You're only getting one shot at this. You'd better make it count.
"Arglwydd y llwyn llwyd!"
The shield blossoms for the third time that day. You feel its weight immediately, leeching from your muscles, your bones, from your very core. With every second your pseudo-Noble Phantasm waxes, you wane. You thought you would rise but you don't have the strength in your legs to do so. You remain there, one knee all that stands between you and collapsing completely, huddled behind the translucent fortress wall. You hear Avenger snarl with frustration, intensify the force of her flames. You can't see a thing through Lord of the Grey Grove. It's nothing but a lake of fire.
"Jeanne!" you shout over the din. "I... I can't pretend I know how you feel! But there are some things I do know. Do you remember Bathory?"
You can't tell if she replies. If she even hears you. You forge on regardless. You have to talk quickly or else you'll pass out. Then you'll be dead and no use to anyone.
"It didn't matter how deep-seated the lies about her became! It didn't matter how fixed Carmilla became in history's view of her! The real Bathory was still in there, waiting to be uncovered. And Avenger did uncover her!" You hesitate, grunting with pain and effort as you struggle to keep the shield raised. "Avenger found that truth and brought it back because the Grail saw the truth in her!"
"Are you trying to do my job for me?" Avenger laughs.
You grit your teeth. "Jeanne, someone told me about the Throne and Heroic Spirits. I'd go into detail but that really isn't viable right now. What I can say is that the same Heroic Spirit can appear in many forms! Be built from many different facets of the same story! And Avenger is a part of your story, the truth deep down that isn't going to go away no matter what anyone says. Just like Bathory!"
"If you're trying to make me spare you, it might be working."
"But that means you're real too!" you shout, shutting out Avenger's words and the fact that all your muscles are starting to go into spasm. "Your half of the story is just as valid as Avenger's! You are equal to her, and you always will be! The fact that you rose up from nothing and single-handedly saved France, saved all those people that would have died if the English conquered it, that's still real! You're not a wraith, you're Jeanne d'Arc!"
"I've had just about enough out of you." Avenger drives her sword into the translucent blue shield of force, the white-hot blade of flame punching straight through the centre. You cry out in agony as cracks radiate out like jagged lightning bolts, mirroring the arcs of pain shooting through your body. The pseudo-Phantasm shatters. You collapse in a heap, the real shield clattering and clanging as it strikes the ground. You're struggling to breathe, let alone move. Easy prey. Avenger stands over you, drives her boot into your chest to keep you pinned. Keep you from squirming too much. She aims the blade of flame at your throat and thrusts.
It stops in an armoured fist.
"What!?"
Jeanne stands over you, teeth gritted with pain and effort as she slowly wrenches the length of fire away from you. She abandons her banner in the dust beside you, wrapping her other hand around the blade as well. Avenger's eyes are wide with shock, forced back a step from sheer surprise. Jeanne lets out a pained grunt as she manipulates the sword to point straight up, holding it steady between her and her rival. This fire is burning her, piercing even her Magic Resistance. But she's felt fire before. This time she's ready for it.
"Hargrave," she barks. "Battle report!"
You scramble to your feet, obeying without thinking. You turn to the battlefield proper and scan it as quickly as you can, momentarily taken aback at how you could have been so absorbed in the conflict between the Jeannes to have forgotten about it. You catch the moment that the Servants draw back in a semicircle, arranging themselves in an arch with Siegfried as the keystone. You see him standing there in the ankle-deep water of another dimension and raise Balmung high into the air, heedless of the pain the dozen scaled tumours of dragonflesh bursting from his skin must cause him.
"O sword, let thee be filled!" he intones. The greatsword shines with golden light, swiftly subsumed by the twilight aura of the jewelled pommel. Filling fit to burst with Aether, the pure magical energy of the Age of the Gods. The power grows, flows around the blade in an aura, bathes the weapon in it. He charges it fearlessly even as the demon hordes bear down upon him and the arm of starlight reaches, grasps, for him.
"BALMUNG!"
He brings his sword down, and the marketplace is awash with the colour of pre-dawn twilight. The energy releases in a great arc, rippling outward, vaporizing the water and the water demons alike. Ripping up the cobblestone square, obliterating the buildings, reducing it all to ash and dust. The arc splits in three - the outer edges spill over the breach, continuing on to rip through Rouen's abandoned streets. The centre of the blast pours through, driving into the alien world. An ear-splitting shriek like a thousand needles being driven into your mind splits the air, turns you blind and deaf, makes you sob with pain. The arm of starlight flinches back with pain, retreating into the breach. Only given pause by the great Noble Phantasm. A dent is made in the water demon army at last. They begin to pour through again, but valuable ground has been gained. You can't see Gilles anywhere.
"Whatever Gilles summoned, I-I think it's self-sustaining!" You whirl back to face Jeanne and Avenger, still struggling over the sword. The former gripped by a furious strength that dwarfs the latter's. "Balmung barely scratched it! I... I doubt we have the power to defeat it, whatever it is!"
"Then we must stop it here, before it comes through," Jeanne says with grim resolution. "Close the breach."
"Oh, is that all?" Avenger grunts mockingly. "And how do you plan to do that, exactly?"
"With your help."
Jeanne lets go. Avenger seizes her chance immediately. She draws back and, like lighting, drives her blade through Jeanne's stomach.
"Jeanne!" you shout, stretching out your hand. Just as futile a gesture now as it was when Lancelot took his life. You can only watch as La Sorciére sinks into Jeanne up to the hilt, almost all of the burning blade protruding from her back. Sizzling as it burns away the saint's blood that soaked it only moments before. Avenger grins at her triumph, almost hesitant to believe that she finally has it after so long. Jeanne slumps against her black-armoured double, arms draped loosely around her, clutching weakly for support. Plated fingers digging into the back of her cuirass.
"By my Command Seals," she shouts with sudden strength, and the two that remain shine bloody scarlet through her gauntlet.
"Wh-what!?" Avenger exclaims, disbelieving even as Jeanne's arms cinch around her like a steel press. She struggles and squirms, trying to draw the sword out, but she has no room to do so. Despite all her strength, she can't escape the saint's death grip. "What are you going to do!?"
"Send us home." Jeanne turns to you like lightning. "Hargrave, get everyone back! Run and don't look back!"
"I-"
"Go!"
<Jeanne- you have to get everyone away from the breach as fast as you can!> you mentally command all three of your Servants, your mind's voice far stronger than your real one could ever hope to be right now. You don't turn back to see if they're obeying you. You can't tear your eyes away from what you're seeing. From the sight of La Sorciére's fires slowly being extinguished, the flames going cold and black. Slowly bleaching silver. Turning to steel. The shattered sword becoming whole again. La Pucelle, Jeanne's lost second Noble Phantasm.
"Stop!" Avenger pleads. "No, anything- not like this! Not again!"
Jeanne's left hand wraps around Avenger's waist. Her right slides up, cupping the base of her skull as Jeanne presses her forehead against hers, eyes shut tight.
"We will meet again in the Throne," she promises. "O Lord, I entrust this body to you."
Avenger goes limp. She collapses against Jeanne, shoulders shaking. The strength leaving her all at once. As La Pucelle begins to shine a brilliant gold between them, bathing them in the holy light of the saint's ascension, you think you catch a glimpse of something. For a moment you see Avenger wearing only a filthy dress of rags, her raw red scalp covered in roughly shorn stubble. You see a sign around her neck; 'Heretic, Witch, Relapsed'. You see her bare, soot-blackened feet and the scorched hem of her crude dress. And you see Jeanne, without her armour, without the wear of a long campaign hanging on her body. You see her as the peasant girl of sixteen who set out from her tiny village to save her country, and succeeded. She's short enough to fit her head under Avenger's chin like this. She holds the older girl tightly as, amid a storm of scarlet traceries from the energy of the Command Seals, they vanish.
With a sudden lurch you're yanked off your feet. It takes you a moment to realise that it's Saber, hefting you one-handed and bearing you bodily away from the breach. The ground flashes past beneath you at terrifying speed, becoming little more than a smear of colour. You tear your eyes up towards towards the horizon, straining to catch a glimpse of the breach even as you jiggle and bounce in Saber's grip and it fades away into the distance. You see the arm of starlight reaching through up to the shoulder, the fingers of the other hand slowly curling around the other edge of the breach.
Then all of Rouen is consumed in golden light.
One moment the city, the castle, are there. The next they simply aren't. There's nothing but a smoking crater where the buildings, the walls, the streets, the flames once were. You hear that ear-splitting cry once more before it's suddenly cut off, the pain replaced by blissful relief. Saber stops dead, making you jerk painfully under his arm. Turns to observe the destruction himself. He doesn't say anything. Neither do you. You just look on in silence and wonder - if the Heroic Spirit that resides in the Throne of Heroes will ever truly know what occurred here, between her two halves.
The group returns to the smoking crater that was once Rouen, gathering after the desperate flight from the blast scattered you all to the four winds. Corday doesn't want to believe it at first. She walks this way and that, calling out to Jeanne as loudly as she can. As if that could reach her when the telepathic link could not. Siegfried and Sanson accept the loss more readily, more pensively. You can only guess at what's going through their heads, but the silence seems respectful. Mourning will have to come later. If at all. Without her, their time in this world is on a very swift clock. Already you can see motes of mana burning off at the edges of Siegfried's mutant form.
And there, beyond them all, is the Grail. The Anomalous Grail that caused all this, that caused this singularity to spring to life. Sitting in the epicentre of the crater, gleaming its brassy golden glow without so much as a scratch to show for what it's been through. Was it perhaps shielded by the energies of the breach? A useless question. What matters is that it's here. And you, the Demi-Servant Galahad, are the only one who can claim it. You walk towards it, each step lifting a puff of ash and dust up from the ruptured earth. You stoop, as if picking a flower, curl your fingers around the cool golden stem and lift it into the air. Your second holy prize. The second Grail claimed.
The air ripples and distorts. Einzbern appears before you in that familiar monochrome illusion.
"TRISMEGISTUS is reading the singularity as destabilizing!" he says excitedly. "You have the Grail, perfect! Bring it back and we'll get to work integrating it into TRISMEGISTUS and debriefing you!"
"And the Servants?" you ask. "Some of them are still alive. Like Medea."
"Oh." Einzbern pauses, scratching the back of his neck. "Well... I hope not just like Medea."
"No."
"Well... there isn't really policy in place for something like this," he admits, shrugging helplessly. "The plan was always to go in guns blazing with an army of Servants, not this more, shall we say 'guerrilla' setup. If they're willing to follow you, then by all means ask them. You're the one who was there on the ground, and you're the one with the Seals. Your decision. But make it fast, the singularity's collapsing."
You nod. Einzbern's technological familiar vanishes back to the 'present' such as it is. You turn, Grail in hand, to Jeanne's remaining Servants. Corday, the first of them you ever met, going above and beyond the call of duty despite her weakness as a Servant. She's tactically put herself on the other side of Siegfried as Sanson. Sanson the executioner, who betrayed Jeanne only to betray Avenger just as quickly. The doctor-executioner without even his beloved Marie to cling to. Finally Siegfried, fading fast, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Fidgeting, digging his claws irritably into the peeling, mottled, scaly flesh of his unchecked changes. Europe's proud hero, brought low. All of them useful in their own right. But do you know them well enough to get them to follow you? Do they even trust you?
Well... now's the time to find out.
"Luvia, my Servants and I came from the future," you explain quickly. "A future where the world will soon end. Someone is trying to end human history. A traitor from inside the organization I represent, Chaldea. I'm the only Master left. To stay in this war Chaldea needs Servants to range into singularities like these ones and defend the base while we do so. We need your help to save the entire human race, and every little bit helps."
Not the best pitch but there's a limit to what you can do on a time limit after everything else that's happened today. You quickly scan the three. Siegfried's still not making eye contact and Sanson has his hands nonchalantly tucked away in his coat pockets but they all seem to be listening at least. You have to single somebody out as an example.
[ ] Corday. You doubt she'd be anything but eager and willing to ram a knife in Uvall's thorax, but it pays to be certain.
[ ] Sanson.
--[ ] Mention that his execution skills could be useful to Chaldea's war efforts.
--[ ] Mention that his medical prowess could be useful to Chaldea's medical facilities.
[ ] Siegfried.
--[ ] Mention that fighting for Chaldea would be an honest cause to fight for, without fear of the betrayal that was his undoing in legend.
--[ ] Mention that Chaldea's cutting-edge magical and technological research facilities might be able to find a way to treat or reverse his mutations.
