[X] Explain to Kirika that you had to kill the Witch several times before it would go down
-[X] Fall over
--[X] Tell Mami you're alright, just worn out
[X] Grief Seed goes to the person with the lowest stock, which is Mami; without her enchanting it wouldn't have been possible to take out the Witch with so little magical energy so quickly anyways
[X] Switch perspectives to Archer
"Archer, report- How are things going on your end?"
You look out over the massive rolling
expanses of grey, trees lining the long and winding pathway you and the rest of your team have been traveling down for what feels like an eternity. The occasional splash of colour, orange, yellow, and blue of the flowers that dot the wide dirt path, does little to help make the trek any more navigable.
"I hate to say this, master, but we're hopelessly lost."
"What do you mean, you're lost? Where are you?"
Your team of five - consisting of yourself, Kyouko, Mikuni, Rider, and Berserker - had probably entered the labyrinth about ten minutes ago; and had almost immediately gotten lost. Familiars, brilliant crimson brains stuck atop signposts which no member of your team had trouble dispatching, quickly led the five of you astray, and even "Still nothing?"
Mikuni shakes her head, saying "I'm afraid not, Archer. There's something about this labyrinth that's confounding my precognition. Every time I try to look for the path which we should take, I only get further and further lost. I think that might be the point of this labyrinth, actually- To confuse accidentally entrants, and tire them out before the witch comes to eat them." Mikuni's precognition fails you when it comes to finding your way out.
Backtracking is nearly impossible, and any attempts to leave a trail are quickly swept away by errant brain-familiars, eager to do their job of obfuscating the way forward
or backward. So when your master asks you a question like "Where are you?" the only possible answer you can give is
"All I know is that we're somewhere inside the labyrinth. The familiars are actively working to keep us lost, and Mikuni's precognition gets scrambled when she tries to find the exit." You turn to her, asking "Hey, can you try looking for something else?"
"Like what?"
"Anything. Check tomorrow's weather, or what you're going to have for lunch tomorrow; anything that doesn't have to do with us being lost."
Mikuni nods, eyes closing for a moment as she takes a peek into the future. She smiles, and then her face turns
really red, and she says "Well, I can definitely see, um,
other things."
"Like I was saying," you return to your waiting master without missing a beat
"Mikuni's precognition is shot, but only
when she tries to use it to find our way out of this place. Apparently, she can see other things perfectly fine."
"Of course. Of course that's how things would be. I finally have an ally with a useful ability, and half the time she can't even use it properly because there's something jamming her."
You spot another of the brain-familiars up ahead. A single arrow dispatches it before its signpost-faces are able to lead you and your team even further down what would probably be the wrong path.
Then again, you're doubtful that there even is a right
path.
Well, in times like these, what you need is a better tool for the job. "I am the bone of my sword," you chant, calling up Hrunting from your unlimited store of blades. Your eyes make a moment's pass at Mikuni, but you refrain from taunting her as you would were she not your master's valuable ally.
"This was the blade that destroyed your partner's legs," you wish you could say to her, but you don't.
They didn't even try
to save anybody; they just jumped straight into the killing. Straight into what made you hate what you had become.
You draw back your bow, whispering to the cursed blade
"Hrunting, seek out our foe and guide the way to it" and release, straight into the boundless grey sky of the labyrinth. Hrunting soars upwards at breakneck speed, before suddenly stopping, changing course mid-flight and tearing to the east, leaving a crimson blur in its wake.
East it is, then; but you aren't done yet. You're positive that the chance to get lost is still high even when you know that east is the direction you need to head, so
"Steel is my body, and fire is my blood" there's one more sword you'll need to employ for this task. "Hey Rider," you call out, holding in front of you the sword that belonged to his father. "Look familiar?"
"Hey, that's a pretty neat trick you've got there," Rider replies, sauntering over to your position. You hand the sword over to him, and he takes it eagerly, testing the weight and balance with a few solid swipes and thrusts. He hands it back to you, saying "It's just like I remember it. How'd you do that?"
"Trade secret. Wouldn't want to spoil the reveal by giving away my identity before the big climax, would I?"
Rider shakes his head, muttering "Man, you're weird, you know that? You're an Archer, but you use stuff like swords and shields, and all sorts of things Archer's aren't usually supposed to use."
"Well, why don't you tell me about the Archer-" you add the "s" immediately after, reminding yourself that there were
two Archers in Rider's War. "-s from your War, then; maybe if I had someone else to compare myself to, I might be inclined to agree that I'm 'weird'. Actually-" while you're at it, getting as much out of Rider about his War as possible would probably be a good idea, since if Caster is right, your own team is about to be facing a similar situation "-I'm very interested to hear about your War as a whole. I've never heard of a War with two factions to it, so I'm curious."
"Yeah?" Rider cocks an eye at you, just like you've seen his master do to yours many times. "Maybe I'd be more inclined to tell you, if you'd stop being so mysterious and tell us something about yourself as well. How's that?"
"I'll make you a deal; you and Berserker, even." Kure's black knight, who has discarded the dark suit he wore during the day for his equally dark plate armour, sans the helmet that once obscured his no-longer-maddened features, looks to you as you speak of him. "The both of you have Wars that I'm curious about, so while we're busy hunting this witch down, why don't we all share some information with each other about what our respective Wars were like. Who knows, that information might come in handy one of these days."
Rider speaks first, saying "Well, I never figured out who the Saber on my own team was, but I'm pretty sure the enemy Saber was Siegfried. As for my team, we had myself, Atalanta as our Archer, Karna as our Lancer, Semiramis as our Assassin, and some pretentious twat writer as our Caster. Never cared for him very much; too much talk, always about either himself or whatever crap he was writing about."
Pretentious twat writer? That could only be Shakespeare. "We had a Berserker, for a little while, but he got loose, and the enemy team captured him and turned him against us. Lasted all of one battle before he blew himself up with his own Noble Phantasm."
"And the enemy faction? You mentioned Siegfried, and I assume he was their Saber, but who else did they have?"
"They had him, but he actually wasn't the one in charge of things- That, as far as I could tell, was actually the enemy team's Lancer. Fucking Dracula, of all people; can you believe it?" You can't, as a matter of fact. "And because the War took place in Romania, he was all of crazy strong, right up until we stole the Grail from the enemy faction. He lost his advantage as soon as the fight shifted from Romanian soil to Assassin's floating fortress. Then his master forcibly fused the two of them together, he turned into an even bigger vampire, and our master just flat-out annihilated him after that. Anyway, the rest of the enemy faction was kind of a mixed bag. Their Archer was my old teacher, and their Rider was some annoying French kid. She... Turned out to be alright, in the end, but it's not like she wasn't annoying at the start. I have no idea who they had for a Caster or Berserker, but their Assassin... Well, you've already seen what she can do."
Some annoying French kid; and it's a girl... There's a few people you have in mind; you'll have to remember to ask Rider about your guesses later.
Rider spends the next few minutes explaining his understanding of the background to the War. Boring institutional politics,
the Nazis, a homunculus from the rival faction turning into an independent master
and Siegfried, somehow, and an extra class of servant showing up not once, but
twice, with one of them even being the master of Rider's faction.
Amakusa Shirou Tokisada versus Jeanne d'Arc; now there's a fight you wish you could have seen. Hearing him describe things to you, Rider's entire Grail War "Sounds like one hell of a rollercoaster."
"Yeah, it was a pretty wild experience. I kinda wish I hadn't had to leave the way I did, but..." Rider smiles, staring up at the expanse of grey with a wistful smile on his face "Hey, I'll never forget finally being able to fight and die side-by-side with a girl I admired since childhood. So, I guess it wasn't too bad." You'll pretend not to see how the rain only falls on Rider's face.
"And you?" you ask Berserker, "Was your War as wild a ride as Rider's was?"
It was not. While Rider's War sounded like an adrenaline-fueled rush, Berserker's War was practically a horror story. An unidentified Caster, who went out at night with his master to kidnap and slaughter little children; a decaying master, standing both feet in death's door fighting and dying to save his niece from the twisted violations inflicted upon her by his father; the master of Archer, the man who sold that girl to his master's father, who commanded a golden Archer of unspeakable power; and Saber, the virtuous King brought to ruin when faced with the maddened results of her reign. Only Berserker's description of Rider, Alexander the Great, brought any amount of levity to the story.
That's when it hits you
; you've heard this all before. King Arthur as the Saber; a golden Archer; Alexander the Great as the Rider; a murderous Caster; and a black knight as the Berserker, commanded by a master who was falling apart from the inside. Lancelot's War was the Fourth Grail War; the one that engulfed Fuyuki in flames at its climax. The one which your father, Rin's father, Sakura's uncle, and Kotomine fought in.
Berserker's master was Sakura's uncle. He was trying to save her. He could have saved her.
You breathe in; you don't have time to let Berserker's revelation disrupt your concentration. Focus on the battle in front of you;
then you can focus on the battle that's already behind you. That, and you owe the pair your own version of events.
But how to talk about your War, especially to Berserker, without giving too much of yourself away?
Maybe you won't have to. A brilliant explosion rocks in the not-too-distant east; that'll be the signal for battle. "Sorry about this, fellas, but we'll have to postpone talking about my own War until after we've dealt with the witch." You take one look at Kyouko's spear, and Trace a duplicate of the design, with one slight alteration made to the head. "Here," you say, handing the new and improved weapon to Rider's master. "I showed you how to use this before, right?"
"Kinda," she replies, taking the improved spear and slinging it over her shoulder, one now in each hand. "I remember ya gave me one'a these the first time we all went ta fight Assassin, and ya told me how it could cut through defense like crap through a goose."
"Alright, then before we get tangled up with this witch, let me show you how it works..." You take a few moments to explain to Kyouko the proper way to handle and fight with the Boneless Man; and by the time you're done, it's time to face the witch. It looks like a trash bag wearing a tie. It has hands for a head and heads where its hands should be. In other words, it's the same sort of garbage as every other witch you've encountered so far.
Best not to underestimate it; some of these witches haven't been the easiest of pickings.
[ ] Wat do?
