Pooja looked like she wanted to kill something when she arrived to the planning session. Many representatives were present, including Reeva who had completed her breakthrough and stabilized her foundations. While there was more she wanted to take the time to reflect on, the situation outside was rather dire and she decided she needed to be here. Seeing her angered ancestor enter the room surprised her as she had never seen her lose control in all the many years of her life.

Hera didn’t say much as she could pretty much guess what the problem was. She also didn’t bother provoking her old friend either and just greeted her when she arrived.

The ones who were the most stunned were the other military leaders and representatives who had gathered. While some of them had meet Pooja before, they obviously didn’t recognize the woman who had just shown up. Just from the sheer strength of her presence, several of them stood up when she entered, just on reflex. It was only the older and stronger one who could resist doing so, although even they felt the pull.

"Uh. Your Majesty? While all of us know each other who has gathered today, it seems like we are seeing a new face? And a powerful one at that. Perhaps an introduction is in order?" Asked one of the old generals who hadn’t planned on following Hera, but ended up here anyway. Like several of the others who had joined up, he was a fence sitter who only knew how to go where the wind blew. While in the field, he had heard that the capitol had fallen and retreated here without a second thought.

"Oh? You don’t recognize her? This is the demon’s old ancestor, Pooja. She has recently decided she was tired of playing her game of being an old, helpless woman and decided to try something else. You’ve all met her before, including you," Hera concluded while the old general’s face went white.

"That’s right Brackus. Don’t remember me? You called me an old useless bag of wrinkles the last time we met, something about me not being worth anything and you wouldn’t bother pissing on me even if I was on fire? Does that sound familiar?" Pooja asked the old general named Brackus. While her looks had changed, her voice hadn’t changed nearly as much. It just lost most of it’s harshness and went back to being her normal, seductive tone. It was kind of a joke among the upper class that for such an old, almost dead woman to have such a pleasant voice was a crime.

At least Brackus had enough sense to look ashamed at this point and not try to stick to his earlier opinion. Instead, he bowed his head and simply responded with,

"I was wrong. Please forgive me..."

It wasn’t just her beauty that seemed to break his confidence, although that did nothing to help. Instead, it was her overwhelming power. As the old woman, she played the part thoroughly, hiding even her power. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had been alive when they were young and still alive as they grew older, no one would have thought she had any power at all. But considering her life span, they knew she wasn’t that simple. Despite that, they never took her very seriously either since she always seemed to have just one foot in the grave, even when she used to go off on them about outliving all of them. Now though, when faced with the same old woman after such a drastic change, they knew they had been the ones in the wrong all this time.

"Heh. Used to have more balls on you when I looked old and crippled. Now look at you..."

"Alright, alright. That’s enough. If you keep going we will never get to the reason why we are here," Hera injected.

"Heh. Ok. Fine. You’re the boss," Pooja said before taking a seat. Leaning back, she hadn’t thought to much about the fact that she was no longer wearing the old robes from before but was now dressed in tight, leather pants and a cropped top of silken fabric that while covering, didn’t exactly provide a lot of support, causing her massive bosom to bounce rather wildly. Although not a problem for her, it caused a collective gasp from the men in the room while Hera could only shake her head.

’She never knew what she was doing before and it’s only gotten worse now... ’ Hera thought with a sigh.

"I won’t hide anything from you," Hera said, flipping her hand on the wall behind her and bringing up a relief map of the area. It showed the mountain range that they were located in along with the path leading into and out of the massive canyon, the only obstacle in their way was the mountain where this base was currently located. They had carved it out of the mountain itself, whatever group of people had made it. While Hera’s husband and the other survivors they picked up along the way had found it and made it their own, they weren’t the ones who had built it as whatever rocks the mountains were made out of were strong enough to resist even the power of a god. Hence they the name of the mountain range was the God’s Barrier mountains.

Even Hera herself had no idea who had come up with that name however.

"Waves were spotted from the sentries placed at the entrance of the canyon. The approximate number of beasts coming is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands..." Hera said.

"With such numbers, there is no way to hold this fortress. We should leave a small group as a distraction and make out way out south and then west. If we head out to the isles out at sea, we can cut out fighting the land based creatures entirely," One of the generals suggested.

"It seems that running truly is the only option. Even with our encampment here, there is no way to fight such a large group of enemies," another general agreed.

Hera went cold at this suggestion and waved her hand again. The map, which had been displaying lots of red dots at one end of the canyon was now showing red dots at both ends.

"I called you here for suggestions, strategies. And the first thing you suggest is to run. Well, allow me to point out two problems with your plan. One, the isles had already been overrun, hence why our Demon allies are all here, even the oldest and most infirm are being housed here now. The races within the seas are several times more numerous that the ones on land. And problem number two is that we are already trapped here. There is no escape from this base. I don’t know what the outside world looks like right now, but I can tell you that we are, most likely, the only people still alive in the world."

"WHAT!?!?"

"HOW COULD YOU HIDE THIS FROM US?"

"YOUR MAJESTY...."

"SILENCE!!" Hera said, raising her voice and releasing a wave of her power at everyone who had gotten riled up.

"Even if I had said something sooner, what would you have done? Where would you have gone? There is no where left to run, no where to hide. The demon beasts have always outnumbered us by a large margin. But they were stupid. They weren’t to be feared. And even when beasts attacked out-lying towns, at most we would send troops to clean up the area around the town and that was it. There was never a concern to make an effort at reducing their numbers as they were never a threat before. So now there is something organizing and moving them. Now it’s a war. And guess what? We are losing this war. So I would suggest you come up with something soon, otherwise all of us will be buried here," Hera said, completing her speech and then sitting down.

The gathered generals and officials were silent, their minds running wild with thoughts. But not a single helpful one emerged.

It truly seemed like this final battle would be the fall of man.

...

Come on, come on. There is something interesting down here," Nagi said as she sprinted ahead, a reluctant Eris following behind her.

"I don’t know. Isn’t this just the basement for storage or something? What kind of fun thing would be down here?" Eris asked as she kept up with Nagi. While Nagi was far older than Eris, she was also way more childlike, making Eris feel like she was the older sister who needed to keep the younger sister out of trouble.

"Well. Maybe yes. But there is something else. Something old... something... sleeping? It’s hard to describe, but I can feel it," Nagi said, coming to a massive and empty room. She slowed down and looked around before entering, as though checking each inch of the place.

Eris stopped beside her and waited. For whatever else she had thought of Nagi, she had to admit the girl had good instincts, allowing them to escape from annoying guards more than once. This was even further than Eris had ever been able to get.

The room seemed empty, but Nagi felt the feeling stronger as she got closer to the center of the room. After looking around for a good ten minutes, Nagi didn’t notice anything that made her senses tingle. She walked forward, moving to the center of the room.

As she approached, a dais raised from out of the floor, off the center of the room, standing up almost four feet before it came to a rest. Neither girl recognized any of the buttons on it or any of the writing that went along with it.

"Uh... maybe we shouldn’t?" Eris said, as Nagi raised a hand and touched a big blue button.

After doing so, the entire room started to rumble and shake, as though something underneath the floor was beginning to stir.