The Sentinel raised its other arm.
Its palm began glowing.
Steve brought his shield between himself and the weapon.
He knew it would not be enough.
A great silver shield slammed into the Sentinel's arm.
Metal folded beneath the impact.
The machine released Steve and staggered back.
He hit the ground hard, rolled, and looked up.
A white-armored knight stood between him and the Sentinel.
Sir Galahad held his shield before him, its surface untouched by the blast that had been meant for Steve.
"You appear to require assistance," Galahad said.
Steve dragged himself upright.
"Had it handled."
"I am certain."
The Sentinel attacked again.
Galahad met it directly.
His shield stopped the machine's fist without giving so much as an inch.
Steve moved beside him and drove his own shield into the damaged elbow.
The joint broke.
Scott's optic beam returned as the anti-mutant generator flickered, striking the Sentinel squarely in the chest.
Jean tore the device from its back.
Ororo called down lightning.
Bobby froze the exposed machinery.
The Sentinel collapsed.
The second machine turned to flee.
It had already learned what Galahad's arrival meant.
Yet Galahad wasn't a merciful knight, at least not one given to needless mercy, and certainly not toward a mere machine, something incapable of seeking forgiveness because it understood no guilt.
So, before it even had a chance to move, Galahad disappeared from where he stood and unleashed a clean, decisive cut with his sword.
He certainly felt the resistance; the sword failed to cleanly cut through the powerful metal of the enemy, but that didn't mean the Sentinel survived.
It merely meant that it was crudely torn in two, as if cut by a dull blade that caused the metal to distort and break violently.
The fight was over in moments. Galahad moved as if teleporting, and while the advanced systems of the Sentinels were able to detect his movements, being able to see him didn't make it easy to dodge.
No sooner had Steve stood back up, ready to fight again, than the fight was already over, and all that was left were the broken remains of the enemies and a handsome knight with a great shield.
Steve looked toward Galahad.
"How long have you been back?"
"Not long."
"And Arthuria?"
Galahad's expression remained calm, but pride entered his voice.
"The King has returned to Camelot."
The words traveled through the defenders faster than any formal announcement.
Soldiers repeated them.
Mutants passed them across their communications.
Enforcement Knights relayed them along the new defensive lines.
The King had returned.
Steve looked around at the exhausted team that had followed him across Albion for seven weeks.
For the first time since Plymouth, he allowed himself to believe they could stop moving.
Not forever.
Perhaps not even for long.
But long enough to breathe.
-----
At the coast, the few Enforcement Knights remained, their arrows filling the sky, trying to stop the Sentinels from moving past them, but there were simply too few of them and too many places the Sentinels could attack from.
Yet suddenly, all around Albion's coasts, golden portals appeared, and new Enforcement Knights stepped out and instantly took up arms, aiding their fellow knights in defending the realm.
The added numbers quickly reduced the cases of Sentinels breaking through, sharply reducing the number of new attacks across Albion for a while.
(End of chapter)
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