Susan watched the Air Dragons approach, mouths open and ready to fire. The world around them was darkness and screams, as if the city itself was wailing in terror.

Above their last hope, the glowing lines of the Guardian Rune dimmed to nothingness. The light burned itself out as it tried to activate.

Susan's heart thudded in her chest as she turned her eyes down to the girl huddled in her palm. Her chest clenched as she went to speak.

"Elizabeth-"

Whatever thought she had never finished, as every nerve in her body lit up at once. She didn't so much feel as she did know the rune up above activated. Wide eyes rose up to see the glowing lines, now a sphere roughly five feet across, erupt in a pulse of mana so powerful it seemed to scream.

Susan huddled as it tore through her, mouth clenched and eyes wide as she realized that it didn't just feel like it was screaming. The mana around her was humming, changing as something beyond the bounds of regular magic reached out and touched it.

The approaching Air Dragons scattered as the shockwave blew toward them, but instead of an attack it simply passed by. It quickly expanded into the dark city, continuing on until it vanished over the horizon.

On the runic construct however, there was a change. A splash of color had appeared on one side, a small sphere that grew larger as Susan watched. It expanded to show a rough map of brown plains, then continued on to reveal grey oceans squeezed between more brown continents.

Something glowed in her hands, and her eyes fell to find Elizabeth glowing with light once again. A glowing rune appeared beneath her feet, and in a flash of light she was once more in her red and blue dress.

"HAH, it worked!" she shouted, "wait, are you okay?

She paused at the sight of Susan, she was staring down at her with wide eyes.

"There's no way that should have worked," she breathed, the terror of the last few minutes finally giving away to elation.

"Well it did!"

Susan gave a huff of air, barely managing a laugh as her head came up to look over the rest of the city. A dozen lights glowed in the darkness, and she felt her mouth split into a grin as it finally hit home what that meant.

In the next moment, the city below was lit up by tens of thousands of glowing lines spreading out from the glowing points. They flowed into the damaged and crumbling buildings, each one connecting to a person inside. Then the screams and cries vanished, the citizens teleported away to safety.

The Air Dragons seemed wary, forming into large groups that circled the Ziggurat from a distance. Many of them looked outright scared, glancing between the glowing sphere on the ziggurat and the lightshow in the city below with wide eyes.

They never knew what hit them.

A dozen glowing figures flashed into existence among them. The fight was short. Glowing fists pummeled dragons into submission with ease. The counter attacks were easily avoided, the attackers simply teleporting to a new Air Dragon and continuing their assault.

It took all of thirty seconds for the fight to end, the Guardians teleporting away as the Air Dragons tumbled from the sky like snow.

Susan took the teleporting figures with wide eyes, elation and shock warring in her head until they were finally overcome by a new emotion. Exasperation.

"Elizabeth."

"Yup?" Susan could hear the ear to ear grin in her sister's voice.

"I blame you for this."

Elizabeth just cackled as the Magical Girls began teleporting one by one to the top of the ziggurat. Susan supposed she couldn't blame them for dressing this way. After all, Elizabeth was their only exposure to the original Guardians so far. But she had to physically suppress a groan as she looked over the ranks of burly rebels now bedecked in a beautiful array of ball gowns.

"Ruin," Cato said as he teleported next to her, "what is this?"

Now wearing a frilly golden gown, the governor turned Guardian was staring up at the glowing globe with wide eyes. Susan wasn't sure whether she wanted to laugh hysterically or bury herself in shame.

"It… was supposed to be an imitation," she finally said, "but instead we somehow managed to recreate the source of Elizabeth's Guardian powers here on Exulum."

"Oh," Cato said, then his look of awe shifted into a shark-toothed grin, "can you do it again?"

Susan grinned back.

"Hell yes. I'll need one of you- wait no," her eyes narrowed.

A glance up at the globe overhead was all it took to confirm her suspicions. A second smaller ghostly sphere, colored a familiar blue and green, circled the brown and gray one like a moon.

"Five of you and a few minutes."

"Perfect!" Cato said, then turned towards the portal.

The group turned with him. The daylight from the other side had been cut off again, but instead of a tent it was because of the thick wall of dragons standing on the other side. Shoulder to shoulder, the collected Thunder Dragons looked entirely unwilling to try their luck with whatever was going on in Exulum.

Already the portal was beginning to weaken, the edges sputtering as the Guardian Rune sucked up the mana around it. Even a single more Guardian and the portal would collapse, Exulum's mana too weak to sustain it.

Cato stepped up to the edge. He smiled. Some of the Thunder Dragons trembled. He shouted, and the other Guardians followed, their cry echoing in the night.

The front line of Thunder Dragons took a step back.

The Guardians charged as one.

The line of dragons disintegrated in front of them, blown away by shimmering weapons and glowing fists. Susan followed after them, dashing through the portal only to find the ranks of dragons in chaos. With decades of training under Cato buoyed by the near unparalleled magical might of the Guardian Rune, a handful of Guardians had the entire army on the backfoot.

"Susan," Elizabeth called.

Susan turned around to find her with Cato, Onfroi, and two others. They had broken off from the others and were now standing in the shadow of the Sunrest side of the portal.

"Something's up," she continued, frowning as she did.

She and the others were glowing softly, their dresses fizzing around them. They were warping, forming lines that stretched around them before vanishing again. Susan let out a low chuckle, then felt it grow into a laugh.

"Try joining hands!" She said, and a frowning Elizabeth followed her instructions.

The moment all of the Guardians connected, their dresses exploded into twisting lines. But now with the minimum requirement of five Guardians, the rune didn't grow.

There was no need. Instead the five sequences of lines fit together perfectly, forming the rough shape of the Guardian Rune.

A tidal wave of mana crashed in over Susan once again, careening in towards the Rune. Susan turned around to find the battle stalled, the thousands of Dragons staring inwards with transparent terror written across all their faces.

Susan couldn't hold back a wide grin.

She had been right. A single person couldn't contain enough of a Great Rune for it to propagate like this. So you needed more.

Susan's grin widened, and she began to laugh.

She had originally thought of the creators of the Guardian Rune as wise sages, sorrowful geniuses making the only logical choice, to sacrifice themselves and their world to contain the demon king. She couldn't have been more wrong.

"You mad bastards!" she shouted as a pulse of mana blasted forth and the globe began to form in front of her. "You didn't succeed in trapping him, you failed to beat him!"

"Susan, what are you talking about?" Elizabeth shouted as she appeared from underneath the forming globe. They were all powerless again, once more dressed in cotton and leathers.

"These portals," Susan said, waving an arm around her, "the Demon King used them too! The people that created the Guardian Rune didn't just make it to guard Earth. It was designed specifically to use the portals to spread between worlds, infecting them so that an inter-realm empire could never form again! The Demon King wasn't trapped on earth, he trapped himself to prevent…"

Her smile was manic now.

"This."

The Guardians in front of her stood frozen for a few moments. On each of their faces wide smiles began forming. Up above a new Guardian Rune pulsed with power as it began to draw on the mana of Sunrest. There were simultaneous explosions of light and the Guardians were once more garbed in glowing dresses.

As the light faded, Elizabeth reached down to her side to grab her communication gem.

"New priority everyone," she said, grin not leaving her mouth for a second.

Turning away from the quintuplet of grinning Guardians, Susan looked up towards the floating globe. But instead of taking in the sight of golden plains and emerald oceans, her eyes were drawn towards the mana emanating from it.

It flowed outwards like a river, so thick it was almost visible to the naked eye. And every bit of it was headed straight through the portal and back to Exulum.

Her smile, somehow, widened even further in anticipation.

People capable of becoming Guardians were hard to come by.

At least they were supposed to be.

Because the Dawn Empire didn't just kill their undesirables, no they made use of them. Every upstart hero and starry eyed idealist had been taken and shipped off to Exulum. Right into the waiting hands of an Elf mad enough to take on not one, but two evil empires.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Now, hundreds strong, each and every one of those potential Guardians had gathered in Exulum's Capital City. Just waiting for their chance to help.

And oh boy were they going to get it.

Chuckling once more, Susan turned and made her way to the edge of the ziggurat to look over the ongoing battle. Already the seven other Guardians had pushed the Dragon army all the way back to the bottom of the Ziggurat.

Then from behind her a dozen more glowing figures stepped through the portal to join those standing on the top of the ziggurat. Exchanging matching grins, they walked to the edge of the platform to look down over the battlefield.

Cato screamed out another battlecry, and they charged.

The results were explosive. The ranks of Dragons below, many of them already retreating in the face of the Guardians overwhelming firepower, were sent flying.

Shining fists broke through their ranks, and within moments the entire army was in retreat once more. Many of them leapt and scrabbled on the ground in their desperation to get away. Not even noticing as the Guardians gathered into groups of five and took off towards Sunrest's massive network of portals.

The Rebel Guardians quickly vanished into the other worlds as the Dragons finally managed to reform their ranks. Gathering together beneath the bulk of the Earth Dragons, the Dragons hunkered down and readied themselves for more.

A pregnant moment followed, the wide eyed dragons glancing around as if waiting for the Guardians to reappear and attack.

Then their expressions changed from fear to openmouthed dread as the portal behind Susan lit up like a rave.

It was almost fifty Guardians that charged through the portal this time, the glowing figures leaping down the steps of the Ziggurat in droves. Some of them split off into groups to head towards the other portals, but most charged into the army of Dragons around them.

This time it was the dragons' turn to scream.

As the sounds of their roars echoed, Susan pivoted in the air and accelerated. It barely took a second to retrace her steps and begin heading towards the half pyramid where she had been fighting only minutes before.

Or in this case, what was left of it.

No matter Empress's advantage, Terminus Rex was no slouch. The half pyramid was more of a quarter pyramid now, most of it blown to pieces along with the bunkers that had surrounded it.

The Dragons that had filled them to fuel Empress's Causality Magic were scattered around the field surrounding the pyramid. Intermittently cowering and fleeing from the still ongoing fight.

Susan took a moment to look over them, noting with a sneer that Takeo was not among them. She would be finding him later.

Turning her attention to the two fighters, she could see that Terminus was firing almost nonstop at Empress. The attacks missed or deflected off of her each time, but he fired in such volume that she couldn't get close without being hit.. She would retaliate with her own Dragonbreath, covering entire sections of the battlefield in white hoarfrost. But each time Terminus would manage to slip away.

Susan reintroduced herself by dipping into a low dive, accelerating until she smashed into Empress in a titanic clash of metal on scale. A carefully timed shove sent Empress tumbling away, and Susan skidded to a stop in front of Terminus.

"Ruin, what of the rebels?" He shouted.

"They're doing-" Around them every single remaining portal shone like a spotlight was being pointed through it. "-Amazing."

"WHAT IS THIS?" A scream echoed from behind her.

Susan turned to see Empress stumbling to her feet, her metal frame cracking and buckling around the dent that had been smashed into her chest.

"What you asked for!" Susan shouted back. "A world where you never fall to Dragons."

Empress let out an inhuman shriek, the air crackling as snow began to appear in the air around her. Frost exploded forth from her mouth in a tidal wave, crashing over Susan and Terminus.

Terminus roared, his torso rumbling at full power to fight off the crushing hold.

Susan just smiled through frozen lips.

The tide of frost cut off an instant later as a full three squads of Guardians crashed into Empress from behind. She was sent flying, only to be blindsided by a fourth squad of Guardians coming down at her from above. She quickly vanished below a tide of thunderous attacks, her roars echoing as she desperately tried to fend off the oncoming Guardians.

Susan shook the ice off, then settled back with a smile as she watched Empress vanish under an army of glowing figures.

Ice crackled beside her as Terminus finally shattered the last of the ice on him. She spared a glance at him, only to blink in surprise.

The look of perpetual disdain was gone. Instead the razor filled mouth was wide open as he looked around at the glowing portal with what looked suspiciously like a smile.

"Incredible," he breathed, "a magic that creates heroes."

"Not 'creates'," Susan shook her head, "empowers."

"It doesn't matter." Terminus shook his head.

"Hadwigis always said the difference was as wide as the Beringian Passage." Susan shot him a look, he didn't seem to notice.

"I think this is what I have been looking for," was all he said.

Empress let out a final scream from beneath the blanket of Guardians, then fell silent. Susan turned away as she did, crouching down and leaping into the sky. A twitch of her Dragonheart sent her soaring upward, letting her take in the battlefield below.

The Dragon army had gone from bunkering down to outright surrendering. Most of them now huddled on the ground beneath the flying forms of the Guardians. Susan took in the sight with a smile, but kept looking.

"Whatcha doin?" Elizabeth asked from the top of her head.

"Stop doing that!" Susan shrieked, swatting at her.

"No way!" Elizabeth shot back, flopping down over her nose so that she could look down over the battlefield herself.

"Ugh, just help me find Takeo then."

"Not him!"

"Yes, him! He's like a cockroach, the second you look away, he vanishes and you can't find him again!"

They were coasting over the top of the enormous tower, the ziggurats and pyramids so far below they resembled pennies. Susan swept an eye over them, idly wondering if she was going to have to make a spell to hunt Takeo down.

"What about that?"

"Hm?" Susan refocused, then spotted that one of the furthest pyramids flickering.

Looking closer, she could see the cause of the light was the portal. The sides of the frame had been pried apart to reveal a web of intricately carved runes. Some of them had been scratched out, replaced with a set of hastily carved coordinates.

Susan began to accelerate, her eyes narrowing as she drew closer. The view of the other side of the portal began to clear up, revealing a crowd of dragons marching away from the portal.

Her heart froze as she recognized the world around them. Cracked concrete streets, telephone poles and blocky apartments.

"No," Elizabeth whispered, "is that…"

Just on the other side of the portal stood a single black dragon. As they watched he tossed away a tiny copper bowl, then turned away from the portal with a shake of his head.

"Earth," Susan said as the portal began to close.

-

Nora leaned back in her seat, watching the small crystal in front of her with her breath held. The courtroom around her was in chaos. It had been only fifteen minutes since the nameless BSMP Agent's mad declaration.

Both leading attorneys were yelling Latin at each other, the Judge looked to be entirely checked out, and the rest of the courtroom was openly talking. It all fed into a dull roar of noise that Nora barely heard.

Instead she spent her time looking between the crystal and one of the defendants on the other side of the room. Rex Scuggums, looking ruffled as he glanced around at the roaring courtroom.

Before the Agent's grand declaration, she had been enjoying watching him squirm. Now she found herself commiserating.

The BSMP had kicked the hornet's nest, sending an attack team against the Demon King. Once he'd had his fun with them, he would be hunting down whoever sent them. And no matter how foolish the BSMP may be, no one deserved the interest of the Demon King.

So Nora would try to stop him.

And die.

Thousands of Guardians had gone to fight him over the millennia, none had come back. Their enemy was beyond them; too strong, too fast; unaffected by disease, poison, or even time. They had tried every tactic, every possible contingency over the years.

And even when they did win, burning or sealing him away, they couldn't touch the ichor. The damnable gods' blood that even the strength of an entire planet wasn't enough to destroy.

So here she was, stuck in a noisy courtroom with the man who started this whole mess. Two fools, just sitting around waiting for fate to come knocking.

The crystal in her hand chimed.

She breathed out.

It kept chiming, drawing some attention from the rest of the room as it kept sounding until it had chimed a total of seven times. That earned a raised eyebrow from Nora. Two new Guardians had been christened, just for this.

A trial by fire, if there ever was one. Her eyes closed, and she gave a silent prayer that they would somehow make it out of this mess alive. Someone should, at least.

Finally making her way to her feet, she walked into the aisle. Gasps echoed as an ethereal pillar began to form in front of her. The side facing her solidified, then changed, colors forming to create a picture of a wooded hill overlooking a small town.

And a bloated mass of black stone hanging down through dark clouds like a black sun.

She swallowed. The situation must be desperate if the Guardians weren't being given the chance to meet up beforehand.

Her hand trembled. She clenched it.

Taking one last look around the courtroom, seeing the frightened faces filling the rows, she steeled herself. Then walked through the portal.

The noise around her dropped away as she arrived on the other side. The world was almost entirely silent beyond the rustling trees, as if holding its breath. Around her more shimmering pillars formed, and the others walked through. There were the usual suspects, Daisy, Miura, and Abana, all suited up and looking grim.

No Elizabeth though, Nora grimaced at that. Either her family had done the smart thing and held her back or…

She shook her head and turned to the final two. The first was a towering mass of black armor that stomped through their portal with silent intent. Beside it was a shorter figure wearing the same helmet and bodysuit combo as Miura, except in red.

Nora heard a whispered 'hell yeah' from the pink suited figure to her right.

"Only two?" Abana was the first to break the silence.

"Looks like," Daisy sighed.

"Damn," she shook her head, "I had hoped for at least a dozen to deal with this shitshow. And with Elizabeth vanished who knows where…"

"Wait, you know Elizabeth?" the armored Guardian spoke up, "this is the group she is a part of?"

"Yes… how do you know her?" Abana asked.

"I'm her grandmother," she replied, pulling off her helmet to reveal an older woman with black hair and a heavy frown. "Ulfhild. And this is my apprentice, Cole."

She gestured to the black suited Guardian to her side, who removed his own helmet to reveal a plain face topped with a mess of shaggy brown curls.

"Well, it's always nice to meet new Guardians," Daisy nodded, "Usually we celebrate with cake, but there's a mini apocalypse going on so we'll need a rain check on that."

"Oh," Cole swallowed, "that's bad, isn't it."

"Yup," Abana said, before turning back to Elizabeth's Grandmother. "Now do you know where Elizabeth is?"

"She ran off with Susan a little while ago to save their parents."

"From who?"

"The demon king."

"Shit."

"Shit indeed."

They both turned to look up towards the castle. It hadn't moved at all in the time since they had arrived, though the dark clouds around it had thickened even more to cast the countryside in thick shadow.

"Zach- my husband, has been tracking them. They were in the castle when it appeared here, but shortly after vanished. Not dead, but gone; jumped to another realm is his guess."

"That's probably for the best," Abana nodded, "As for the rest of us…"

She turned to face them, meeting each of their gazes in turn. She didn't have to say anything. Guardians were chosen carefully for a reason; each one of them would never just let a disaster pass by them, no matter the cost.

As one they turned to face the looming fortress.

Then a light shone from one of the roads leading into the town below, resolving into a burning portal a hundred feet across.

"DAMN IT WHAT NOW?" Abana roared.

A group of almost fifty dragons appeared through the portal, marching down the asphalt in two lines. Enormous and covered in heavy red armor, Nora felt her heart sink as she realized the implications.

"Oh, this is bad," Daisy muttered.

A final dragon walked through. Smaller and covered in black scales, it tossed aside a glittering object before marching through the double lines of Dragons towards the castle. Behind it the portal began to slowly close, the sized crackling as it shrunk.

Up above the clouds roiled, growing even thicker. Something dropped from among them, a dark figure that landed on the road in front of the approaching dragons.

"Right, new plan," Abana snapped out. "We close the portal immediately. If the Demon King gets through it then everything- and I mean everything- is over."

Nora nodded, balling up her fists as she stared down the ranks of Dragons. The fight a month ago had pushed her to her limits, this one? She would just have to do her best.

"Ready, set-"

"ABANA!" A voice practically screamed from behind them.

They turned to find Elizabeth collapsed to the ground behind them, eyes wide as she leapt to her feet.

"Elizabeth, what are you doing here-"

"You gotta hear this!"

"Oh boy," Daisy muttered.

"So me and Susan wanted to save our parents and the Thunderbirds from the Demon King- and we did it- But then we got really beat up and Susan took us to this other world to escape- except it turned out that that place really sucked and had been taken over by the bad guys that Susan beat up on Themus- except they hadn't really taken it over because it was being run by this evil Archdragon- not the evil Archdragon from last week- an evil, EVIL Archdragon Lady- So anyway we started a rebellion but it wasn't doing so hot so Susan pulled off this crazy spell and that helped but then that jerk Takeo escaped back to Earth and we have to stop him because otherwise the Demon King will get out and that'll be really bad!"

She finally stopped, gasping for air.

"…what?" Miura finally asked.

A roaring from behind made Nora turn back towards the portal, only to freeze as Susan appeared through it. Both arms reached out to either side of the shrinking portal, and with a roar that shook the air around her, she grabbed the portal itself and pushed back. Mana thrummed as it rushed from her and into the portal, and impossibly the tear in the world began to widen.

Then around her glowing figures appeared, dashing through the portal and towards the Dragons. Nora's mouth fell open as she took in the sight of dozens, then hundreds of hard-bitten warriors charging through the portal, each clad in a glowing dress.

"Good news though," Elizabeth continued, "we have like waaay more Guardians now."

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