Fate/Stay Royal

Bazett considered her options for a long moment. Of course, she could have simply left. That was the most basic decision, perhaps also the most craven, that she could make. The mystery would stay just that, a mystery, and she would be some level of safe in the day. It was not an ideal solution, but it was a valid solution. Not every mystery in the world was meant to be solved, after all. In fact, most mysteries were too dangerous to be solved. This one may fall into that category by shear coincidence.

That left entering the house. If this was meant to be a trap, then it was a poor trap. After all, it had made itself too obvious and too easy to identify. With no magical energy in the air at all, any trap would be like an alarm bell before it could trigger.

Well, unless someone did the trap the old fashion way, Bazett supposed. An arrow from a wall would still be fatal.

"Master, you're just going to walk through the front door?"

Bazett had already started to move when Caster spoke up. The door creaked open at Bazett's touch. It was not locked. In fact, examining the handle revealed the lock had been broken. The slot in the door had been ripped apart by shear force. Someone had simply kicked the door open.

It was a crude way to unlock a door, but effective.

"The house was invaded." Bazett surmised. "Whoever did this should be long gone."

"What if they aren't?"

"Then they are the dumbest Caster we ever met." Bazett answered dryly. "There's no magical energy. We have an advantage." Any spell that worked without magical energy would by definition be a trump card. There was no reason to fear, at least. Ignoring the unease in Bazett's stomach, she pushed the door open and slowly walked in.

"This is a mistake." Archer muttered. Bazett had to wonder if he would actually follow her in, but her fears were soon allayed as both Caster and Archer followed her. The interior of the house was shear chaos. The walls were scarred with fire and the furniture had long since been kicked aside. Whatever had occurred within here had already finished, and been finished for quite some time.

"Archer, check upstairs." Bazett stated. "We'll check downstairs."

"Anything I should do if I find something?" Archer asked. Bazett nodded.

"Blow off the roof. The wind will carry some energy inside." She answered.

"You intend to fight?"

"The only reason to remain in this place is to ambush someone coming to investigate." Bazett noted, as she slowly started walking down the main hall. "Whoever is willing to do that, no longer wishes for diplomacy, and I have no patience to give it either." Archer nodded, fading out of existence as he moved upstairs to investigate. He was like a shining beacon to her senses, and whoever was here definitely knew Archer was on the premises.

The real question was, did Bazett and Caster light up in the same way?

She hoped not, but experience told her that they probably did.

The living room was the first obvious room that Bazett found. It was ruined beyond any semblance of repair, a giant chunk ripped out of the wall and what looked like the mansion's main support. It probably only still stood because it had always stood, and if the mystery went away, like it was slowly doing, well...

"It's inertia." Caster noted, more to herself then to Bazett, but her meaning was obvious. "The walls stand because they've always stood. Look, I can see straight into the kitchen. The room above us should have fallen down already. It doesn't because it never did before."

"Old buildings defy the rules of physics." Bazett agreed. "I didn't think this one was that old though." Relatively speaking, the Tohsaka were actually a fairly young magus family. Their main claim to fame had been Zeltretch, who had brought them into the fold with him a few centuries ago. That was nowhere near long enough for a house to begin taking on an existence akin to 'always have, always will'. There were castles that had not stood the test of time long enough for that.

"That's just it." Caster muttered. "It's... not... Eww."

"Eww? What'd you find?"

"I don't know." Caster breathed in, and Bazett could almost feel the flare of her magical energy, like a sun she had no protection from whatsoever, as a glob of purple something rose from the ground. "The consistency reminds me of blood, but I don't know anything that bleeds purple."

"Is it poisonous?" Bazett asked. Caster paused for a moment, before nodding.

"Very." She muttered. "I think we know what burned through the walls now." Purple, burned through the walls... Bazett didn't like this one bit.

"I have some news. If you see anything purple, do not touch it." Archer's voice suddenly reverberated from every wall. In a place like this, even telepathic communication seemed like an excessive exercise of magical energy.

"You know what it is?"

"I just lost a leg to it. It's Hydra Venom. You will die."

Bazett's body ran cold. Hydra venom. A poison so insidious that it was still considered worth synthesizing the mystery from the Age of Gods in the modern day. Most mysteries from that far back in the worlds history simply faded; attempts to recreate them would inevitably fail because human thought and, indeed, the world, had already moved on. Hydra poison was so deadly that trying to make more of it was one of the more heretical things that could be done. Bazett had already had to hunt down enough idiots making more of it, usually by making an abomination of a monster.

"Are you okay?"

"I think I will be, but my body is still expunging the poisoned parts. I'm not sure I can maintain a combat viable form for long."

That Archer was able to survive the poison at all put him in the absolute top percent of Servants. That was certainly information to store away for later. Bazett did not want him as a enemy.

Still, he wouldn't be fighting anything for long. Hydra venom came with it an unhealthy toll of pain. She had to wonder if a hero could even maintain concentration through it, when the great Herakles went mad from it.

The frown on Caster's face told Bazett that she had been listening in. Her sword-staff had flickered into existence, and she had stabbed the poison already.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking a page from Herakles' book." She answered dryly. "My Noble Phantasm is an amplifier. This will make it a bit more dangerous." There was a certain logic in poisoning ones weapon, though Bazett had to admit, she hadn't expected it from a knight. "Are you going to say it's dishonourable?"

"No." Bazett answered softly. "Some fights are worth bringing everything to bare." That, and they were now at a disadvantage. If an Assassin attacked... well, Bazett would rather still be alive at the end of this. "It's not just Hydra venom. There's some left over metal here." She picked up the metal scab from the ground, examining it. "... Huh. Carbonated."

"From a sword?"

"Well, that wasn't my first guess, but yeah." She admitted. "There's shavings all over this side of the room. Was this where Tohsaka got ambushed, or where her Servant was sitting?" Racking her brain, Bazett found she couldn't quite remember what the Tohsaka specialty actually was. They had dabbled in many arts but were famous for none of them. She vaguely recalled the Edelfelt had a grudge against them, but that could have been for literally anything.

"Coin for your thoughts?"

"I think there were two invasions." Bazett admitted. "The first, was Rider of Red. We have his poison. We have evidence of a fight." Bazett paused, casting her mind upstairs. "Did you find anything besides poison and metal shavings?"

"A katana. It's sharp." Archer's voice answered. "Construction is pretty poor. It looks like the maker experimented and failed. It's impregnated with some sort of blood, but the construction is so flimsy that I almost want to say it was a test of a new forging method."

"Which means either Tohsaka tried to forge something herself, which I doubt, or her Servant is some sort of smith." Bazett surmised. "And one that made no efforts to hide his work."

"Why do you think it's her Servant? Just leaving around metal is sloppy work."

"Cause Tohsaka is a waif." Bazett answered. "I don't know if you've ever seen her, but she very clearly works to keep her body in a specific shape. I suspect because she knows martial arts. Forging would ruin that physique very fast." It wasn't uncommon, man or woman. Magi, especially those who specialized in magic effecting the body, would have to retain the same figure, or as close to it as possible, forever to optimise the usage of their spellcraft. "It's not un-"

Whatever Bazett was about to say, was cut off, as she rounded a corner and her foot kicked a body. Her gaze went down immediately, crest flaring, but there was really no need. More accurately, it was half a body. Bazett knew this body, and this man, quite well.

Three red dots straight down the forehead. Tailored clothes that bore red accents. His right hand was stained with excessive use of his magic crest. There was no doubt as to who she was looking at.

"... Shit. The Gum Brothers." Bazett didn't know what was worse, that the Gum Brothers had joined the war, or that one of them was dead. "Caster, spirit form, search the house. You're looking for a man with three red dots shaped like a triangle on his head. Do not stop if you find him. Kill him. Make sure he's dead."

"Master?"

"Now." Caster nodded, vanishing into the air. Thankfully, she understood the explanation would have to wait. Fishing into her pocket for the bullet she'd procured before, Bazett drew a quick acceleration rune. With a flick of her fingers, the bullet raced forward like a rail gun, and blood splattered from Diemlet Pentel's now definitely destroyed heart.

Always confirm the kill. Even if it was just half a body. In fact, especially if it was just half a body.

Kneeling down, Bazett began her examination. Diemlet's body was not quite cold. His death had occurred relatively recently. Perhaps at the hand of some sort of trap meant for investigators. The wound that had bisected him was rough and jagged, likely made by a short blade that hadn't been long enough to actually cut through his body cleanly. Even with the strength of a Servant, if the sword wasn't long enough, then it wouldn't cut cleanly.

She discarded the possibility it was a different kind of blade. The information was useless without a better grasp of how he actually died. His body hadn't set in rigor mortis, and a quick analysis of his body revealed why.

"That's one mystery down." She whispered. "Poor man." He had clearly died in agony. His hand was stained with his magic circuit because it was still on, trying to gobble in the magical energy within the house to fuse with non-existent energy within him. That it was still on, told her that the paired magic crest was still around, or simply no longer in range. Either way, it'd make a pretty penny if she survived this war. Retrieving her runic knife, Bazett began her gruesome work, severing the magic circuit entirely and preserving it. Runes could keep it from decaying for now, but she'd need a better container then whatever she could find in the kitchen before long.

Maybe Tohsaka had something downstairs. It was a magus' house. There was always a secret basement.

"He's dead." It wasn't Caster that confirmed it, but Archer.

"Fell through the roof. His head's been decapitated." Caster explained. "If this was an ambush, it was a hastily made one."

"I'm on my way." Grabbing a second container from the kitchen, Bazett started making her way through the house. Caster was right, he had been knocked clean through the floor, and what looked like the guest bedroom could be seen through the roof. The room itself was a study, though one curiously bare of magical trinkets. Just books, books and more books.

"Tohsaka you bitch. Why couldn't you have an atelier where it was easy to find." Bazett complained under her breath, as she checked the second Pentel brother's body. It was definitely Cabik, and you couldn't be more sure that he was dead. Unlike his brother, the body was, indeed, cold. His Magic Crest had a giant chunk torn out of it, from what looked like the crudest knife cutting around. "Where's his leg?"

"Good question." Archer noted. "It's been severed at the knee. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing."

Bazett tried to discard the feeling of dread. His left arm was gone too. His right still bore the Command Spell.

"The body is dead. So why is the Command Spell still there?"

"The Servant must still be alive." Caster noted. It was an obvious answer, but one that disturbed Bazett. Still, there was no time to worry about that, as she set about preserving what was left of the Magic Crest. "Do you have to butcher the dead like that?"

"I like having food on the table." Bazett admitted. "It's easy to forget I have to live after this war too." The Gum Brothers Magic Crest was simply too valuable. The Pentel family would pay a fortune for its safe return.

"You knew them." Archer noted. Bazett nodded.

"Man slayers. Mercenaries. Murderers of the highest order." She responded. "If Enforcers are the dogs of the Clocktower, then these two were the butchers. They kill for a price. Usually with a lot of collateral. They were very good at erasing towns off the map." Whatever could kill the two of them so easy was scary. They had at least one Servant between the two of them. However, Bazett was not about to pretend she was sad to see them dead.

"Neither of them are a 'waif', though." Caster noted. "The house's owner is conspicuously missing."

"She has a good enough head on her shoulders, then." Bazett answered, her hands running along the bookshelf. "Come on, be just that stereoty- Yes." Bazett pulled on a book, a section of the study wall pulled back, and revealed a staircase going straight down. "Hurray for the Tohsaka being just stereotypical enough."

"... How many of those do you find?" Caster asked. Bazett blushed, ever so slightly. Answering that would mean admitting this was not her first home invasion on a magi's house.

"The first." She admitted. "Most magi families are too old to be that stereotypical. It's actually a refreshing change of pace." Caster nodded, and Bazett was glad there was no look of judgement in her eyes.

"Well, I suppose Britain has changed a bit." She admitted. "Mother's atelier was hidden behind a similar door. The wizard preferred shoving his on the roof, though."

"It's more effort then its worth, most of the time." Bazett admitted, as she started descending the stairs. "Af-"

She stopped speaking as the smell of putrid flesh hit her nose. Caster rocketed downstairs and Archer had vanished through the wall. Whatever was down there, it was foul.

Three heads greeted them, pressed shut by smokey chains. It was bound to the wall, thankfully, but its mere sight was more then enough to strike fear into Bazett's heart. It was probably not going to stay there forever.

Bazett had come face to face with the Cerberus. The hound attempted to roar and bark, but its mouths were sealed shut. It's back right leg was rotten red, but it had no issues moving it. It took Bazett only a moment to realise the wound was weeping Hydra venom, and the hound did not look the least bit hindered by it. It was easily almost the size of a truck, and Bazett got a feeling it could be way larger, too.

"Oh shit." It was actually Caster that said it. "Master, I think that's our cue." To leave did not need to be said at all.

"Ri-"

"I'm back!" Any further thought went straight out the window, as a youthful male voice rang out through the house. Bazett's gaze went to Caster and Archer. They weren't alone anymore. At all.

[ ] Bolt for the exit.
[ ] Hide.
-[ ] Wait and see what happens.
-[ ] Set up an ambush.
[ ] Rush upstairs and attack.
[ ] Write in.