Gold Morning was supposed to be the end. The capstone of a short, frenetic career. Taylor Hebert's fight was supposed to be over. But the end of one story is often the beginning of another, and when she's offered the chance to take part in a mission whose scale and scope feel so very familiar, there's only one answer she could give.
A Fate/Grand Order fanfic where the story of Worm's Taylor Hebert continues beyond Gold Morning as a member of Chaldea's A Team, and how that might impact the events of FGO canon. Expect to see Singularities with tweaked events and expanded rosters of (sometimes OC) Servants to fill in where they might have been lacking (e.g., more Roman emperor Servants in Septem, more pirates in Okeanos, etc.) as well as the team feeling the weight of the events surrounding them and finding their own ways of shouldering that burden.
Yes, now we see the new project I've been working on for the past two months. This is Hereafter, a story much different from An Essence of Silver and Steel, because this is most certainly a baseline Taylor, and she will not be doing any great and grand superhuman feats with the power of Heroic Spirits.
Still around? Okay.
What You Need to Know: Every part of Worm up to, but not including, "Interlude: End" is canon to this story. The whole shebang. The Undersiders, robbing the bank, the Bakuda thing, Coil, the Travelers, killing Alexandria — everything, including Gold Morning. This is a Post Gold Morning story, only instead of being dumped on an alternate Earth with her dad and retiring, Taylor was handed over to Chaldea, and it probably wasn't the healthiest lateral move after saving the world to be thrust into an organization that, you know, is dedicated to the same thing. For Fate/Grand Order itself, I'm expanding things a little so that "Fujimaru Ritsuka" is "Fujimaru Ritsuka and Fujimaru Rika," so that I can inject some humor into the story without Ritsuka appearing bipolar or silly. The rest of it is all as it was in canon. Taylor is technically taking the spot of another "canonical" Master, but only in the sense that there was an unnamed Master Candidate 9 in Chaldea who existed solely to be a statistic and that spot is now Taylor's.
I'm not afraid to deviate from canon, where it needs to happen, but having said that, the Singularities should be familiar to you, because Taylor isn't going to make Goetia deviate from his plans drastically enough to matter.
So far, the plan is only to do part one of FGO, "Observer on the Timeless Temple." That's already going to bring us north of 400,000 words, if the word count of Singularity F is any indication of each Singularity's length. I wouldn't be surprised if it's significantly longer. "Cosmos in the Lostbelt" is too much to commit to, right now, in no small part because that storyline is still ongoing, so I have no plans for it.
What This Story is Not: a power fantasy. Taylor will not trample over all the peons, magically defeat even Servants with her mad skills, and master magecraft in two years that took Clocktower prodigies whole lifetimes (or generations) to perfect. If you're expecting her to steamroll everyone, you've come to the wrong place. I told you already, didn't I? This isn't going to resemble An Essence of Silver and Steel much at all. Welcome aboard the strugglebus.
Well, kinda. Taylor's grit, determination, and cleverness will continue to be her best weapons, and it's an uphill battle, but Nasu's the one who wrote FGO that way, not me.
This is also not a romance story. Seriously. Don't be surprised if Mash and Ritsuka wind up sweet on each other, and the usual Servants who are utterly infatuated will still be utterly infatuated, and there might even be some flirting (Cu is a horny dog) and some female gaze (because Taylor's surrounded by super attractive people, let's be real), but romance isn't anywhere in the plans.
Update Schedule:For the most part, there won't be one. The first twelve or so chapters are already finished, so I'll be posting the first three now and the rest weekly from there on, but I'm trying to rebalance things to be fair to the folks supporting me who allow me to dedicate the time to write this. As and when they're three chapters ahead, I'll post the fourth chapter publicly.
Special Thanks:to all my supporters in the usual place, for helping to make this possible. Without them, neither this nor Essence would have gotten very far off the ground. It's because of them that I could make this a story that updates weekly.
I came to slowly to the blare of a screeching alarm klaxon and an air thick with heat and smoke. Heavy eyelids blinked open to flashing red warning lights that flared on, off, on, off, off, over and over again.
For a moment, I forgot where I was and how I'd gotten there, and then I tried to move and my shoulder shrieked out with agony that lanced up my spine and straight to my brain.
"Ngh!"
With an aborted scream, I collapsed back against the wall I was leaning on, and when I looked over, a crumpled pod shaped into a vaguely cylindrical tube pressed down on my shoulder. The very top had been shorn clear off, and the glass door was ripped away, ending in jagged fragments near the bottom.
Oh, I thought. My coffin.
It came back to me, then, the procession of events that had led me to where I was. The emergency alert, the rushed briefing from Director Animusphere, all of us prospective Masters racing towards our Klein Coffins, with Team A out in front.
Team A, our crack squad of badasses, the vanguard of our operations throughout time and space. Each and every one of them a rare talent or possessed of an exceptional ability, with storied bloodlines going back hundreds of years. Calling them the best of the best probably wasn't all that inaccurate.
On paper, the rest of them were so much more impressive than their final member, the tall girl with the magical prosthetic arm and not a single drop of magic in her lineage. Especially Kirshtaria and Ophelia, who had such storied heritage that it was hard not to hear the rumors about their abilities.
On paper.
I had serious doubts any of them had anything on half the shit I'd somehow managed to live through and come out intact — mostly. Mostly intact. Hell, sometimes I had trouble believing some of the stuff I'd survived, and I'd been there through it all.
But I hadn't gotten much chance to see how good they were, so there was no way of knowing.
Where was I?
I took in a smokey breath and my head spun. Oh. Yeah, that probably wasn't doing me any good, was it?
As the alarms were going off, we had all climbed into our assigned coffins. The support team up in the command room had started going through a checklist of everything that needed to be ironed out and established before our Rayshift, with the Director standing in the middle of the room, watching us prepare.
And then… Then, there'd been an explosion. Everything there was fuzzy and disjointed. I remembered being thrown about inside my own coffin, not knowing what was going on, the crash of breaking glass. Somewhere in there I must have hit my head or something and lost consciousness.
I blinked at the coffin pinning me down. Which meant it must have been mine, didn't it? With that huge slab that was sitting on top of it, it falling the way it had was probably the only reason I was still alive and hadn't been crushed. Small mercies.
Not that it would do me much good. The thing that had saved my life was also going to get me killed, because I was trapped in a burning room with rapidly dwindling oxygen.
I cast my gaze around the Rayshift chamber — as much as I could, at least. The haze of the flames and the thick smoke rising towards the ceiling made it difficult to see much of anything at all.
What had happened to everyone else? Had they managed to evacuate? Was I the last person still here, left behind simply because no one had been able to find me?
What about the rest of Team A? Had any of them managed to make it out? Were they, even now, helping to pull others from the rubble? Or had they too been knocked senseless by the explosion and were lying in their coffins, pinned against the floor by the wreckage and debris? Maybe I had just been particularly lucky, and they had all been crushed or killed outright.
Taylor Hebert, the last Master of Team A. Somehow, despite all the odds, I had survived when everyone else died. Again. Was it too early to call this a pattern, or was I catching on far later than I should have?
I guess it didn't really matter, since we were all already dead. Our bodies simply hadn't figured it out, yet.
A chuckle vibrated past my lips, low and unheard.
How ironic. I survived fights with eldritch monstrosities, went toe to toe with a man who could transform into a dragon and came out the other side unhurt, squared off against a group of psychos who routinely slaughtered entire towns, pulled myself through getting sheared in half, lost my arm — twice in about as many days — and bounced back, made it through the apocalypse mostly intact, and when the next world-ending event kicked off, I was going to die before we could even get past the starting line.
A two-year extension, Contessa? Was that all that she could give me, after everything? At least if I was going to die so soon, couldn't I have gone with dignity, in those final moments of slipping sanity, or else obliviously with the rest of mankind, never seeing the end coming?
Instead, I was going to end as I began: in the fire, unable to do anything about it.
Lung's grin would have been a sight to behold.
A brief surge of defiance sputtered in my chest at the thought, a burst of emotion that echoed what I'd felt when I'd goaded him into burning my mangled arm off during that final battle, but a look down at the floor I was sitting on reminded me that my right leg was trapped under rubble. Not broken, for whatever that was worth just then, at least as far as I could tell, but I wasn't getting it free anytime soon. I'd just waste what little of my dwindling strength still left to me trying and failing.
Maybe I could've sawed it off with my knife, if I'd been so single-mindedly determined to live, but I doubted it would have done more than make me die faster, and besides that, my left shoulder was still pinned beneath both my coffin and that huge and undoubtedly very heavy slab. It didn't feel crushed, but that could just have been because the pressure on my shoulder had left that entire side of my chest basically numb.
I wasn't getting out of there. Not unless I spontaneously became Alexandria and developed the strength to lift massively heavy objects.
My sigh jerked into a coughing fit as my lungs tried to expel the acrid smoke that choked the air, and the edge of my coffin pinning me ground painfully against my collarbone.
Maybe I should have just retired, instead of letting myself get drawn into this whole "save the world" thing again. Just found a plot of land somewhere and settled down, or chosen a random city in America to plant my flag and move on with my life. Even if the end result was the same, two years of peace after two years of preparing for the end of the world, sprinting towards every possible way of stopping it and grasping every imaginable straw, just those two years would have been worth it, wouldn't they?
"Heh. Like I have it in me to just sit around and do nothing."
Who was I kidding? The instant Professor Lev and Olga Marie told me their organization's mission statement, they'd had me hooked. In the end, leaving the important things up to everyone else had never been something I'd figured out how to do. Maybe, if I'd been dropped anywhere else, I could've figured it out, but being set on Chaldea's doorstep had made the decision for me before I'd even woken up.
RAYSHIFT SYSTEM TRANSFERRING TO FINAL STAGE, the announcement echoed. COORDINATES: JANUARY 30TH, 2004 CE. FUYUKI, JAPAN.
"Mash!" I heard a voice calling distantly. "Mash!"
I looked around, blinking heavy eyelids, my head shrouded in fog. I still couldn't see anyone through the red flames and the haze of heat. As far as I could tell, I was still the only living thing in that room, and even then, it wouldn't be for long.
Maybe I'd just been hearing things, then. Hallucinating as I died. Funny. This would be the second time, and I wasn't having my life flash before my eyes this time, either.
LAPLACE CONVERSION PROTECTION ESTABLISHED. ADDITIONAL FACTOR FRAME TOWARDS THE SINGULARITY SECURED.
"Geez," I mumbled, "you'd think when they built this thing, they would've programmed it to realize when all of the Master candidates were dead or dying. What's it going to do, send our corpses back in time?"
I set my hand against the edge of the coffin pinning me down, and I tried again to slip out from under it — I couldn't bite back a cry as my bones ground together under its weight and a sharp pain lanced up my whole left side. Even when I pushed past that to pull myself out, because pain and I were old friends, there just wasn't enough wiggle room for me to manage it.
"Guh… Ha… Ha…"
My whole body sagged, and I gulped down breaths of suffocating air that choked me even as I breathed it in. My vision itself was starting to blur, now, and my eyelids that had struggled to stay open struggled even more. Everything felt weak and tired, and it was so very tempting to just close my eyes and let it go.
I'd been ready for the end, last time. After everything, I wasn't just prepared for it, hadn't just accepted it, I'd known it was coming, known it would come. For the things I'd done, there hadn't been any forgiveness, and those violations would damn me just as surely as those final two bullets had. What I'd been given instead was mercy.
Maybe this was just my sins catching up with me.
But now… Now… I wasn't ready to give up. I wasn't ready to just lay down and die. I wanted to get up and fight it, face down the end and bloody its nose, at the very least. It was so very ironic, then, that this time, there was nothing I could do but to give up and let go.
Scion, so close to a god that there hadn't been a meaningful difference, and I'd managed to do something. This time, a bit of falling rubble was what would do me in, and I couldn't even budge it.
UNSUMMON PROGRAM SET. MASTERS, PLEASE ENTER THE FINAL ADJUSTMENTS.
The faint blue glow of the globe set in the center of the room vanished and turned red. The shining dots that represented human civilization had all winked out and disappeared. The globe itself roiled with an ominous orange light, like magma bubbling up at the center of a volcanic basin, or the flaring of the sun as spots of darker color splotched its surface.
This was it, then. The end of the world. Mankind, wiped out in one, fell swoop.
And here I was, watching it happen helplessly.
It burned in my gut, thinking about it like that. Being unable to do anything rankled, far, far worse than it ever had at Winslow. I didn't think I was the kind of person to let my own hype swell my head, but it felt like I should have been able to do something. I'd already saved the world once before — numerous, uncountable worlds, more than all the stars in the skies — shouldn't I have been able to save it again?
No. Because this time, everyone who could have helped me was already dead, and I had no powers anymore, no bugs to weave lines of silk and lift this block off of me just enough to escape. No Bitch to get one of her dogs to lever it up, no Atlas to do the same, no Golem, no Defiant to saw through it with nano-thorns.
I was helpless.
WARNING TO OBSERVATION STAFF. CHALDEAS' CONDITION HAS CHANGED.
NOW REWRITING SHEBA'S NEAR-FUTURE OBSERVATIONAL DATA.
UNABLE TO DETECT THE EXISTENCE OF MANKIND ON EARTH FOR THE NEXT ONE-HUNDRED YEARS.
UNABLE TO CONFIRM HUMAN SURVIVORS. UNABLE TO GUARANTEE HUMANITY'S FUTURE.
Another sigh hissed out of my mouth.
That was it, wasn't it? The coffin nail. The device designed to read the presence of people on the planet's surface for the next century had just said there weren't any. Shy of seeing it for myself, that was probably the best confirmation I was going to get.
CENTRAL BULKHEAD WILL NOW BE SEALED, a different voice announced.ONE-HUNDRED-EIGHTY SECONDS UNTIL INTERNAL CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE.
Something in the distance rumbled, and it vibrated the floor beneath me. The only thing I could think of it being was the big, thick, emergency steel doors, sealing off the fire and the room to keep things from spreading and getting worse. Not that it really mattered, if the world really had ended.
But it meant that I officially had no way out. No rescue was coming. No one was going to show up and pull me out. I and everyone else in here had been written off for dead.
"Wish I could've seen you guys one more time," I murmured.
Lisa…
We'd only really spent a few months together, and then the few short days that were Gold Morning. If you counted it towards the last time she and I had just been able to hang out, without any of the pressures of all of the shit happening getting in the way, it really had been more like four years since we'd spoken.
I'd known going into it that I would never get the chance to see them again in this new world, but even so, I wished I could have seen her and Rachel and all the others one last time.
BASELINE FOR MASTER VITALS COULD NOT BE ESTABLISHED. RAYSHIFT REQUIREMENTS NOT MET.
A morbid chuckle vibrated out of my mouth. "That's because we're all dead."
Confirmation, at least. Guess none of the others managed to make it out, either. So much for the crack squad of badasses — none of us had even managed to last long enough to make it to the first mission, let alone all the way through it. At least they'd all died fairly quickly, then, instead of this long, drawn out agony.
What about the rest of the world? Was it even just this one, or was this whatever-it-was that killed us widespread enough to touch other worlds, too? Lisa, Rachel, Aisha, Dinah, Theo, everyone I'd ever known or cared about, had it been as quick and painless for them, too? Or were they still alive on some alternate world, unaware that this one was even now falling apart? Unaware that I'd even lived past the end of everything before, too, and wasn't going to make it that far, this time?
I didn't do hope all that well. Hoping had never gotten me much of anywhere. But I didn't have anything else, just then. There was nothing for me to do, sitting there helplessly like I was, except to hope that my friends were living and smiling, completely oblivious to this new mess I'd found myself in, or that if they had gone, they'd gone swiftly and without suffering.
SEARCHING FOR QUALIFYING MASTER CANDIDATES… SEARCHING… SEARCHING…
FOUND.
I blinked. "You can't mean me."
I was pinned beneath my coffin and a giant piece of rubble, my entire left side was numb, I had no idea if my leg was even still intact, let alone unbroken, and we shouldn't forget that I wasn't even in one of the coffins that they'd spent months drilling into our heads were essential for the process. In what way did I qualify as a Master candidate at that moment?
RESETTING CONTACT WITH MASTER CANDIDATES NUMBERS NINE, FORTY-SEVEN, AND FORTY-EIGHT.
Nine, forty-seven, and forty-eight?
I tried to hone my mind, to focus on those numbers and put a name, or at least a face, to them. Nine was mine, so I guess the system's standards for "qualifying Master candidates" had a couple of glaring loopholes, but I couldn't remember anything about forty-seven and forty-eight. Newbies, they had to be, because the numbers went in order of recruitment and there were only forty-eight Master candidates that had been brought into the orientation meeting, but beyond that…
Recalling anything else was a struggle. My head was stuffy and my thoughts were getting ever more sluggish. I thought… maybe one of them had red hair? I… I remembered thinking how strange it was, because she was apparently as Japanese as they came and there hadn't been a trace of hair dye. Red roots and everything.
Nothing else was coming to me. The color blue, but what it was connected to was beyond me.
BEGINNING UNSUMMON PROGRAM.
Whoever it was, it meant I would at least not die alone. For whatever that might have been worth, when the only thing I had to let me know that was a monotone voice announcing another's presence over a loudspeaker.
I wasn't a stranger to the idea. My memories of those final moments weren't entirely clear, but I remembered being utterly alone, having run away from everyone and everything I cared about so that I didn't hurt them by accident. I remembered dying there, kneeling in the dirt, hardly able to even think about standing, let alone doing it. I remembered Contessa, the cold comfort of the single human being who would be there, when it was all over.
I remembered two bullets. The stars, so vast and distant. The universe, so impossibly big.
As I gazed hazily up at the globe of Chaldeas, the rotating panels reflecting its red glow, I found it this moment not all that different from that one.
BEGINNING SPIRITRON CONVERSION.
What would happen to us? I could only wonder about it morbidly. Without the supposedly vital coffins, would we be strewn across all of spacetime, decohering into scattered strings of molecules that were dumped into random times and places? Would we simply evaporate as whatever mechanism was supposed to affirm our existence in the past failed? Or would we simply arrive dead, corpses thrown to the ground, hearts stopped and brains stilled?
Or would we wind up stranded in the past, wandering ghosts clinging to whatever semblance of life we could manage, because while our souls — and hadn't learning those existed been a kick in the teeth — had been sent back, our bodies had been left behind to burn in the fire?
RAYSHIFT IN 3… 2… 1…
I couldn't say. I'd read through the manuals they'd given us way back when on how this was all supposed to work at least a dozen times, and every time, I'd found something else that went completely over my head. Technical specifications that required a degree in mechanical engineering that I just didn't have, or else magecraft that "just worked, don't question it," brought in by one of the magicians on loan from the mysterious Mage's Association.
Even the coffins worked on some Tinker-esque bullshit thing about being both alive and dead simultaneously until they were opened. Something about quantum uncertainty and Schrodinger's cat? It was a whole lot of stuff that I didn't know anything about, because at the end of the day, I wasn't a physicist who had spent her entire life studying high concept math and theoretical quantum interactions or a mage with a pedigree in spacetime manipulation.
It was a bunch of stuff I just had to take on faith — which, being fair, was basically what passengers and powers had been like, in another life — and trust that others knew the things I didn't.
There was only one thing I knew for sure, and it didn't require a PhD in astrology or a research grant from some blueblood with a thousand year lineage.
ALL PROCEDURES CLEARED.
We were already dead. Our bodies just hadn't figured it out, yet.
Somewhat ironically, the first thing I noticed was the hunk of rock digging into one of my kidneys.
Not the heat of the flames that smoldered what seemed like everywhere around me. Not the hard street I was lying on. Not the thick smell of smoke that lingered and clung to everything. It wasn't even the fact that I was no longer pinned beneath a huge piece of rubble.
No. The thing that I noticed first was the sharp, jabbing annoyance pressing into my back just an inch or two to the left of my spine, so insistent that I had no idea how it hadn't woken me up sooner.
I rolled over, grunting, and my hand smacked against something hard and very much solid.
Ow.
My nose wrinkled, and when I cracked open my eyes, I realized quite suddenly that I was no longer in Chaldea.
My first thought was actually that I might be in Hell.
I was never really a believer in any sort of religion. The Heberts were technically a Christian family, in the same sense as anyone else who paid the idea lip service was, but if we'd ever gone to church on Sundays, I'd been so young that I didn't remember it. Later on, well, it got harder to believe in a benevolent, omnipotent god watching over everything when cities got wiped off the map once every three months or so.
But if there was a Hell, I wouldn't have been surprised to find myself there when I finally died for good.
After the funny jolt that hit me in the stomach, though, I thought better of it and smirked at my own melodrama. Fire and brimstone? A city destroyed, with buildings collapsed and everything falling apart? That wasn't Hell. That was Brockton Bay on a Tuesday.
Gingerly, I pulled myself to my feet and looked around. Aside the fading ache from that hunk of broken asphalt that had been trying to gouge out my kidney, nothing seemed broken or injured, and neither my leg nor my left arm ended in a stump — small mercies, considering how quickly I seemed to go through limbs — but that was the only bit of good news I could give myself.
"So if this isn't Chaldea anymore, where am I?" I muttered.
The last thing I remembered…
It was hard to grasp. Hazy. Considering how much smoke I must've been choking on, maybe that wasn't all that surprising. It was something of a minor miracle I wasn't hacking up my lungs, right then, all told.
But I remembered… There'd been a voice. Automated. The kind of prerecorded messages used by emergency service announcements. Something about Chaldeas being fucked and no available Master candidates — yeah, because everything had gone to shit and anyone who wasn't already dead had been dying.
And then… I think I'd been Rayshifted. Somehow. Without a coffin. Which was supposed to be dangerous or even outright lethal, but hey, I was still breathing, so I wasn't about to complain too much.
Where to, though? An equally important question was also "when."
"Something with an F," I mumbled to myself. "Fu… Fuyuki, I want to say. In…Japan, I think? Right. A place I've never heard of, though. And then the when… Early 2000s, I want to say?"
What could have happened here that it was a point needing correcting, though? The early 2000s… On Earth Bet, that could only have been Leviathan, but this…
I looked back around. The city in flames greeted me, drowning out the stars with orange light and blanketing the sky with black smog.
This was not Leviathan. Not by a longshot.
I wasn't sure I could have done anything about it, even if it was. What, correct the Leviathan attack on Kyushu so that it didn't happen? Me and what army? Without backup from Chaldea, I couldn't even summon a Servant to even things out.
"Wait."
My head swung around again, but the scenery hadn't changed. More importantly, I was still alone.
"Master candidates nine, forty-seven, and forty-eight… So where are forty-seven and forty-eight?"
If the program had registered them at the same time as me, then they had to have been in the room with me when the Rayshift happened, which meant that they must have been shunted back to this place, too. They should have landed here somewhere.
But there was no sign of them.
Maybe where they'd been dropped corresponded with how far away they'd been from me in the room before, but if that was the case, the room was only so big, so shouldn't they have still been within line of sight? Unless it wasn't a one-to-one thing, and that meant they could be clear on the other side of the fucking city, because of course, that was just my luck, wasn't it? My only allies within reach, separated from me by miles of labyrinthine streets, deep in hostile territory.
I grimaced.
"Or maybe I lucked out and survived, and the other two got smeared across time and space the way we were all warned about."
Either way, it looked like I was alone in hostile territory against unknown enemies of unknown numbers and unknown capabilities. I had no backup, I had no allies — at least as far as I was aware, at any rate — and no hope of exfiltration. My only resources were the Mystic Code I was currently wearing and whatever meagre supplies I might be able to round up from what remained of this city.
A city I'd never been to and whose layout was also a complete unknown.
I sighed.
Great.
Against my will, my lips pulled into a smile. "So, it's Tuesday," I said.
No use moping around or whining about the unfairness of it all. I could honestly have said I'd been in worse spots than this.
"Alright. First things first."
Basic survival had been one of the lessons we'd gotten in the Wards. Generally, it had been stuff about what to do if you were stranded in the wilderness, but urban survival had been covered to some degree, too, and what hadn't been covered directly, well, there were some parts of survival techniques and priorities that were basically universal.
The first and most important thing was shelter. Unless you were one of the rare capes with powers that normalized temperatures around your body, exposure was the quickest thing that could kill you. Three days without water and three weeks without food — it wouldn't be comfortable the entire time, but you could survive it. Exposure could kill you in under an hour. If I remembered the statistics right, it was the number one cause of death for the homeless.
So. I needed to find some place to hunker down and establish a base of operations. I had no idea how long I was going to be there, not the faintest clue if there was even anything left of Chaldea's staff to stage a rescue, and I had to work under the assumption that I was completely alone.
"Only problem… I'm not seeing much in the way of intact buildings around here."
And the ones that were might not be for very long.
My lips pursed, but looking around didn't really change the facts. There wasn't much else I could do except pick a random direction and hope it led me somewhere better off.
"Preferably on higher ground, so I can get a better look at the layout of the city itself."
It looked like I was on a main street, too, so if I was lucky, I'd find a supermarket or something that could double as a dependable supply of food. Whether or not it had any power would be hit or miss, and if the city was as abandoned as it looked, that wouldn't last forever anyway, but there should still be enough canned and boxed food to last at least a little while.
If that even meant anything, now. There was no way of knowing exactly how this Singularity connected to the larger world, so it was entirely possible that I could spend months surviving off of cereal and canned peaches without seeing any other person, and no one would ever come to investigate the city that had inexplicably vanished off the face of the Earth.
I glanced back up at the sky, but with the smoke and the clouds so thick and dark, there was no way of knowing what time of day it was. Hell, it was entirely possible that it was actually the middle of the afternoon, but with roiling black blanketing everything from horizon to horizon, it might as well have been three in the morning.
My finger looped through the collar of my jacket, tugged. Not cold, but that might be because it seemed like the entire city was going up in flames all at once. It was supposed to be almost February here, wasn't it? In that case, I wanted to have a setup in place before the fires went out and I was stuck in the winter chill.
"Alright."
A chanced look behind me showed me the same destroyed city as in front of me. Didn't look like it was going to make a difference either way —
A sudden scream pierced the air, high-pitched and feminine, and I whirled around towards the direction it came from.
Master candidate forty-eight was a girl, wasn't she?
I was running before I even had time to think about it, my legs pumping, my arms swinging, my body going through the remembered and practiced motions of what felt like an entirely different life. My thoughts had been erased, and only a singular focus remained as I sprinted towards the voice. The unfamiliarity around me disappeared, became familiar, became something I recognized.
I'd never been to Fuyuki before in my life.
In fact, if you'd asked me to point it out on a map, I couldn't have done it to save my life. Hell, it was entirely possible that it was sunk with Kyushu on Earth Bet when Lung and Leviathan decided to stage their own live action Godzilla movie — no idea which one would have been Godzilla in that metaphor, but fuck it.
In spite of that, though…
The shattered pavement. The crumpled buildings. The glow of the flames that lit up the dark. The sense that danger lurked around every corner and you were never safe.
It felt like coming home.
Maybe in proper human history, Fuyuki was a perfectly normal place to live with perfectly normal people and no biweekly gang wars or rage dragons to disrupt its perfectly ordinary everyday life.
Right here, right now, however… If I was five years younger, it would have felt like my first night out, charging Lung with nothing but bugs and pepper spray.
It wasn't long before I saw them, a horde of walking skeletons, human. They were dressed in rags and scraps of cloth and their bodies were barely held together by whatever magic had reanimated them in the first place. Each of them had a weapon, a spear or a sword, and they were moving with surprising speed — fast enough that anyone who wasn't as used to running as I was probably wouldn't be able to outrun them.
Past them, I didn't have a clear enough view of the person to tell who it was, but I caught snatches of color, the clothes of whoever it was they were chasing. Black and yellow, entirely wrong for Chaldea's combat uniform.
Were there actually natives still alive in this place?
"Why do things like this always happen to me?" the person shrieked hysterically.
Something flashed, and one of the skeletons crumpled into dust. Again, and another one disappeared. It wouldn't make a difference, though, not at that rate. There were just too many skeletons.
It wasn't like I would be doing any better. My options weren't exactly the best. But…
I skidded to a halt, lifting my arm and bracing it with my other hand as I took aim at the backs of the crowd that hadn't yet noticed me. Something in my head snapped, and I had the fleeting image of a thread of silk breaking, and then I channeled my meagre magical power through my combat uniform the way I'd been taught.
…I wasn't the type of person who could just callously watch someone die like this.
Gandr!
A ball of black energy leapt from my hand. Without my bugs, I wasn't anywhere near as good a shot as I used to be, but at that range with that tight a grouping, it didn't matter. My blast struck one of the skeletons in the back, and it collapsed, vanishing into dust before its stumble could even knock over the one in front of it.
The rest kept going, completely ignoring me in favor of their other prey. If they got to her first and turned on me afterwards, it didn't really make a difference. We'd both be dead all the same.
I took aim again.
Gandr!
Another skeleton went down.
Gandr!
A third.
Gandr!
A fourth.
The other person was still firing back, too, but the crowd of skeletons didn't seem to notice much or care, they just kept advancing. They were like Mastered minions: they didn't know what pain or fear or anger were, they only had the order to seek out and kill, and that was all they cared about.
I panted and took aim again.
Last two shots before I had to rest. My paltry six shot Gandr.
Wasn't like I had any better options. What came after that… I'd figure that out when I got there.
"Save me, Lev!"
My brain stuttered to a halt for a moment. It couldn't be.
Director?
How… The Director wasn't supposed to have any Rayshift aptitude. Everyone in Chaldea knew that — a lot of them thought it ironic that the person in charge of the whole thing couldn't have carried out its prime directive if her life depended on it.
I gritted my teeth and took aim again, trying to pick the thinnest spot so I could push through when I ran out of magical energy. I could scratch my head about the Director later —
CLANG echoed across the street as a massive cruciform slab slammed into the already battered asphalt and crushed a skeleton. And then it moved, and the figure wielding it swung the sharper edges of its spokes around and into the skeletons with what had to be Brute strength and incredible speed. Pale hair fluttered, and eyes so blue they looked almost purple flashed as they passed me over.
My focus stuttered for a second time.
No way.
"Mash?"
The only thing I could really do was watch as she moved, picking apart the group of skeletons with contemptuous ease. She dodged, she blocked, she swung the edges of that massive shield through their bodies, and one by one, they all vanished into puffs of smoke. I wanted to call it brutal efficiency, but calling it brutal implied something inelegant about it all. What I was seeing just then could only be called graceful. Like watching a prima ballerina dance.
When it was over, Mash turned towards the Director and trotted to stand in front of her.
"Battle concluded," she reported crisply. She didn't even sound winded. "Are you okay, Director?"
"What's going on?" the Director demanded as she pulled herself to her feet.
"I'd kind of like to know that myself," I said as loudly as I could without shouting.
The Director jolted as I walked over to join them, like she hadn't even realized I was there, and Mash turned to me, holding her massive shield like it was a toy.
"Miss Taylor —"
"Hebert!" the Director barked. "There you are! Where's the rest of Team A?"
"Dead, as far as I know," I answered.
"What?" she squawked.
"Whatever happened did catastrophic damage. I didn't see what happened to everyone else, but given the shape the Rayshift chamber was in, I'm not sure they would've survived it. When the emergency Rayshift happened, the system could only find three viable Master candidates. Me —"
I looked behind her at the pair of kids who were peeking out over the ledge of an impressively large section of overturned road. They both jumped, like they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't.
"And those two."
The Director whirled around.
"You!" she shrieked and pointed at them. "The two brats who fell asleep during orientation! I thought I kicked the two of you out!"
"Ah, well," the boy stuttered. He was a scrawny kid who couldn't have been older than seventeen, with messy brown hair and blue eyes and an otherwise vaguely East Asian shape to his face. "You see —"
"Doctor Roman pulled us aside!" the girl declared boldly.
Red hair. So I hadn't been imagining things, then.
"Romani…" the Director muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. "No, forget about that! How the hell did you two become Masters, is the question! Team A was a carefully selected squad of talented and unique individuals considered peerless in their given fields!" A muscle in my jaw twitched, but I kept my mouth shut. That was quite the vote of confidence. "A pair of country bumpkins shouldn't even have the aptitude for something so exclusive!"
"Please don't misunderstand, Director," said Mash. "Master and…Master did not initiate the contract, I did. The circumstances weren't ideal, so I had to establish it forcefully."
The Director looked at her incredulously.
"You what?"
"Let me explain."
And she did. How she'd been lying, half-crushed beneath a slab of Chaldea's roof that hadn't landed on her quite so gently as the one that had pinned me down. How Ritsuka and Rika (their parents must not have been expecting twins) had found her and stayed, even as the room shut down and everything had started to look rather bleak.
How a Heroic Spirit had reached out to her as the Rayshift was occurring and offered his powers, on the condition that she use them to resolve the cause of the Singularity. Demi-Servant, the Director called it when it came up. A fusion of a Servant and a human being, a halfway state where you could gain the powers of a Heroic Spirit and wield them in combat, without being overcome by the Heroic Spirit's ego.
"And we were Rayshifted here, to Fuyuki, Japan, the year 2004," Mash concluded. "No other Master candidates Rayshifted with us." She blinked and looked to me. "Ah, or so we thought. You and Miss Taylor are the only other humans we've seen so far, but if you're both here, then that must mean the others could be here, too."
"…It's possible, but I don't think it's likely," the Director said thoughtfully.
Mash blinked again.
"Director?"
"Hebert," the Director turned to me instead, "you weren't inside your coffin when you Rayshifted, were you?"
"No," I said. "I was pinned beneath some rubble."
My coffin had been cracked open and I'd fallen out of it, and in the chaos, I hadn't been able to get my bearings fast enough to avoid the collapsing ceiling that had landed on top of me. Not completely.
"I thought so," said the Director. "That means we're the only ones here, in all likelihood. No, I'm certain of it."
"What do you mean?" asked Mash.
The Director swept her hand around the group.
"Each of us here has one thing in common. None of us was inside a coffin when the Rayshift occurred. Rayshifting flesh and blood has a much higher rate of failure, and that's why we have the coffins in the first place, but it's not technically impossible. Everyone else would have been inside their coffins, so they never actually got Rayshifted in the first place. We're here alone."
"I see. That's why you're the Director."
"You're actually pretty reliable when you're calm, Director," Rika said with a smile.
"What's that supposed to mean?" the Director snarled. "Are you saying I'm not usually calm?"
I coughed to hide my smile behind my fist.
"Director," her brother cut in, "does that mean you weren't supposed to Rayshift?"
The Director glared at Rika, but dragged her gaze away to address Ritsuka. "Do you think that's weird? I'm Chaldea's Director. I'm your commander. The last place I'm supposed to be is getting into the thick of it on the frontlines."
And yet, she was here anyway.
Mash, the twins, and I had all been in the Rayshift chamber. Mash and I because we were supposed to be, the twins because they'd come to try and rescue whoever they could in the wreckage. Whatever the case, we had all been in the room when we were Rayshifted.
Where, exactly, had the Director been? Could she have been caught up in the confusion and unconscious when it all happened? Trapped in the room with us, out cold?
She must've been, to be here with us now.
"In any case, our first goal should be to establish a base camp," I said.
"I know that!" the Director snapped. She turned towards the twins. "Listen up! It's not ideal, but this is an emergency, so I'll provisionally approve your contract with Mash and accept you as Masters of Chaldea! That means, from here on out, you follow my orders. Got it?"
"Understood," said Ritsuka at the same time as his sister snapped to a salute and barked out, "Roger that, Boss!"
The Director let out a miserable sigh, but didn't comment.
"Okay, then we need to find a Leyline Terminal, a place where magical energy converges. From there, we should be able to establish a connection with Chaldea. In this town's case, it would probably be…"
Mash coughed pointedly. "Director?"
"What?"
Mash pointed at the road beneath our feet. "It's right here. This is the Leyline Terminal."
"What?" And then as she processed the words, the Director's face turned bright red. "I-I mean, I knew that already! I knew that from the beginning! O-of course I did!"
"The Director is kind of hopeless, isn't she?" Rika muttered. Her brother dug his elbow into her side.
"Mash, place your shield on the ground!" the Director ordered louder than she really needed to be. "I'm going to set up a summoning circle, using your Noble Phantasm as a catalyst!"
"Understood, Director."
Carefully, Mash placed her gigantic shield on the clearest patch of asphalt she could find, and the Director set about drawing up and preparing the summoning circle. I watched from the side, arms folded, feeling a little out of my depth but keeping an eagle eye on the whole thing.
Magecraft… Considering I no longer had my powers, I could only wish I had better talent for it. There was only so much two years of frantically cramming everything I could into my head was able to do to bridge the gap between me and even the most average of regular magi.
When it was ready, the Director stood back and nodded. "Okay. Now then, you just have to —"
Beep-beep
A chime sounded from Ritsuka's wrist, and a moment later, a hologram shot up over Mash's shield, depicting a frazzled Doctor Romani Archaman, facing towards Ritsuka.
"Thank goodness!" he said. "I managed to get the connection back up! Ritsuka, Rika, Mash! The three of you are still okay! I'm so glad."
"Doctor Roman!" Rika called.
"You managed to secure the connection, good job," said Romani. "Now, we should be able to communicate properly, even send you rations — eh?"
He looked at me. The hologram swiveled until he was facing me directly. "Taylor? You're there, too? But then…No, you weren't in your coffin, either? I guess that explains the flatlined vital signs —"
"Romani!" the Director barked. Romani startled. "Why are you the one sitting in that chair? Where's Lev?"
"Director, you're — !"
"Lev, Romani. Put him on. He's the next in line with me trapped here."
"Uh…" Romani let out a little sigh and briefly closed his eyes. "Professor Lev was in the command room. He was right there when the explosion went off. I'm sorry, Director, but I can't see how he could have survived it. I thought that you, too… But you're obviously okay."
The Director…sort of crumpled. The fire left her face and her posture slackened, and the only thing that came out of her mouth was a quiet croak that might have been an aborted attempt at a "what?"
"Doctor," I said, stepping up while she recovered, "what's the state of things? There has to be a dozen other people who should take control before you do."
"That's about how many people we have left, actually," Doctor Romani said grimly. "We're still picking through and checking everywhere we can, but we're down to a crew of about twenty. The reason I'm in charge right now is that there isn't anyone else more qualified to take the position."
A tremor went through my belly and my mouth worked as I tried to wrap my head around that. A staff of over two-hundred people, and in the span of a single attack, almost all of them had died?
Just who or what had attacked Chaldea that they could kill that many people that quickly?
"Twenty?" the Director breathed. "What about — the Master candidates. What condition are they in?"
"Critical, all forty-six… ah, that is, all forty-five of them. We're short on both medical staff and supplies, so even if we let the worst off go, we might not be able to save that many of them —"
"You call yourself a doctor?" the Director demanded. "The coffins all have in-built cryopreservation functions! You can worry about resuscitating them all later. For now, your top priority is to save as many lives as you possibly can!"
Romani's mouth fell open and his eyes went wide, and then he slapped a hand to his forehead.
"Ah — right, I'm so stupid! I can't believe I forgot about that!" Immediately, he leapt out of his chair, and his voice called back towards us, "I'll get on that right away! Please wait!"
The hologram of an empty chair not hovered in the air in front of us.
"I'm a bit surprised, Director," Mash commented quietly. "Cryopreservation without consent is a violation of international human rights, and yet you committed to it without a second thought."
"I can worry about something so meaningless later," the Director said. "Making sure they all survive is the most important thing."
In spite of the way she said it, though, her brow was furrowed and the line of her mouth was nervous. Times like these were when I remembered exactly how young she was, barely a year older than me, and exactly how much she'd taken on her shoulders in spite of that.
Maybe I didn't have the most unbiased perspective on that, though.
In the uneasy silence that followed, I stepped up next to the Director. I didn't say anything, but she glanced in my direction, and then some of the tension in her shoulders eased just a little bit.
A few minutes later, Romani returned to his seat and slumped against the backrest with a sigh. "It's done. The remaining Master candidates have been put into cryopreservation, pending an attempt to resuscitate them at a later date."
"Good." The Director nodded. "What's the state of the rest of Chaldea?"
Romani sighed again. "We've lost about eighty percent functionality. We're doing the best we can with just twenty people on hand, but as it is, there's only so much we can handle, and we're already relying on the backup generators to keep things running. Right now, we're focusing on getting the Rayshift functionality repaired and maintaining Chaldeas itself and the SHEBA lens. Without external communications, that's the best we can do."
The Director's lips pursed, but she nodded.
"That's good. It's exactly what I would be doing right now in your place. Make Rayshifting your top priority. We need you to be able to recall us, so we can send another team to handle the situation. I'm going to have Hebert attempt a summoning using Mash's shield, but if we run into higher tier enemies than the fodder we've seen so far, our current setup won't cut it."
A jolt of apprehension shot through my stomach, but I did my best not to let it show.
"In the meantime," the Director went on, "we'll investigate the cause of this Singularity's formation."
"Is that a good idea?" Romani asked worriedly. "Even with a Servant and a Demi-Servant, it could be dangerous. We originally intended to send an entire team, after all. And that's assuming the summoning system works properly at all, considering we've only successfully completed three summonings in its lifespan."
"Don't be ridiculous," said the Director. "Even if we only had Mash, a Demi-Servant should be enough to handle the sort of low level monsters we've encountered so far. Besides, I have no intention of attempting to resolve this Singularity with just what we have here. Having said that, it's going to take time for you to complete repairs, and there's no sense in us standing here waiting while you do."
"You do technically have two members of Team A with you," Romani said thoughtfully. "Mash, Ritsuka, Rika, I know this is a lot to ask of you three, but do you think you can handle this?"
"It's fine, Doctor," said Mash.
"We'll have this thing all wrapped up before you know it!" Rika added. Ritsuka gave a confident nod, and if Romani noticed the clenched fists and shaking hands, he didn't comment on it.
He turned towards me.
"Taylor…"
"It's literally what I signed up for," I told him.
He sighed. "Just don't push yourself. And if your arm starts to bother you —"
"It hasn't," I cut him off. He seemed to take the hint.
"I can't do much from here, but I'm rooting for all of you. Director, best of luck. If an emergency crops up, please contact me."
The Director let out a huff, but didn't comment. The connection cut and Romani's hologram vanished. We were alone, again.
"Director, are you sure this is the right decision?" Mash asked. "We could just wait here for rescue."
"If we did that, I'd never hear the end of it from the Association," the Director said. "Worse, they might decide this whole thing was my fault for mismanaging the situation and take Chaldea from me. Like hell I'm letting a bunch of stuck up busybodies take my father's dream away! We're not going back empty-handed!"
"This isn't the best place to stand, either," I added. "Sitting in the open is just asking for us to get attacked again."
The Director nodded. "Right. We can't stay here no matter what, so we might as well start investigating so that this whole mess isn't a total loss. Before all of that, though…"
She turned to me.
"I know this wasn't exactly how we told you it would happen, but you're going to summon a Servant."
"We were supposed to be doing this with a proper catalyst," the Director groused. "At least then, we could have had a decent idea of which Heroic Spirit was going to be summoned. We were supposed to have more control."
She wrapped one arm across her chest, cradling the elbow of her other arm as she chewed on the end of her thumbnail, her brow furrowed. It was a nervous habit I'd seen her adopt a few times, something she did when she was worried or anxious or just thinking herself in circles about a problem she couldn't fix.
"Ugh. It can't be helped. This whole situation is one big mess, and I'd feel a whole lot better about it if we had more than just a single Demi-Servant to defend us."
"Director," said Mash, "if my combat efficiency is a concern, I'm still functioning optimally. If we encounter more enemies of that level, I should be able to handle them all without any trouble."
"That!" the Director said. "That is exactly the problem! If we encounter more enemies of that level. I know I just said Mash could handle it, but that's only if we don't run into anything scarier. You do remember the situation we're in, right?"
"A burning city?" Rika suggested.
"No! Weren't you paying any attention to the briefing? Ugh!" The Director let out a disgusted breath. "This is Fuyuki, Japan, 2004. According to Chaldea's records, this is the site of a ritual referred to as the Holy Grail War."
"Holy Grail War?" Ritsuka asked.
The Director pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is why I prefer selecting from the Association. They might be a bunch of students who think they know more than they actually do, but at least their knowledge base is good enough that I don't have to explain everything every few minutes. But no, this is a joint initiative with the UN, so I have to take in any Master candidate that shows even the slightest hint of promise, no matter how utterly clueless they are."
"Hey!" Rika squawked.
The Director pointed at me. "Hebert. Explain, please."
I let out a breath through my nostrils.
"Seven Masters paired with seven Servants," I explained shortly. "A battle royale between them, and the winning pair get their wish granted by the Holy Grail."
The twins blinked at me.
"…That's it?"
Rika huffed. "I was expecting three paragraphs of exposition, at least."
My lips pulled tight.
It wasn't like I was exactly an expert on the subject. I understood the basic premise and the most important mechanics, but I only knew about as much as had been explained to me. A battle royale between Heroic Spirits summoned as Servants controlled by Masters wielding Command Spells, all for the prize of a wish on the Holy Grail. I didn't need to know how all of the bits and pieces worked to get the important parts.
"It's a vast oversimplification, but if we took the time to cover all the details, we'd be here for hours," the Director said. "The important takeaway is the first thing: seven Servants. Without Masters, they shouldn't be able to stay in this world, and looking at the state of this city, the Masters are probably all dead."
She looked around at the burning metropolis, and I had to agree. If there was anyone alive… Well, if we hadn't run into them yet, either we wouldn't at all or they'd probably be an enemy.
"Ordinarily, that should mean we wouldn't have to worry about Servants," the Director went on. "But this is a Singularity, which means something went wrong somewhere, so none of our assumptions are reliable. It's entirely possible we might run into no Servants, or we might run into several. Either way, relying solely on Mash to fight them all off would be stupidity of the highest level!"
"Shouldn't we summon as many of our own Servants as possible, then?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.
"That's what the rest of Team A was supposed to be for!" the Director snapped. "Ugh! No, Masters can only handle supporting so many Servants at once! Generally, it's only the one, but if Chaldea was running at full power, we might have been able to get away with three or four. As it is now, however, we can't put too much stress on the backup generators, so trying for more than one more is too risky."
Rika's hand shot up into the air. The Director glared. "Put your hand down. This isn't a classroom."
"Couldn't we each try to summon a Servant?" asked Rika. "I mean, there's three of us. Wouldn't it be better to have one each?"
The Director looked between them for a second, then glanced back at me, and finally shook her head.
"No," she said. "First off, didn't I just say we could only safely try for one? Geez! Secondly, you two are already supporting a contract with Mash between the two of you, aren't you? The last thing I need either of you doing in a situation like this is stretching yourself too thin!"
"Everything was a bit rushed, so the contract wound up split evenly between them," Mash confirmed. "Sorry, Director."
"This whole thing has been one gigantic mess from the beginning," the Director griped. "Hebert! We're not wasting any more time. We don't have a catalyst to make things easier, so we're just going to have to hope that whoever you summon is at least somewhat useful."
I let out a breath through my nose, not quite a sigh. My stomach squirmed a little. "Understood, Director."
She stepped away from the shield laying flat on the ground as I stepped closer, and the others followed her lead. "You remember the incantation, right?" she asked.
"You don't need to worry. I have it memorized."
She worried her bottom lip, but nodded, and I turned to the shield and the magic circle inscribed around it and thrust out my hand.
"Thy Essence is of Silver and Steel," I began, and then I went slowly and meticulously through the entire incantation.
It sounded like a lot of nonsense, and I felt a little silly reciting it. Gems and the Archduke of Contracts, ancestors and grandmasters, forked roads and kingdoms, alighted wind and walls. Maybe it meant something to the people who had crafted the spell, but to me, it just seemed like gibberish strung together into vaguely coherent sentences.
Throughout it all, I watched the circle light up, the lines and symbols glowing as it connected to the spiritual meridian beneath our feet — the ley line, and when I'd learned about those, I'd kinda wanted to laugh. I wasn't laughing, now. If my focus wasn't so narrowly turned towards the nonsense spewing from my lips, I might even have been nauseous.
"Let there be fivefold perfections upon each repetition, and break asunder with perfection."
Each member of Team A had at least a preferred class of Servant they had intended to summon, if not a preferred Heroic Spirit. I'd been hoping to get a catalyst for a heavy hitter, someone like King Arthur or Achilles, maybe Herakles. One of what they called the knight classes. Not an Assassin, because that kind of Servant played too much to my strengths and the ways of thinking I'd been trying to train myself out of.
The thing I'd dreaded most was summoning based on compatibility, without a catalyst at all. Because there were a couple of Heroic Spirits I feared summoning, both for the implications they carried with them and for the way of thinking they might encourage, just by existing.
"Arrive from the Ring of Deterrence, O Keeper of Balance!"
The glowing circle flashed, surging, filling up and expanding, and for a moment, there was a sense of peeking through the veil of reality as a presence loomed on the other side, about to step through and manifest, staring straight at me as though it could see into my soul. Off to the side, Mash gasped aloud, and the Director took in a sharp breath in anticipation. Rika made a noise of delighted surprise, like a kid in a candy shop. My own heart thudded in my chest, so loud that I was amazed the others couldn't hear it.
And then, the glow flickered, guttered and died, winking out suddenly and inexplicably, as the circle went inert. The door opened to the Throne of Heroes had shut, and standing before us all was nothing but empty air.
For several seconds, a heavy silence hung between us. Something like disappointment curled in my belly.
"What?" the Director breathed disbelievingly.
"Was…that supposed to happen?" asked Ritsuka.
"I don't see anybody," Rika commented, head swiveling as she looked around. "Oh! Maybe they're invisible!"
"Senpai," Mash said wearily.
"No!" the Director snapped. "No, that's not what was supposed to happen!"
She marched over to me and grabbed my hand, first the outstretched one and then the one at my side, inspecting the backs, and when she was done, she let go and grunted.
"No Command Spells, either," she said, frustrated. "I don't understand — your Master aptitude was among the highest in all of Team A! Only Wodime and Phamrsolone scored better! This should have been the easiest summoning we've done yet!"
Her thumb made its way back to her mouth, and she was chewing on her nail again.
"I don't understand," she muttered. "Why did it fail? Sure, this spot isn't ideal, but the theory is sound and this place is a Singularity — it should be easier to summon a Servant here than it was in Chaldea. Is it a flaw in the system or… No, maybe it has something to do with Chaldea's functionality being so far reduced? Damn it, I wish Lev was here, he'd know."
"Maybe you should try next, Director?" Ritsuka suggested.
I grimaced as the Director's mouth snapped shut so hard and fast that the clack of her teeth grinding together was audible. He couldn't have known, so I couldn't blame him for it, but he'd just stepped on the landmine of one of her biggest sore spots.
"I don't have any Master aptitude," the Director ground out, like admitting it physically pained her.
"What? Like, none at all?" Rika asked. "The Director of Chaldea can't be a Master?"
"I just told you a minute ago that my job isn't to be on the frontlines!" the Director snarled. "So it wasn't supposed to matter whether or not I had Master aptitude, was it?"
"Director," Mash said, trying to defuse the situation, "maybe we should try again? It's possible the system just wasn't prepared for the summoning, or maybe that with things as they are, we just need to try another time or two before it works."
The Director swallowed whatever she was about to say and instead shook her head. "No. Whatever the problem is, it won't be solved by bashing our heads against the wall trying to make it work. Standing here and shouting the incantation over and over again is just a waste of time."
"Maybe Senpai did something wrong?" Rika suggested hesitantly.
"Senpai?" I repeated incredulously.
Ritsuka offered me a patient smile. "Well, you are the senior most Master on this team, right?"
"Taylor was hand-picked to be a member of Team A, the most elite team in Chaldea," the Director said coldly. "She was recruited during the initial stages, back when we were being very selective about who joined. Only the best of the best were accepted as potential Masters. You two were pulled off the street to fill out the last few slots in our roster."
"Right. Senpai is a total badass. Shutting up," Rika chirped.
Ritsuka sighed wearily.
"Director," I said as gently as I could while still being firm, "they're new recruits."
Ease up on them, I didn't say. I liked to think she heard me, either way.
The Director grimaced.
"Right," she mumbled. "There's no point. I'm just wasting time and energy getting worked up by these neophytes."
"Gesundheit," Rika said.
"It wasn't a compliment, you — !" The Director reined herself in. "You're Japanese, how do you even know how to use that word anyway…"
"If we're not going to try again, we should start our investigation," I said, steering the conversation back on track. "We should also be on the lookout for a stable base of operations. Somewhere we can hole up in case this stretches on for days instead of hours."
"You're right," the Director acknowledged. "Right, yes, of course. Although with the state of the city, there might not be anyplace safe enough to rest for any appreciable amount of time."
Privately, I worried about that, too. It was good to know that Romani was alive and well and working on getting us out of here, it gave me a tangible goal to survive for, but losing eighty percent of Chaldea's functionality and staff would only stretch out the timeline for the repairs they needed to pull us back to base. Without a solid estimate on how long that would take, we really had no idea how long we'd have to stay alive in this hellhole.
"We'll worry about that when the time comes. For now, we need to know where we are and where we're going."
The Director's lips pursed. "The records showed that Fuyuki had two main districts that divided the city in half. The newer half was a metropolis, with office buildings, strip malls, and places like that. It was oriented more towards business and commerce. The older half was almost exclusively residential, with some houses dating back to the Victorian era, or, um, the…Meiji Restoration?"
"The revolution that put the Emperor back into nominal power," Ritsuka added helpfully. "It was the end of Japan's isolationist policies, so powerful Westerners took advantage to establish trade."
The Director eyed him, like she wasn't sure whether she should praise him or not for offering useful information.
"In any case, we're in the modern business half of the city," the Director said. She gestured at the buildings around us, consisting mostly of modern high-rises and skyscrapers. "The other half, the residential district, will be across the river that splits the city in two. We'll have to cross the bridge to get there."
I nodded.
"Points of interest?"
"There should be four main areas we'll want to look at," the Director said. "According to the records, there were four possible places the Holy Grail could manifest at the end of the Grail War, four hotspots where the ley lines converged and the magical power was dense enough to support it. One will be on the mountain, on the far outskirts of the city, past the edges of the residential district."
I grimaced and looked towards the left, but immediately felt silly, because I had no idea whether that was even the right direction. "That's going to be a hike."
"All the more so because that's likely to be our best bet at figuring out what happened in this Singularity," the Director added.
"My feet are sore just thinking about it," Rika whined.
I turned back to the Director. "The other three?"
She gestured at the ground beneath our feet.
"There's one that should be near here, but I think we can rule it out. If it was the source, there should've been a lot more going on than just a few skeletons. There's another one in the residential district across the river. The city's Second Owner built their house on top of it."
"Second Owner?" chirped Rika. The Director sighed.
"The Second Owner is a family of magi that have been entrusted with the management of a significant spiritual ground, Senpai," Mash explained patiently. "They're chosen by the Mage's Association to handle all of the magical phenomena that occur in that place. For a city like Fuyuki to support an event as intense as the Holy Grail War… Director, wouldn't that make this one of the most magically active lands in the country?"
"For what that's actually worth," the Director said. "Despite being an island nation, Japan is notoriously poor in terms of its spiritual grounds, to the point that there's really only two places in the whole country that are viable for large scale rituals like a Holy Grail War. It's part of why the Association has so little interest in it — or in the magi who come from it."
"I feel like I should be offended," Rika commented.
The Director quirked an eyebrow. "Oh? So that's what it takes to get you to pay attention."
"That's three," I noted, trying to cut off another confrontation. "Where's the fourth place?"
"An old Catholic mission," said the Director. "There should be a church near the edge of the city limits on this side of the river. It's the last possible place for the Grail to form at the end of the ritual, so at the very least, we should check it out and make sure there's nothing of interest going on over there."
My lips pulled into a frown. "You don't think there will be?"
The Director let out a slow breath through her nose. Resigned, that was a good word for the sense I got from her.
"It's possible, but I doubt we'll find anything except maybe more skeletons. If there are any Servants still left in this Singularity, they might have chosen it as a place to hide out. However, having said that, my estimation is that we won't find much of anything at any of the other three sites. Whatever is going on here, the most likely location for its epicenter is the mountain on the far edge of town."
She was probably right. No, even knowing so little about the functions of magic and its practitioners, I had the feeling that she was absolutely correct. The church, the Second Owner's house, whatever the last area near here was, they weren't necessarily bad places. In fact, since they were apparently so significant, they might be good places for us to plant our flag, so to speak, and hunker down when we needed to take a good, long rest.
But if I were someone fucking around with history? If I wanted to screw things up badly enough and make it as difficult as possible to untangle it all? I wouldn't have chosen any of those spots. Too easy to access. Too easy to get to. Good ambush spots, if I'd still had my power. Enough places to hide traps, to weave gossamer strands for any enemies to trip and tangle themselves up in.
Even so, the mountain… That was the best place. Remote, far less hospitable than the rest of the city, presumably rife with vegetation and even more places to hide traps. The most defensible spot, too. Not as convenient as a penthouse in the city or a mansion in the residential district, but that just made it better because it was the less obvious choice.
Despite that…
"We should check them anyway," I said. "All of them, just to make sure."
It wouldn't hurt to be thorough.
The Director's lips pursed, but she nodded. "Nearest first, then the church. If we don't find anything, we'll cross the river and check the Second Owner's house."
"Rest up, even get some sleep, if we can," I added.
"Then, we'll check the mountain."
I nodded. "Closest first?"
"Closest first," she agreed, and then she turned to Mash. "Mash, you're in front. I'm entrusting you with our safety, got it? If anything attacks, it's going to be up to you to handle them and protect us."
"Roger that, Director!" Mash said.
The Director pointed off in a vague direction, a winding pathway framed by low flames on either side. I could just make out what looked like a side road, or at least one that branched off from the main road that we were currently standing on.
"It should be about half a mile that direction," she said confidently. "In 2004… It would have been a civic center."
"Understood."
Mash reached down and hefted up her massive shield, swinging it around and wielding it like it was nothing more than a toy. Even having seen her do it before… Well, no, maybe I wasn't that surprised, in the end, just unused to casual displays of superhuman strength, these days. It had been two years since I'd last seen anything resembling the Brute capes I'd known in my younger years.
Holy fuck, that made me feel old, and I was barely twenty.
Mash turned in the direction of the first point and looked at us from over her shoulder.
"Please stay behind me, Master, Director, Miss Taylor. I will defend you with my life."
And thus began our investigation into Singularity F.
"Battle concluded, Master, Director," Mash reported as she let the bottom of her shield rest against the ground. The last of the skeletons vanished into dust.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka said brightly.
"Wow, you're so awesome, Mash!" Rika added. "You made that look so easy!"
Mash smiled bashfully, and it struck me that it must have been the most honest smile I'd ever seen on her face. How cruel it was that it was only happening here and now.
"Here, too," the Director said thoughtfully, brow furrowed.
"They were at the other site, too," I said. "They must be related."
"More skeletons appear the denser the concentration of magical energy, you mean?" the Director mused, cupping her chin. "It's starting to look that way. It's strange, though. Normally, when you talk about reanimated corpses, you'd expect to find a necromancer of some kind involved. But we haven't even encountered another living person, yet, let alone the magus who might be behind this."
If I translated that into powers as I knew them, that would mean there shouldn't be any minions without a Master to spawn and control them — no goblins without Nilbog, no ghosts without Crusader, no evil clones without Echidna. That was what made sense to me.
Of course, that didn't mean magic necessarily followed the same logic, as I'd been learning for the past two years.
"Could the magical energy itself be reanimating them?"
The Director opened her mouth, paused, and then let out a disgusted sigh. "I want to say no, but nothing here is making any sense to begin with! Ugh! So it's entirely possible that some sort of magical phenomenon has affected the ley lines, and any nexus points are causing spontaneous reanimation of human remains."
"Maybe it's a Servant, instead?" I suggested.
The Director grunted.
"It would have to be a Caster, in that case, and if they have the range to control their familiars from so far away, there wouldn't be anything stopping them from crushing us the same way," she said. "Otherwise, Romani would've notified us of a Servant's presence." She paused again and winced. "If…the sensors for it are still working properly."
"Doctor Roman was able to scan my Saint Graph earlier," Mash chimed in.
The Director shook her head. "Then even if the range was reduced, any Servant nearby enough to sic familiars on us would ping the sensors. Besides…"
She looked out over the ruins of the church, a mess of rubble so destroyed that there wasn't much of a single wall, let alone an entire building. The remnants were still smoldering as what was left of the pulpit and the pews burned down to nothing.
It was no better off than the rest of the city. In fact, it seemed as though someone had specifically gone out of their way to demolish this building in particular, smashing it to smithereens. Or maybe it had just been a casualty of some earlier battle, blown to pieces when a pair of Servants decided to duke it out inside.
Maybe two different Servants had had the same idea and killed themselves fighting over who got to claim the real estate.
That one was probably wishful thinking.
"…it's pretty obvious that there isn't anyone hiding here, isn't it?"
"If they were, they aren't anymore," I agreed.
Beep-beep!
The band on Ritsuka's wrist chimed, and an instant later, a specter of Romani appeared in the air. The Director snarled. "What is it now, Romani —"
"Director!" Romani cut across her. "I'm detecting the presence of a Servant nearby your location!"
Immediately, everyone was on alert, and Mash hurried forward, interposing herself between the group and the road we'd come from, and planted her shield like a barricade.
"Everyone, please get behind me!"
No one questioned her, we all just huddled behind the massive shape of her shield, silent and waiting. I had the thought that she might be facing the wrong direction, but if she had the instincts of the Heroic Spirit fused to her, body and soul, then she probably knew better about that than I did.
I glanced past the embers of the ruined church anyway and found nothing.
It made me feel helpless, standing there behind a teenage girl who had been in a grand total of maybe half a dozen actual fights in her entire life, unable to do anything else. I'd underestimated exactly how impotent being a Master instead of a direct combatant would make me feel, and I didn't like it at all.
A nail-biting moment later, Romani made a confused noise. "Huh? It's gone?"
The tension deflated like a balloon, and the noise that came from the Director's throat sounded like one. "Romani! Did you misread the sensor output, you dunce?"
"F-forgive me, Director, but there was a Servant there, no question about it!" Romani said quickly. "It appeared suddenly, stayed for a few seconds, and then it left! Almost like —"
"It came to observe us," I realized.
To…what? Scope out the competition? Or just to take a look at the strangers who had showed up where they shouldn't be? No, we couldn't afford to give this mystery Servant the benefit of the doubt. We had to assume it was an enemy, here to scout us out and get our measure.
The Director turned to me, wide-eyed. "Romani," she said, quieter and with a thread of anxiety in her tone, "are you sure you didn't just misread the sensors?"
"I'm positive, Director," said Romani.
"Oh no," the Director moaned. She started chewing on her thumbnail again. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. This is bad. There weren't supposed to be any Servants here that we had to fight. There's no way we can take on a fully fledged Servant as we are with nothing more than a Demi-Servant like Mash."
"What's wrong with Mash?" Ritsuka asked.
The Director whirled on him. "What's wrong with — are you seriously asking that? In the first place, do you see any weapons on her?" She gestured at Mash with one hand. "In the second, a battle between Servants is a battle between Noble Phantasms, and Mash doesn't even know the name of hers! If that Servant has an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, we're all dead!"
"Director." I placed my hand on her raised arm and gently forced it down. "Calm down."
"Calm down?" She turned on me, next. "How can I calm down? The instant that Servant comes back, there's nothing we can do!"
"And panicking won't change anything about any of that."
"The first thing you've said that makes sense!" the Director said.
"Director, wait, that's not fair," Ritsuka began.
"Fair?" she demanded. "None of this is fair! None of this is right! Not a single thing has gone right all day! Lev is…is…! Chaldea is in ruins! Almost the entirety of the staff is gone, and I'm stuck here with a half-baked Servant contracted to two novices who don't know a Command Spell from a Mystic Code — !"
"Everyone, please stop!" Mash shouted, and immediately, everyone else cut off. "Director. You're right, this situation isn't ideal. However, please, have faith in me. I'm still performing at optimal levels."
"There've been no significant fluctuations in her readings so far," Romani added.
"I understand that I don't meet all of the expectations that were placed on me for this project," Mash went on firmly, "but even so, I think… No, I know that I can handle any Servant that we might encounter. As long as I have my Masters' support, we can make it through this."
A moment of long silence stretched. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ritsuka and Rika had positioned themselves on either side of Mash, as though to lend her words weight, standing opposite the Director, with me caught in the middle.
The position of mediator… There was something darkly ironic about that.
"We need to keep investigating," I said at length. "If that Servant didn't attack, that means they're probably not confident they can take us out. If that's the case, then if I was in their shoes, I'd either regroup to find a more advantageous position or go for reinforcements."
Mash's brow furrowed. "If multiple Servants teamed up and attacked us…"
The Director heaved a deep, heavy breath. Her hands were still trembling.
"Even if you can fight off one, fighting two at the same time is too much," she said. We all pretended not to notice the quaver in her voice. "You're right. At this point, our best bet is to keep moving. Even if we wanted to find a good, easily defensible spot, this most certainly isn't it."
"Then the next point of interest?" I suggested.
"The Second Owner's house, in the residential district," the Director answered. "We'll need to cross the bridge for that. So be on your guard!" She pointed at Mash. "If we're going to be ambushed, the bridge is basically the ideal place to do it! Keep your eyes peeled for any enemies!"
She swung her finger around the group and landed on Ritsuka. "That goes for you, too! The more eyes we have keeping a lookout, the less chance we'll get hit with a surprise attack!"
Rika gave her a cheeky salute. "Roger that, Boss Lady!"
His sister didn't reply, but the glint in her eyes was familiar.
Like trying to wrangle Alec, I thought with a muted pang. Just as obstinate and just as determined to needle whenever she could.
"In any case, if there's nothing of interest left to investigate here," I said, "then we should get moving. Mash, you'll need to take point."
"Understood!" Mash nodded.
"Director —"
"The Masters should be immediately behind her," the Director said suddenly. "It's the best position for them to support her from." She pinned me with a stare. "Hebert, that means I'll be entrusting my protection to you."
I didn't reply immediately, just stared back, but her gaze didn't waver.
I wasn't blind to what a show of trust this was. But then, the Director had had my back for a while now, so maybe it wasn't that strange that she was so willing to trust me with hers.
"Director, are you sure that's a good idea?" Romani asked worriedly. "Taylor isn't a Servant, after all."
I didn't even glance in his direction. Neither did she.
"Understood, Director."
She nodded, and then turned to Mash. "Back the way we came. The main road may not be in the best of shape, but it'll be the most direct path to the bridge. If we're careful and conserve our energy in case that Servant comes back, it should take us about an hour and a half to reach it. Two, if we run into any more skeletons."
"If, she says," Rika mumbled.
A huff came from the Director's nostrils, but she didn't rise to the bait.
"Remember. Keep your eyes wide open. Mash may be a Demi-Servant instead of a regular Servant, but her performance will still drop if her Master is incapacitated. Or worse, killed."
"And of course, you getting killed is the worst case scenario," said Rika.
"That should go without saying! I'm the Director! I'm the most important person on this team!"
Somehow, we eventually managed to start the journey back into the city. Materially, nothing had really changed, but there was an air among the group as we walked that hadn't been there before. Everyone cast furtive glances about the buildings around us, no matter what shape they were in, looking for the ambush that we were all worried was coming. Every nook and cranny and every shadowed doorway seemed sinister in a way it wasn't earlier, and the nervousness had put a damper even on Rika's humor.
The ambush we were all waiting for didn't come. There were more groups of skeletons that waylaid us along the road, but they weren't any more threatening or intimidating than they had been before, and they were just as easily dispatched. Mash handled them with an ease and aplomb that reminded me a little of Defiant, back in his Armsmaster days. Graceful and efficient, and brutally effective.
If she was slowing down, I didn't see it. She seemed just as capable and just as calm as she was hours ago, when we first got dropped into this quaint little hellhole.
Perks of being a Servant, I guess, even a Demi-Servant.
By the time the big, red bridge came into view, we were all waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Even still, there was no sign of the Servant who had come by to scout us out while we were at the ruins of the old Catholic church.
"…Was it a fluke, after all?" the Director mumbled thoughtfully. "Maybe…no, just a sensor ghost? A blip caused by an accidental double read of Mash's Spirit Origin?"
My lips pulled tight. "We can't bet on that."
She looked around nervously up and down the banks of the river. No Servant materialized from the aether to try and kill us, but it did little to make her feel better.
Being entirely honest, I'd been expecting us to get attacked by now, too. We'd passed dozens of points where the Undersiders would've been able to stage a flawless ambush, made so numerous by the general state of the buildings around here, and anyone with a modicum of tactical prowess should have seen the opportunities for what they were just as easily.
So whatever the Servant who had been observing us was, it probably wasn't an Assassin — there was no way one of those wouldn't have taken the shot already. Not unless they were counting on the bridge itself as a trap.
An uncomfortably possible scenario.
A Caster…
Maybe. My money was on the Caster being wherever the source of the anomaly causing this Singularity was situated. It seemed to me that a Caster was the one most likely to be responsible for it in the first place, considering what I understood their skill sets tended to look like.
"We'd still know they were there before they came after us, right?" Ritsuka asked nervously. "So shouldn't it be fine?"
"Assassin class Servants have a skill called Presence Concealment, Senpai," Mash told him solemnly. "They can hide themselves until the moment they go on the attack, even from Chaldea's advanced sensors. If the Servant was an Assassin, we won't know until the attack has already begun."
"That's a cheery thought," Rika groaned. "So they could be watching us right now and we wouldn't even know it? I feel kinda icky."
"Think about that for a second," the Director said. "If it was an Assassin, would we even have known they were watching us back at the church in the first place? Use some common sense!"
I shook my head. "And if they wanted to lure us into an ambush?"
The Director grimaced. "Then why not just attack us at the church? Our guard was already down, so it's not like we were expecting them and prepared to defend ourselves."
A good point. Honestly, I agreed with her, but it didn't hurt to keep your mind open to even the stuff you thought unlikely.
I looked across the bridge. The light of the flames danced across the red, metal beams and the equally red suspension cables, making them look like they were on fire, too. "The road to hell" wouldn't have been an inappropriate comparison to make.
"We have to cross the bridge no matter what, right?"
"It's the only way to make it across the river," the Director said grimly. "Anything else is miles further inland, which means hours or even days more walking."
"Then we don't have much of a choice, do we?" said Ritsuka.
It seemed like we really didn't. Fuck. I didn't like this.
The Director took a deep, bracing breath. "Right."
"Keep your guard up," I added. "Mash, be ready with that shield."
"Understood, Miss Taylor."
Hesitantly, we started walking. Mash stayed in front, shield held in front of her as though to ward off danger, and she peered over one of the massive spokes that jutted out from the rounded center shape. We all stayed behind her, huddled as closely together as we could without tripping over one another. My ears were constantly straining for the slightest off sound, but aside from our footsteps, our breathing, and the low crackle of the flames, the city remained eerily silent.
"We're off to see the wizard," Rika sang to herself under her breath, so quiet that I barely heard her, "the wonderful Wizard of Oz…"
I glanced at her, thought about chastising her, but I seized the impulse before the words could even make it to my tongue, because I was trying to be better than the person I'd been before Gold Morning. It wasn't malicious or inappropriately jovial, anyway; the line of tension in her shoulders made it obvious she was using whatever she could to distract herself.
She was just a kid, I reminded myself. Older than I was when I became Skitter, sure, but far less experienced and far less prepared than even I had been on my first night out. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, in far over her head.
Still, there was no sign of the enemy. No one leapt out at us, no one fell out of the sky on top of us, and there wasn't even the blip of Romani reporting a Saint Graph reading nearby.
We were about halfway across when that changed.
Beep-beep
"Romani —"
"Director!" Romani shouted without waiting for her to answer. "There's a Servant near your location, North-Northwest!"
Mash stiffened and immediately swung around, facing a point off to the right as though she could see the Servant herself.
"Director!" she said urgently. "I'm picking it up now myself!"
Shit.
"Across the bridge!" I ordered. "Now, now!"
Mash hesitated and turned to Ritsuka. "Master —"
"Go!" said Ritsuka.
I broke into a sprint, and a bare moment later, the others fell into step with me. Mash kept pace, only instead of staying out ahead of us like she undoubtedly could have, she stayed to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glancing in the same direction every few seconds, like she was expecting to be attacked from there any second.
Maybe she was. I wasn't a Servant, so I couldn't detect them on my own, and I wasn't so accomplished a spellcaster that I could track the magical energy to find their location that way.
"Reading's…holding steady," Romani reported as we went. A burst of static punctuated his words. "They're not disappearing, this time. I'm sorry, the system can't get a better handle on the Spirit Origin or Saint Graph, so I can't even begin to tell you what kind of Servant it is or which Heroic Spirit it might be —"
"Just…keep an eye on it…Romani!" the Director huffed as we ran.
"Communications…still spotty," Romani said, interrupted by static halfway. "I…gen…location, but…more than… It's on…orthwest bank…the river."
"Romani?"
"Director," he said, and then the feed cut out.
"Damn it," the Director said. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
"Director," said Mash, "I think he was trying to say that the Servant is somewhere on the northwest bank of the river."
"I know what he was saying!" the Director snapped. "Damn…it! Why…is everything…falling apart…on me…"
The Director slowed to a halt as we cleared the end of the bridge. She hunched over, panting, hands on her knees. I stumbled to a stop a few paces beyond her, and Ritsuka and Rika did, too, hunching over next to the Director as they gulped down air. Only Mash seemed less bothered by the exertion of running across the bridge than I was.
"Director," I started, "we can't stay here."
The Director glared up at me. "Damn…it. So…unfair. You're not…even…breathing hard."
"Senpai…such a…badass," Rika whined.
"Director," I said more insistently.
She grimaced.
"The…Second Owner's house…should be…in the southern half…of the residential…district."
"Go," I said. None of them moved. "Go! If Mash can sense whoever that Servant is, you can bet they can sense her, too! We need to get moving before —"
"Master!" Mash shouted as she leapt, kicking off the ground.
Faster than I could blink, she'd interposed herself between Ritsuka, Rika, the Director, and the northern section of the riverbank, and at the same moment, a thunderous clang rang through the air as a dark figure materialized practically on top of her, feet planted on the surface of the shield and the butt of a polearm planted between her ankles. Her cloak and her long hair hadn't even had time to settle before the new woman flung herself away to land with the grace of a jumping spider, bent over in half, one hand planted on the ground, and her polearm held out behind her.
"Oh?"
The voice that came out of her was silky smooth and slippery, and as she straightened, she gave us a perfect view of her ample cleavage and her tall, slender body. Her cloak was ragged and ripped, but the pale skin she left on display was unblemished, with the exception of what seemed like red tribal markings. Her long hair fell almost to the ground, an inhumanly vivid shade of strawberry blonde.
But the most striking thing about her was not her body or her grace, it was her presence. A palpable aura radiated off of her, chilling the hot air, and it gave her the sense of some great predator, stalking its unsuspecting victims. A snake, coiled and ready to strike, to swallow us whole.
"You're better than I thought you would be," she purred. "To have blocked me so effortlessly… My, my… And behind you…"
Her gaze traveled across Ritsuka, Rika, and the Director, and when it landed on me, I felt my insides freeze and all my muscles seize, like they'd all locked up at once. I couldn't have moved to save my life, not even to breathe. It was like I'd been turned to stone.
She licked her lips, and her gaze turned back to Mash. The instant she looked away, I could move again.
"Two unknown Masters and some more fresh meat."
"Director, that's…"
"A Servant. Judging by that weapon, a Lancer," the Director said, voice quivering. She shaped one hand into a gun and braced it with the other, although it didn't quite stop her arm from shaking. "Kuh…! O-of all the lousy luck! The first thing we run into that isn't a skeleton, and it's not even a living person!"
The woman chuckled. "My, a woman could take offense to that."
"She appears to be operating without a Master," Mash noted.
"Nothing about this situation is normal!" the Director bit out. "In a situation like this, where everything has gone wrong, I'm not surprised to find a Servant without a Master!"
"I thought you said Servants couldn't survive without a Master to support them!" Rika said.
"Ordinarily!" the Director shot back. "Does anything about this seem ordinary to you?"
"She's one of the Servants from the Holy Grail War, right?" Ritsuka asked hurriedly. "Then, if we just explain that we're not a part of it —"
"It doesn't work that way," I cut across him. I addressed the woman. "Right?"
The woman smirked, cold and cruel.
"When fresh prey stumble into my hunting ground, I can hunt them down at my leisure, can't I? The only thing my prey can do is try to run or try to fight."
She hefted her polearm, turning the hooked blade towards us, and her off hand glided sensuously up the haft.
"So? Are you going to try to run? Or are you going to try and fight me?"
The Director bit her lip hard enough to bruise. Rika took a step backwards, face contorted with fear. Even Ritsuka's hands were shaking.
Except for Mash, who squared her shoulders and took a brave step forward, holding up her shield. The woman's smirk grew into a bloodthirsty grin.
"Fight, then! Good! Try not to die too quickly!"
Mash and the woman both moved at once, each kicking off the ground and throwing themselves at the other. They met somewhere in the middle, closer to our position than to hers, and Mash's shield shrieked as the blade of the polearm scraped down its surface, to no apparent effect. Mash planted her feet and pushed forward.
But the woman was not deterred. She pulled backwards, and then surged back into action, swinging faster and faster with expert skill. Each blow glanced off of Mash's shield, but if the thunderous clang of each blow wasn't enough to tell me how hard each hit was, the way Mash's shoulders and arms braced for the impact would have been more than enough to clue me in.
The woman laughed all the while.
"You're new, aren't you? You're still getting used to what it's like being a Servant! I can tell! The way you move, the way you don't move, the openings you miss even when they should be obvious — it's all you can do to try and keep up!"
Mash grunted and didn't rise to the bait, she just kept blocking each attack. She weathered all of them, refusing to buckle, refusing to be beat down, holding that massive shield aloft as though it were the battlements of a castle and the woman's blows a battering ram. Neither she nor her shield gave a single inch.
But it was obvious even to the others that she was outmatched.
"Mash…" Ritsuka whispered.
"There has to be something we can do!" Rika said frantically.
"Don't be ridiculous!" the Director shouted back. "In a battle between Servants, the Master has only one place: in the back!"
Good thing I'm not a proper Master, then, isn't it?
I pivoted on my heel and took off running at full sprint, aiming for the main road that led further into the residential district.
"Senpai!" Ritsuka shouted after me.
"T-Taylor," the Director called, "where are you going?"
"Did you think I'd let you leave that easily?"
Chains whipped out, crisscrossing over the space between the buildings. They wrapped around whatever they could, whether that was a lamppost, a wooden beam jutting up from the corpse of a house, or even just steel rebar, and they formed a tightly woven net that blocked off my path.
I spun back around, and the woman was dashing towards me — leisurely, compared to her lightning fast attacks against Mash, but still too fast for a human to outpace. Her eyes seemed to glow as they pinned me in place, and my limbs froze again.
"My prey isn't allowed to escape!"
It wasn't fear that had paralyzed me earlier. No, of course not. I'd faced down Lung, Leviathan, Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna, Behemoth, Nilbog, Scion. I'd spoken with the Faerie Queen as equals, killed Alexandria with bugs, survived being cut in half. A single woman with a scythe, no matter how superhuman she was, didn't hold a candle to all of the things I'd been through.
The clue was eye contact.
Just by meeting my eyes, she'd been able to freeze me in place. I'd learned a lot over the past two years, and one of the subjects was Mystic Eyes, specialized attributes activated through eye contact and line of sight. A Servant, a Heroic Spirit, who possessed a set of Mystic Eyes that could freeze you in place?
I would've been embarrassed if it had taken me more than that to figure it out.
"Medusa!"
Magical energy circulated through my body, and the spell was broken, shattered with ease, now that I knew what it was and could fight it. Magic like this relied on surprise, on the victim not knowing what they were up against. It was much weaker if your guard was up.
My arm rose. Black light gathered on my fingertips. With a direct line to my target, I couldn't miss.
"Gandr!"
And a ball of black energy flew at her face.
The thing about people, even capes with powers? They still had reflexes. Things they did automatically, things they'd trained themselves to do, over and over again for years. Ingrained responses, either instinctual or muscle memory. Pyrokinetics could get used to their own flames, sure, but it took a lot of experience fighting to keep yourself from flinching away whenever someone else threw fire at you. Even high level Brutes still dodged and winced until they got used to being invulnerable.
Servants were no different.
Medusa was a Lancer, one of the Knight classes, which meant she had some form of Magic Resistance as a rule. My dinky, little Gandr was as harmless to her as a gnat. But even if she knew that intellectually, her body reacted without thinking, and instead of taking the shot and letting it splash off of her futilely, she deflected it with her…scythe, or whatever that thing counted as, because her eyes tracked an incoming projectile and the response she'd trained into herself activated automatically.
She slid to a halt as my Gandr glanced off of her and dissipated. She snarled at me.
"You…!"
"Now, Mash!" I shouted.
Medusa whipped around — and as she went to swing her scythe into a counterattack, I reached out with my prosthetic's phantom limb and took a solid grip of it.
It wasn't enough to truly stop her. If she exerted any real effort, she could have wrenched it away and ignored me completely.
But the resistance distracted her, because she wasn't expecting it, and her head and torso turned back towards me, her eyes wide.
"Wha —"
"Raah!"
And Mash leapt at her, swung that massive shield around right into her face. Medusa went flying, soaring across the ground, to tumble to a halt some twenty feet away, crumpled into a heap.
"Yes!" shouted Rika.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka added.
They started over our way.
"Ritsuka, Rika!" I barked out at them. "Don't get any closer!"
"What?" Rika squawked. "But Senpai, it's over!"
"Mash," I said, making sure to keep my eyes on Medusa.
She nodded. "Understood!"
The lump on the ground chuckled, low and ominous, and slowly, Medusa pulled herself to her feet.
"You kids should listen to your more experienced friend," she purred. "You two really are fresh-faced, if you thought that was enough to defeat me."
She turned back around, grinning a demented grin, and her tongue snaked out to lick up the trail of blood that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She slurped it noisily, like she was enjoying a fine meal.
"Not that her experience will mean anything," Medusa said gleefully. "After all, you worked oh so hard to get that one shot in on me, and all you have to show for it is a little bit of blood."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Taylor is a badass. That is all.
I decided to mix things up a little and fill out the Singularity by switching in Medusa and blackened Emiya instead of just generic shadow Servants.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
Medusa was uninjured. Everything that had been put into getting one good hit on her, and we hadn't even made it count by dealing a hard blow.
I gritted my teeth, mind racing.
She was right, much as I hated admitting it. I was down to five Gandr shots before I had to rest, Mash was outmatched, and that little distraction trick I'd used probably wouldn't work twice.
We couldn't win. Not as we were. We didn't have a good enough position, we didn't have enough tactics that would work against someone like her, and we just plain didn't have the firepower to finish the job.
The only real option was to retreat. But none of us was fast enough to outrun her, and she could just chase us down at her leisure, so the only way for the rest of us to escape was…
"Mash…"
The words wouldn't come out of my mouth.
Was I really going to be that person again? To use and discard her, like she was a tool that could be replaced so easily?
What happened to my decision to focus more on the people than the goals?
"Miss Taylor," said Mash, voice steady and strong, "please, take Master and the Director and escape. I can't defeat her, but I'll buy you as much time as I can."
"Mash!" Ritsuka shouted, horrified.
"We're not gonna leave you here!" said Rika.
Mash…
You really were the best person on Team A, weren't you? Willing and able to stare death in the face in your first real battle for a couple of strangers and two people who might as well have been, all without flinching.
"We'll hold her off," my mouth wound up saying. "Director… Take the twins and get going. Find a safe place to hole up until Romani can get you out of here."
I could feel the Director's eyes on me, like they were boring a hole in the back of my skull — heh. Wasn't that an ironic comparison?
"Taylor…"
"Damn it!" Ritsuka said. "Do you think we're just going to leave the both of you to die?"
"I expect you to remember that this is larger than you or me," I rebuked him sharply. "The most important thing is getting as many of us back as we can, and the only one of us here who has any combat experience to help out Mash is me."
I stared down Medusa, trying to project a confidence I didn't really feel. "I already managed to pull one over on her once. I'm sure I'll think of something."
A deep, masculine voice echoed as it broke in, chuckling.
"You have to admit, Lancer, she got you good."
Mash tensed, and then she rushed over to place herself in front of me. "Miss Taylor!"
Over the spoke of her shield, a man faded into view, hefting a staff and wearing sky blue robes lined with white fur. He was facing towards Medusa and away from us.
"Another Servant?" the Director screeched.
"Even if she only got that glancing blow in," the newcomer said, "that gumption of hers got me up off my ass."
Medusa's eyes narrowed. "You!"
The newcomer pulled back his hood, and long, dark hair fell freely over his neck and shoulders. The glint of something silvery hung from his ears, the one I could see, anyway.
"Whaddya say we finally settle that score of ours?"
"Caster…!" Medusa seethed.
"Caster?" I asked sharply.
If he was here… No, did that mean he wasn't the one behind the Singularity? Or did he have some kind of other ulterior motive? If he was the one who threw things off track, why would he show himself now, of all times, here, of all places, instead of just letting Medusa finish us all off?
The so-called Caster glanced at me over his shoulder, and eyes the color of freshly spilled blood glinted merrily as his lips stretched into a grin. He lifted one hand in an irreverent wave. "At your service, Princess."
I looked at him incredulously.
"Princess?"
"I saw your group scoping out the old church a while back," Caster explained easily, which…I didn't really know how I was supposed to take, yet. "Wasn't quite sure what to make of you. Two Masters, a pair of magi, and one, lonely Servant? Curious thing to find, in a city where everyone else is dead, and the little missy there doesn't match any of the old competitors in this Holy Grail War."
He gestured at Mash, who blinked at him, nonplussed.
"Because we're not!" the Director shouted over at him. She stomped her foot. "Geez! Why is that so hard to understand? We're from Chaldea! Chal! De! A! We're here to investigate what went wrong with the Holy Grail War, not participate in it!"
Caster hummed thoughtfully.
"Chaldea, eh? Never heard of it," he said, blasé.
The Director let out an inarticulate scream, like she just couldn't take any more nonsense.
"Caster," said Medusa lowly, teeth gritted, "why are you siding with this group of strays?"
"How could I not, after I saw Princess's clever, little trick? It's not every day you see a scrawny magus get one over on a Servant, especially one of the Knight classes," Caster shot back with humor. I hoped he didn't stick with that nickname, because I really didn't like how it infantilized me. "And the way these two here were so bravely willing to sacrifice their lives…I'd be ashamed as a heroic spirit, if I just sat back and let that go without lending a hand. Plus…"
The air froze. The presence I'd felt before from Medusa radiated now off of Caster, only his seemed directed at her instead of just spread out like frost across the whole area. The smile had vanished from his face.
"Do I need a reason to help them kill a monster like you, Lancer?"
Medusa snarled and took a step forward, teeth gnashing, and then, as though she'd had an epiphany, she stepped back and her expression fell into one of surprise. It was only a second later that her malicious grin was back and she started chuckling. Her grip on her scythe tightened.
"No, this is fine," she said, her voice a purr. "Excellent, in fact. It makes no difference if you help them out, Caster, all you've done now is save me the trouble of finding you and finishing the job myself."
"Oh?" Caster asked, something in his tone. "You say that like the outcome has already been decided, Lancer. Are you really that confident you can take on two Servants by yourself, especially if one of them is me?"
Medusa laughed a deep, throaty laugh. "As I recall, Caster, the one who retreated from our last battle was you. If you think a little bit of backup from that baby Servant behind you is enough to make up for your own weakness, then I'll be happy to break that illusion for you."
"How kind of you," Caster drawled.
"Now." Medusa crouched down, body low to the ground, spiderlike. Her hair fell about her back and over her sides like a cloak, and it almost seemed to have a life of its own. "How should I do this? I think it would be most fitting if I left you alive for the very end, Caster, just so that you could watch me kill these stragglers without being able to stop it."
Caster grinned, twirling his staff to brandish it out at his opponent. "If you're going to underestimate me that badly, don't complain when I beat you, Lancer!"
He glanced back at me. "Hey, Princess. You're a Master, too, right? There's no Command Spells on your hands, but I get that sense about you."
"I was supposed to be, yes," I said neutrally. "Why? Did you have something in mind?"
My mind raced through the possibilities. Was he about to ask what I thought he was about to ask? True, we'd been trying to summon another Servant to help out earlier, but could we trust this one, when it seemed he was a competitor in this Holy Grail War that had gone sideways? Was this just a matter of him eliminating the competition, or could we trust him to stick with us through to the end?
Maybe the better question was whether or not we had a choice, considering the situation. Beggars and choosers, and all that.
"Let's form a contract, you and me," Caster said, his grin taking a sharklike edge. "After all, your group looks like it's in need of another Servant, and me, well, hey, I'm currently without a Master. Way I see it, we can both help each other out, here."
Just like I'd thought.
And I wasn't in a position to refuse him. Not with the situation as dire as it was. I just had to figure out how much that factored into whatever his plans were and whether those plans would be something we needed to worry about later on down the line.
"Miss Taylor," Mash whispered worriedly.
"I know," I mumbled back. Louder, I said, "I accept, Caster."
He thrust his hand out over the spoke of Mash's shield, and before I could think better of it, I took it with my own.
"Then from this moment forth, my sword shall be with you."
Like the lyrics to an old song, the response rolled off of my lips. "And my fate shall be with you."
A flash of light, a brief burst of pain that surged up my nerves, and my left hand spasmed as three Command Spells drew themselves in red over the back. I didn't bother examining the design, beyond confirming that it was there.
At the very least, I should be able to order him to kill himself if he tried to betray us. A cold comfort, but a failsafe like that made me feel better, somehow.
Caster took his hand back as his brow drew down and he tilted his chin towards his chest. "Looks like our contract is set, Master."
Medusa burst out into laughter, cackling madly.
"You've reached a new low, Caster! Are you really so desperate that you'd accept even a scurrying rat as your Master, now?"
"Heh. If you think I'm weaker now that I have a more stable connection to this world, you've really got another thing coming, Lancer."
"Well, it doesn't matter, either way." Medusa brandished her scythe. Her eyes seemed to glow from beneath her hood. "I hope you enjoy the brief moment of having a Master again, Caster. It won't last you very long."
"Long enough for me to finish you off, first!"
Medusa kicked off the ground, streaking towards Caster like a rocket, but Caster didn't dodge, like I might have expected, he caught the haft of her scythe with his staff and twisted. His free hand came up and took hold of it just under the mount for the blade, and with expert skill, he maneuvered the thick crook on the end of his staff directly in front of Medusa's face.
The etchings on it glowed bright orange, and then a ball of fire exploded out of it — and into Medusa's eyes.
"Agh!"
She stumbled backwards, hand over her eyes, even though the rest of her looked undamaged, and Caster took advantage of the opening to etch a series of runes in the air with such rapid speed that it took even me by surprise. The runes glowed brightly, and then ignited, and an enormous explosion erupted out of them, flinging Medusa backwards.
The entire thing happened so quickly that my hair hadn't even had time to settle after it had been blown back by the impact of their initial clash.
Medusa landed on her feet like a cat, but she was worse for wear by the explosion. Burns pockmarked her exposed skin, and parts of her bodysuit had been torn away, but for all that she looked injured, it still seemed to be nothing more than superficial damage. At the very least, it hadn't done much more than make her angry.
"Caster!" she howled.
She kicked off the ground again, throwing up chunks of asphalt into the air, and raced towards Caster again, but Mash took off at the same time, interposing herself between them with her shield up to take the blow. Medusa impacted with a thunderous clang, and Mash grunted as the force of it threatened to buckle her.
"Get out of my way, you brat!" Medusa spat.
Caster thrust his staff out over Mash's shoulder and past one of the spokes of her shield, but Medusa had learned her lesson and used the circular base as a springboard to leap out of the way of the next fireball and up into the air. She flung out her arms, and her hair took on a life of its own, growing out into lengths of chain that homed in on Mash as though to bind her in place so that she couldn't interfere.
She didn't even have the chance to get out of the way before Caster had moved in front of her, and he swept his staff out in an arc, the etchings aglow, and traced a quick circle of runes. Medusa's chains slammed into it and bounced off like rain, veering into wildly different trajectories that were nowhere near her opponents.
I retreated away from the action as Medusa landed, because any one of the attacks being thrown around by either party would probably kill me if they spilled over enough or Mash or Caster miscalculated. The fight continued on as though nothing had changed, and if I put aside my pride, me disengaging didn't meaningfully change anything anyway.
"Let me see!" the Director hissed as I rejoined their group.
Dutifully, I held out my left hand for her inspection, and she grabbed at it like a starving beggar, examining the strokes of my Command Spells. I let her at it as I watched Caster and Mash fight Medusa, dancing around the battlefield and throwing up chunks of asphalt as they moved. Mash wasn't really contributing much — Medusa was far and away more skilled and comfortable with her abilities, compared to Mash, who was very, very new to them. Caster was much the same, though, and although he was mostly playing on the defensive, deflecting attacks and slowly encircling the area so that Medusa's back was to us, he was just as comfortable as Medusa was and equally as confident.
None of his attacks seemed to be landing, though. Medusa was just too fast and knew them just too well, because what she could avoid, she avoided, and what she could handle without issue, she deflected or just pushed through.
"These aren't Chaldea's Command Spells," the Director announced.
My head whipped around, and the twins, who had been entranced by the fight, turned their attention towards her as well.
"They aren't?"
"Eh?" Rika said incredulously. "But they look just like ours!"
She thrust her hand out, showing off her own set, and Ritsuka glanced down at his, but while his and his sister's were similar, even they weren't quite the same, and they both looked vastly different from mine. Theirs looked kind of like a shield with a stylized face, only the face was different between them, whereas mine… I wasn't quite sure what mine looked like, exactly, and it didn't seem important to think about it too strongly, just then.
"W-well," Rika hedged, "maybe not exactly like ours…"
"What does it mean?" I asked the Director.
She grimaced.
"Well, you did make a contract with a Servant of this sideways Holy Grail War… If I had to guess, I'd say these are Command Spells handed out by the Grail, which means that it's still around and performing at least some of its functions."
"Didn't we already know that?" Ristuka asked. "I mean, the Servants are summoned by the Holy Grail, right? So would they even still be around if it wasn't here, too?"
"O-of course I considered that angle!" the Director stammered, flustered. "B-but this whole situation is strange, you know, so even that wasn't a guarantee — n-no, that's not the important part! Hebert." She looked me in the eye. "As a Master of this Holy Grail War, you should have something called Master's Clairvoyance. Chaldea's in bad shape right now, so our version probably doesn't work, but you should be able to see the stats and abilities of any of the Servants we run into, here."
"That's right," I mumbled. "You mentioned that back during Team A's training."
The ability to see through a Servant's skills and Noble Phantasms simply by observing them in action… There'd been talk that it might not work on any Servant not contracted to Chaldea's FATE system, but there was no way to know until we tested it in the field. With all of the damage Chaldea had taken as a result of the attack on the facility, it was likely that it wasn't even functioning properly now, anyway.
But by contracting with Caster, I'd just given our team an advantage against any of the Servants still around from this Grail War.
I turned back towards the fight in time to see Caster swipe his hand through the air again, sending a stream of fireballs at Medusa. She danced around them with serpentine grace, and what she couldn't dodge, she deflected into the ground, where they exploded like hand grenades. Mash came up from the side, leaping into the air, and with a shout, she tried to slam the bottom edge of her shield into Medusa.
Medusa didn't let her and jumped out of the way, then raced back towards Mash and used the shield as a springboard again to fling herself at Caster.
"If you focus, you should be able to see their stats," the Director said. "In fact, you should be able to contact Caster directly with your mind, as well —"
"Director."
Her jaw snapped shut with an audible click.
I glanced at Caster and honed my focus, and as I did, his skills and abilities unfolded in my mind's eye.
Rune Magic — duh, I thought. He'd been using it the whole fight.
Protection from Arrows and Disengage. That explained how he'd been able to come away from, at a guess, multiple fights with Medusa apparently unscathed. Disengage was a useful skill for retreating, but the fact that he had it meant I should be on the lookout for him cutting and running, no matter what he'd said about jumping in because he couldn't let us die after witnessing our willingness to sacrifice ourselves.
He was a Caster. When half the rest of the classes had some measure of resistance to your attacks, you had to get sneaky and creative about getting around those. If it were me, I'd never engage the enemy outside of my specially prepared territory, where they would run into traps and tricks at every corner.
A quick glance at Mash gave me nothing. That was about what I'd been expecting.
When I looked at Medusa, I could see her Mystic Eyes skill, along with Monstrous Strength and Independent Action, a skill normally reserved for the Archer class. Her Class skill, however, in particular her Magic Resistance…
Convenient. Well, not as convenient as her not having one to begin with, but still good for us, in that it wasn't as high as it could be. Maybe that low a rank was some kind of side effect of not having a Master, or even whatever had caused the Singularity itself?
Not important, for now.
I focused hard, trying to thrust my mind outwards and towards Caster. I felt a little silly doing it.
Caster?
In the fight, Caster's step hitched for a bare fraction of a second, so short that I barely caught it, and as he deflected Medusa again, I thought I saw his eyes flicker over in my direction.
Ho? The word came through to me as though across a distance, foreign and intrusive, but not intruding. Looks like I landed a pretty competent Master, indeed. Need something, Master?
He kept fighting, but there was something a little more cautious in his movements, now. I had to be fast — the longer I took, the more I distracted him, and the longer he was distracted, the greater the odds of something going wrong.
Monstrous Strength, Independent Action, and Mystic Eyes, I projected at him. The important part is her Magic Resistance. It's only rank C. If you've got a strong enough spell to throw at her, you should be able to take her out in one hit.
Caster grinned. Good to know. Means this trick should handle her just fine.
Their dance continued. Caster continued to circle, breaking stride only to attack or defend. Medusa ping-ponged between him and Mash, but between Mash's massive shield and Caster's surprising skill with his staff, she wasn't landing a clean hit. Not with the business end of her scythe.
Neither were Mash and Caster, though.
I chewed on my bottom lip, looking for an opening, but I could feel Caster drawing on my magical energy as he fought. Not much, because he obviously had way more than I could ever hope to, but enough that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to risk using a Gandr to try and distract Medusa again.
If it was truly desperate, I might have. Even with Caster apparently working on his own plan, the itch to get involved was strong. Leaving things to others had never been my strong suit; I preferred being in the thick of things, and maybe that was a leftover from my passenger's influence and maybe my passenger had chosen me specifically because it was part of who I was, but either way, that was the way it was.
If I passed out, though, what would that mean for Caster? Now that he had a Master, was his performance tied more to me than Medusa's apparent freedom gave her? It wasn't worth risking it, not when Caster seemed so confident.
Caster completed his circle. Mash rushed in, trying to bash Medusa with her shield, and when Medusa stepped back to dodge it, she swung that shield almost like it was an ax, swiping at Medusa with the longest spoke at the bottom. Medusa stepped back again to avoid it, then went on the offensive with a flurry of attacks from her scythe. Mash blocked each blow, grunting under the force of them.
"Girlie!" Caster shouted. "Get back!"
Mash braced herself, and in the moment between one swing and the next, she leapt backwards. Medusa made to follow, but she had to dodge out of the way again when Caster flung another huge fireball at her, jumping to clear the distance. She landed in what I realized a moment later was the center of the circle Caster had been walking, or close enough to it.
A rune lit up beneath her foot, and she looked down at it, shock written across her face. "What —"
"See ya later, Lancer."
— and a circle of glowing runes ignited around her, surging upwards in pillars of flame that twisted and snaked around each other, spinning, swirling, combining into a fiery twister that spat tongues of red and orange. The bulk stayed contained, never leaving the circle of runes from which it had all sprouted, and the air roared as the fire sucked in oxygen to keep going, to keep burning, to get hotter and hotter and hotter.
Even compacted as it was, I could feel the heat from all the way over where I stood.
For an instant, I was back on my first night out, Lung towering over me, the heat of his flaming body piercing the cold, spring night and pressing down on me. My pepper spray had blinded him, but only momentarily, and any single move would give me away. All it would take was one blow, one stream of fire from his fists, and I was dead.
I wished I could believe it was going to be that easy, here. This… This was on a different scale from the fireballs Caster had been flinging willy nilly before. Not a Noble Phantasm, I didn't think, but still a step above regular attacks. A finishing move, that might be a good way of putting it. An attack designed not to maim, injure, or distract, but to make sure the enemy died.
But if there was one thing I'd learned as a cape, it was that "finishing moves" weren't necessarily just that. Not if your enemy had a way of surviving it. Not if they were just so tough they could shake it off.
The twister kept burning, and I waited, making sure not to blink, so I could be ready if Medusa came out of that thing alive.
Air alone wasn't enough to keep it going forever, though, and eventually, the gouts of flame that spawned this hellish tornado ran dry. The twister snuffed itself out with a low whump, and a column of smoke rose up into the sky, mushrooming as the hotter air pushed the cooler air out of the way.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Of Medusa, nothing remained except particles of light that glittered and faded away just as quickly.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The good news: two chapters this weekend.
The bad news: my financial situation is still tenuous, so that hasn't changed from a few weeks ago.
The worst news: the reason you're getting two chapters this weekend is because Grandma passed away, for those who haven't been keeping up with the thread. All of the funerary services are being put off until next weekend so my sister can be here for them. Either way, however, I was going to take next weekend off, so I'm giving you next weekend's chapter this weekend, too.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
A long moment of silence stretched out between us all as the final bits of Medusa vanished and the heat of Caster's attack began to die down. Only when it became obvious that she was well and truly gone and wouldn't spring out of the ground to land a devastating surprise attack did Mash finally relax, sagging a little as she let out a long, weary sigh.
Caster, too, relaxed, smirking a little as he slung his staff across his shoulders and rested his arms atop it.
"Well," he said with a touch of smugness. "Finally got rid of that bitch."
That seemed to be the stroke that broke the dam, because behind me, the Director let out a relieved sigh of her own, even as Rika cheered.
"Ding-dong, the Wicked Witch is dead!"
"Seriously," the Director groused, "you grew up in Japan. How do you know all of these references?"
"I'm glad we all made it through that," Ritsuka said with a smile. "I was a little worried for a while, there."
"Mash, you were great!" Rika jabbered enthusiastically. "And Caster! Caster! That fire tornado at the end, that was so awesome! Like, wow, what kind of magic was that?"
"Rune magic," Caster answered with the patient satisfaction of a man used to receiving praise. "A little something I learned from my teacher. It's not the way I like to do things, but it got the job done, wouldn't you say, Little Missy?"
"Boy, did it ever!"
"Now what?"
The cheering and celebrations stopped and everyone turned to me.
After a moment, it was the Director who replied. "We need to get to the Second Owner's house and continue our investigation."
"I meant for you, Caster," I said. "What are you going to do, now that we've beaten Medusa?"
Does our partnership end here?
Caster hummed thoughtfully, stroking his chin. "You guys said you're with some group called Chaldea, right? You're here to investigate why this Grail War went so far off course?"
"Th-that's right!" the Director said. "We're the Chaldea Security Organization, and we're here to correct the historical irregularities that caused this Grail War to deviate from proper human history!"
"Director," I rebuked her. Startled, she looked towards me, like she didn't know why I was scolding her.
Sometimes, it was all too easy to forget that she was a very young woman trying to fill very big shoes.
"Correct historical irregularities, eh?" Caster mused. "Well, I don't really know anything about that sort of thing, so the way I see it, there's a Grail War in need of winning, and I intend to see my new Master across the finish line."
Of course.
Because he was a Servant summoned by the Grail into this Holy Grail War, it was only natural that his only motivation was to complete the Grail War and get his wish. It wasn't in any way a surprise, and I'd honestly been expecting it.
"So you can make your wish, even if someone messing with the Grail winds up being the reason this all happened in the first place?"
"Miss Taylor," Mash started. "We don't yet know that the Grail is the cause for this Singularity."
We don't know that it isn't, I didn't say. I just kept staring straight into Caster's blood red eyes.
"Heh." Caster grinned at me. "Sorry to disappoint. Or maybe I should say, sorry I don't live down to those expectations of yours? I don't have a wish for the Grail."
"You don't?" the Director echoed incredulously.
"Everyone has a wish for the Grail," I said quietly.
Even me.
Even if what I felt towards the path I took wasn't quite the same as regret, the idea of having a second chance to do things over, to do them better, was appealing in a way that would have been far too tempting to a younger me.
"Unlike the rest of this rabble, I didn't come here to get a second chance at life or undo some mistake I made while I was alive." Caster's grin took on edges. "I just figured, how many chances was I gonna get to duke it out with some of the greatest heroes in all of history? A good fight against a bunch of strong enemies…I couldn't resist."
My brow furrowed.
"That's it? You're here…because it sounded like fun?"
Seriously? Just which Heroic Spirit was this, that he was more interested in duking it out with other heroes than making a wish on an omnipotent wish-granting device? When tragic deaths and terrible twists of fate were so common in myth and legend, who had lived so well in spite of those that he was content just to have a good time while it lasted?
"That does sound a little unbelievable," the Director said skeptically. "A Servant answering the call for the Holy Grail War, but not having a wish he wants fulfilled? Wouldn't the Grail choose a Heroic Spirit with a stronger motivation than that? As a Caster, to boot!"
Beep-beep!
"I finally managed to reestablish a connection!" Romani said as he reappeared. "Director, there's a Servant —"
He choked off as he saw Caster.
"— right on top of you," he finished meekly.
"Oh?"
Caster stepped towards him, rubbing at his chin as he examined Romani's projected image. "This is… Some form of communication through magecraft? Pretty slick setup."
"A-ah, yes, I mean…" Romani cleared his throat. "Forgive me. I-I don't know which Heroic Spirit you are, but I would like to humbly extend my gratitude —"
"Romani," the Director said irritably, "stop trying to kiss his ass."
"D-Director!"
Rika giggled, the way little girls did the first time they heard their mothers swear.
"You can leave out all of that formal bullshit," Caster agreed, waving a hand as though to ward away an unpleasant smell. "Get straight to the point."
"R-right." Romani looked dismayed. "A-ah. Ahem. First off, can I confirm that you're a Servant of this local Holy Grail War? Or what it was supposed to be, in any case?"
"We've already established that," the Director told him flatly. "He's a Caster class Servant, although he hasn't shared his true name, yet. He helped us defeat a Lancer class Servant, true name Medusa."
Romani choked. "M-Medusa? And you're all okay?"
"Everything's fine, Doctor Roman!" Rika said brightly, waving at him. Romani gave a sigh of relief and turned to something on the monitors he was sitting in front of.
"Rika, Ritsuka, Mash, yes, your vitals are all good," he said. "Director, I haven't been able to get a good read on you, but if you're well enough to scold me —"
"Romani," she growled threateningly.
"— a-and Taylor, you're showing some strain, but it's all within acceptable tolerances, so I'm not too worried about that."
Strain. From supporting Caster, no doubt. It wasn't too bad, although I could definitely notice the dip in my own energy. A constant pulling sensation that felt like it was attached to some place inside of me that was impossible to describe, a place that was both in my body and yet beyond it. The fight with Medusa had been pretty quick, but I got the feeling… If Caster got into three more fights of that length and intensity, I could handle that, but only barely.
I cast him a surreptitious glance. He looked none the worse for wear. He didn't even seem to be breathing hard, although how much Servants even needed to breathe, I didn't really know for sure.
"That said," Romani went on. "Caster. If you and Lancer were both participants of this Holy Grail War… Are you aware of the circumstances of the other five Servants?"
Caster hummed and crossed his arms. "This whole mess has been a shitshow for quite a while. Saber is the one guarding the Grail. She defeated the others and did something that converted them into these…caricatures, like you saw with Lancer. Lancer, Archer, Rider, Assassin, Berserker, they were all beaten one by one and transformed into these monsters. Corrupted, I guess you could say."
"Do you know how this all started?" I asked.
Caster shrugged.
"Not the first clue, Princess."
"Princess?" Romani squawked. We both ignored him.
"One day," said Caster, "everything just changed. Masters disappeared, the whole city caught fire, and every living human just vanished. Poof. Saber started things back up again, not long after. I'm the only one she never actually beat."
"Which means the only way for the Grail War to end —"
"— is for me or her to kick the bucket," Caster confirmed. "That's why the others have been on my tail this whole time. I'm the last Servant standing in the way of Saber's victory."
"And the others?" Romani asked.
"I've already beaten Rider and Assassin, and we just took out Lancer. Berserker… That thing's off rampaging on its own, somewhere in the forest. The only ones left we really have to worry about are Archer and Saber."
"Have you fought either of them before?"
"Heh!" Caster grinned. "Enough to know that I can't take them both on, and Saber's just beyond me by myself. If I had been summoned as a Lancer, maybe. Unfortunately, that copycat bastard rarely strays too far from Saber's side, and even when he does, he only ventures far enough to keep her hideaway in clear view, so he can catch me if I even think about heading that way."
"Hideaway?" Ritsuka parroted. "You said she was guarding the Grail, so does that mean… U-um, Director, what was it you said about the Grail manifesting?"
The Director grunted. "I said there were four places in this city where it could manifest. We've already checked out two of them, and the way Caster is talking about Archer, I doubt it'll be at the third, which means…" She looked at Caster. "She's hiding on the mountain?"
Caster grinned. "You figured it out, huh? Pretty slick. Yeah, there's a cavern in the mountain where the Grail is kept. Saber is down there, but Archer guards the entrance. I've been avoiding going up there and confronting him, because Saber might decide to pop up and double team me, and I know better than to get into that kind of fight when that much firepower is being slung around."
"Does that mean you know who Saber is?" I asked.
Caster's grin dimmed and fell into a frown. "King Arthur," he said solemnly.
The Director recoiled like she'd been slapped, Mash's mouth fell open, and even the twins looked utterly gobsmacked. I guess a legend that famous was known even in far off places like Japan.
"Wh-wh-what?" Romani shrieked.
Even I wasn't unaffected by the news, although I liked to think my reaction was much less extreme and much more muted than the others' were.
King Arthur…
My understanding of Heroic Spirits was that age and fame equated to larger degrees of power. The older and more celebrated a legend was, the more people recognized the name and deeds of a hero from that legend, the stronger they were and the more they had to bring to bear. Medusa probably would have been a good example, if she'd been summoned as a Rider, with maybe Pegasus as her mount and probably something reflecting the island she'd been exiled to. As a Lancer? Even her fame hadn't been able to make up for the limits of her class.
King Arthur as a Saber?
"Which means her sword is Excalibur," I said. In spite of myself, my voice sounded a little faint to my ears.
Wait.
"Her?"
Caster shrugged. "The myths and legends don't always get things right," he said, like that explained anything, "and they don't always know all of the important bits."
"Seems like a pretty big oversight."
"Who cares about her gender?" the Director demanded hysterically. "We're going up against the most famous knight in history! Wielding the greatest holy sword ever made! I think that's a little more important than whether or not she was a woman hiding her gender!"
A fair point. Maybe I was a little more shaken by the news of who our final enemy was than I'd originally thought.
"Director!" Romani shouted. "You can't tell me you're actually intending to face him! H-her! King Arthur, I mean! E-even with Caster's help, there's no way Mash could possibly face someone that strong!"
"The useless weakling does have a bit of a point," Caster said, humming.
Romani sputtered, "W-weakling —"
Caster poked at Mash's shield.
"You can't even use your Noble Phantasm, can you?"
Mash's mouth twisted into a miserable line and she looked away. "N-no," she admitted. "I can't."
Caster made a noise of understanding.
"I thought so. It's not the end of the world, but it does put us in a bit of a bind."
"What did I do to deserve this?" the Director moaned. "King Arthur, Excalibur — Lev, why did this have to happen to me? Why did something like this have to happen on my watch, to my Chaldea?" She clutched at her hair as though to tear it all out of her scalp. "What am I going to do? What am I going to do, Lev? I-I can't handle something like this! I just can't! This was never supposed to happen! I'm going to die here in this miserable city before I ever even got —"
The resounding smack of my hand hitting her cheek shocked her into silence.
"Whoa," said Rika.
"M-Miss Taylor!" Mash gasped.
"Taylor! What are you thinking?" Romani said, aghast. "D-Director, are you okay?"
"Get ahold of yourself," I told the Director, I told Olga Marie Animusphere. "You're the Director of Chaldea, aren't you? It's your job to be calm and in control, no matter the situation, because everyone under you is looking to you for direction. You don't crack, you don't break down, you don't panic, you keep cool and lead."
I stepped closer, and quieter, so that only she could hear, I told her, "I know you can do this, Marie. I know you can. You just have to believe that you can."
Caster chuckled, folding his arms across his chest. "Well now. You know, I have to admit, I'm kinda jealous, Master. Usually, I'm the one helping to calm down hysterical women."
Briefly, I closed my eyes and projected my mind at him. Not helping, Caster.
I don't know, Master, Caster replied, a little humor can go a pretty long way in making even hopeless situations less grim.
The Director took a deep, calming breath, and at length, in a quiet, strong voice, she said, "Romani."
"Y-yes, Director?"
"Have you managed to get into contact with anyone from outside of Chaldea, yet? The UN? The Mage's Association?"
Romani grimaced and let out a long sigh, running his hand over his head.
"I'm afraid not, Director. We've managed to repair at least a part of our communications apparatus, but we haven't been able to reach anyone outside, yet."
"And the Masters in cryopreservation? Will any of them make a recovery in a reasonable timeframe?"
"…No. With things as they are, we can't even expect to begin treatment of their injuries for probably several weeks, at the soonest. Ritsuka, Rika, and Taylor are all we currently have, in terms of Masters, and since Da Vinci can't leave base, Mash is our only Servant."
Which meant the backup we had been trying to hold out for probably wasn't coming.
I wanted to be surprised, but if I was being completely honest, it was basically what I'd been expecting from the beginning. In terms of my career, this was how things had shaken out far too often.
"D-does Mash even need a Noble Phantasm?" Rika asked. "She did pretty good without it against Medusa!"
"If Caster hadn't shown up to help, though," Ritsuka mumbled.
"Weren't you listening before?" the Director asked, some of the fire returning to her voice. "A battle between Servants can be said to be a battle between Noble Phantasms. Against Medusa, it might not have mattered quite so much, because as a Lancer, her Noble Phantasm was limited in scope. King Arthur's Excalibur is going to be on a completely different level."
"Well, there might be something we can do about that," Caster said. "Girlie, you're pretty new to being a Servant, right?"
Mash nodded. "I'm a Demi-Servant. Ah, that is, through a form of possession, I'm a human fused with a Servant, although I'm afraid the Servant who fused with me didn't tell me his name or teach me any of his skills."
Caster made another noise of understanding. "Can't say I've ever heard of that happening before, but it sounds similar to the sorts of things you'd hear about old shamans and the druids. Well, it's not an easy problem to handle, but it's not unfixable, either."
"In the meantime, we need to find the Second Owner's house," said the Director. "If we can't expect any backup…th-then we'll just have to handle this ourselves."
"D-Director…!"
"We don't have a choice, Romani!" she snapped at him. "Proper history needs to be restored, no matter what! If we're the only ones who can do it, right now… Then we just have to be the ones to do it!"
"Nice." Caster grinned. "That's a good attitude to have, Boss Lady. Looks like you have something of a spine in you, after all."
The Director huffed. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response!"
Isn't that what you just did?
"We should get moving," I said instead. "We've already been out for quite a while, so we should find the Second Owner's house and get some rest, before we head up the mountain."
"Hold on a second!" said Romani. "Taylor, I'm sure you're more familiar with this kind of situation, and Director, I realize we don't have much in the way of options, but there's no way Mash, Rika, and Ritsuka are ready for this! Especially Ritsuka and Rika! E-even if you managed to defeat Lancer, a legend like King Arthur is on a completely different level!"
"This Singularity isn't going to wait for us to be ready, Romani," I told him. "Our resources are limited, our supplies are limited, and that means our time is limited. If we tried to wait it out for a relief team that doesn't look like it'll be coming, then all that'll happen is that we'll be tired, hungry, and weak when we no longer have a choice but to handle this ourselves."
"Still…!"
"We'll be fine, Doctor Roman," said Rika a little too brightly. "After all, we've got Mash!"
"Master," Mash mumbled worriedly.
And Romani…deflated.
"I can't stop you," he admitted miserably. "If you think this is the best course of action, then the only thing I can do is make sure you're as provisioned as I possibly can. Contact me when you've settled in at the Second Owner's house. I'll send you some rations to help hold you over."
Without another word, his image flickered and vanished. For a moment, a dark pall settled over us and silence echoed through the group.
"The Second Owner's house is in the southern end of the residential district," the Director said at length. "We should notice it as we get closer…but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more skeletons hanging around it when we get there."
"I'll lead the way," Mash said strongly.
I turned to my own Servant, temporary as he might be. "Caster."
"Roger that, Master." Caster gave me a lazy salute. "I'll bring up the rear and make sure we don't get ambushed.
That wasn't what I was going to say, I wanted to tell him, but I pursed my lips and kept quiet. He'd been helpful so far, so I guess I could extend him that much trust. All things considered… If Caster wanted us dead now, he could have done it from the beginning. The time to watch for him would be when we made it to the Grail and beat Saber.
I didn't intend on letting him bring up the rear then.
In a kind of diamond formation, with us squishy humans in the middle and Mash and Caster forming the top and bottom, we turned down the main road and wound our way through the streets towards the Second Owner's house. The Director led, in a roundabout fashion, pointing out when we needed to make a turn and when to keep going straight, although I got the feeling that, strictly speaking, we weren't taking the most direct route and it was really more of a slow meander.
Well, there was a difference between seeing a map and walking the route yourself. It made me miss my bugs, though; I'd gotten used to not having the sort of absolute proprioception I'd had as a cape, but there were plenty of times where it would have been very convenient to still have that absolute sense of where I was and what was around me, even in the Antarctic.
It might not have done me much good, here. Chaldea was probably too cold and too remote to host anything like as thriving an insect population as Brockton Bay or Chicago, but Fuyuki City on fire would have had the exact opposite problem, since everything being on fire would likely have killed off all but a sparse few of the hardier species.
At the end of it, we took maybe another twenty minutes of walking to reach the Second Owner's house, although calling it just a house might have been something of a misnomer. I wasn't sure "mansion" quite fit, because by the standards of some of America's mansions, it was absolutely tiny, but if I compared it to the more modest homes that had burned down, the almost entirely intact building could be called palatial.
It stretched up two stories, a thing of brick and wood that looked like it belonged in Victorian London instead of modern Japan, with dark paneling on the outside and a sloped roof, complete with chimney. It towered over the other residences around it, bigger and more expansive, with a larger plot of land to sit on to boot.
Surrounded by smaller, more compact suburban homes with mid-century designs, it stood out, in more ways than one.
"Whoa," Rika said when she saw it. "The Second Owner must've been loaded."
"For what it's worth, out here," the Director said dismissively. "The position of Second Owner is somewhat prestigious, yes, but in terms of how much clout it gets you in the Association, location does matter. Being the Second Owner of a place as backwater as this is like being the mayor of a sleepy hamlet out in the countryside and will net you about as much fame."
"Harsh," Rika said with a grin.
"Does the Mage's Association really look down on Japan that much?" Ritsuka asked.
"It's like I already told you," said the Director. "Japan has notoriously poor spiritual grounds, and as a result, what magi do spring up here tend to be lackluster and third rate. The Association only keeps a token presence here and leaves most of the administration to the handful of Second Owners in charge of its few hotspots." She looked up at the house. "If I remember right, most of this Second Owner's wealth and influence comes from the patents their family owns. It's a bit surprising, considering how young their bloodline actually is."
I wished that kind of classism didn't make sense. But one of the things I'd learned studying with the Director and the likes of Wodime was that age equaled power, for magi. The older and longer your lineage, the more impressive and robust your magic was. The only way to get around that was to be born with a really special attribute or innate ability, and if you were you'd better hope you weren't special enough to get the attention of someone who wanted to find out how and why.
Luckily and unluckily, I was barely average, in terms of potential. I wasn't a rising star, but I wasn't stuck somewhere in some nutjob's secret lab with my head in one jar and all of my organs in others, still somehow alive.
I'd come close enough to that with Bonesaw.
"It looks like the house is in good shape," I commented. "A few broken windows… The upper floor might be a bit unsafe, but if it's stayed standing this long, we shouldn't have any trouble."
"The bounded field looks like it's been put through the wringer, too," Caster chimed in. "It's not totally gone, but we shouldn't have to worry about being forcibly ejected or anything, just some mild discomfort on the way in."
"Lucky us," said the Director.
"I can't wait to get inside," Rika groaned. "My feet are killing me."
"I wouldn't mind sitting down for a while," her brother agreed.
One by one, we filed through the front gate, and then the front door, and although the twins shivered as the chill of the bounded field pressed down on us like some distant, disapproving eye, we made it through unaccosted and entered the house to find it marvelously intact, like it hadn't been touched at all by the fires raging outside. There wasn't even a layer of soot from the smoke billowing up from the rest of the city.
"The bounded field did a remarkable job keeping this place in good shape," the Director allowed with a kind of grudging respect.
She stepped up from the small well at the front door and onto the not-quite-pristine wooden floors — polished and cared for, but untended for who knew how long. I followed behind her.
"Um!" Mash interjected anxiously.
The Director and I turned around.
"What is it, Mash?"
"In Japan, isn't it customary to remove your shoes at the door, so that you don't track dirt through the house?" she asked, looking pointedly at our feet. I glanced down and noticed the Director doing the same out of the corner of my eye; a trail of dirty footprints led across the floorboards to us.
The Director and I shared a glance.
"Now isn't the time to be observing social norms and paying our respects to the home owners, Mash," I told her. "If we need to leave in a hurry, we won't have time to bother getting our shoes back on."
"I'm sure the old residents would understand that the situation changes things," the Director added. "Hebert's right. If we need to leave in a hurry, we won't have the chance to grab our shoes, so it's better to just leave them on."
Ritsuka and Rika, who'd been about to start tugging their shoes off, froze, and then abandoned the task.
"This feels a little weird," Rika commented under her breath. I still heard her clearly.
"You're telling me," Ritsuka muttered back at her.
We made our way into the living room, where the plush, expensive furniture was just as intact as the rest of the house. Ritsuka and Rika made a beeline for the couch and they both collapsed onto it with a muted whump, sighing as they sagged into the cushions. The Director and I chose two of the armchairs instead, while Mash awkwardly propped her shield up against the wall and gingerly took a seat in one of the spare table chairs. Caster stayed standing. They were the only ones who didn't seem at all tired.
"Haaa," Rika breathed, slumped. "It feels like we were walking for days."
"It must've been almost six hours," Ritsuka agreed tiredly.
"…It hasn't been that long," the Director said thoughtfully, "but come to think of it… Was there any change in the cloud cover that entire time?"
"If there was, I didn't notice it," I told her.
"So we have no idea what time it is or exactly how long we've been here. Or if there are any unusual weather patterns, like it constantly being night."
I glanced over at the clock on the mantle above the fireplace, but it had long ago stopped working, so there wasn't any point. A good enough Thinker might have been able to discern how long things had been this way by how long ago it had stopped, but we were fresh out of those.
"The sky's been covered ever since the fires started," Caster chimed in. "Sorry, Boss Lady. Days start to slip together, after a while, so I couldn't tell you how long ago this all happened."
The Director grunted again. "We need to contact Romani."
Rika and Ritsuka groaned, but eventually, Ritsuka pulled himself up, slid the sleeve of his Chaldea uniform up, and activated the comms device on his wrist.
Beep-beep
The image of Romani Archaman flickered into existence in midair, and he blinked at us, sandwich in hand and mouth full. My stomach rumbled, and it was joined a moment later by the twins'.
As soon as he realized what was happening, Romani swiftly chewed his food and set the sandwich down out of sight of the camera, then took a quick gulp of whatever he was drinking.
"Sorry about that," he apologized immediately. "You found the Second Owner's house sooner than I was expecting you to, so I went to grab a bite to eat."
"How selfish of you, Romani," the Director said darkly.
"H-hey! I've been trying to keep an eye on you guys and manage the repairs for all of the vital systems for almost eight hours, now! I can only go so long before I succumb to basic human needs, you know!"
Rika thrust one finger into the air. "We've got a couple of those to take care of ourselves, Doctor Roman!"
"She's right," said the Director, although she didn't sound entirely happy to be saying it. "We need those rations yesterday, Romani. Don't tell me you didn't get any ready."
"I've got it all set up, actually," said Romani. "We've managed to get that much fixed, at least. I just need Mash to establish a summoning circle for us to use to connect with, and I can send you as much food and water as you can carry."
"Good," said the Director. "I didn't want to try trusting whatever is left in this place's kitchen, so even the tasteless MRE bars in those ration packs are of more use to us." She waved a hand in the general direction of the floor. "Mash!"
"Yes, Director!"
Mash bounded out of her chair and went over to pick up her shield, and then she set it down on the clearest patch of floor she could find, facing up. An instant later, the pattern of a magic circle inscribed itself in the air over top of it, glowing brightly.
"Got it!" said Romani. "Connection…good. Rayshift procedure…cleared. You should get your supplies in three, two, one…"
With a flash, the magic circle vanished, and in its place was a collection of cans, boxes, and plastic bottles of water, all neatly stacked and somehow balanced. The boxes were labeled in big, stenciled lettering: RATIONS.
Caster let out a low whistle.
"Rayshift successful, Doctor Roman," Mash reported.
"That's great." Romani smiled. "There should be enough there for two meals for each of you, plus a few snacks for quick bursts of energy. Please contact me again if you need anything more."
The Director appraised the stack of rations and bottled water and gave an approving nod. "Good work, Romani."
Romani let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Good to know I can be counted on to not screw up at least this much."
"Do you have the local time?" I asked him suddenly.
"Oh! Uh…"
Romani looked at something on his monitors.
"The readings say…it's a little after midnight."
I nodded and turned to the Director. "We should get some sleep, once we've eaten. We'll head for the mountain tomorrow morning, after breakfast, when everyone's had a chance to regain some energy."
I glanced pointedly at the twins, who looked like they were ready to fall asleep right then and there, and who most certainly weren't ready to hike up a mountain, right now.
"I agree," she said, and then she looked to Romani. "Romani, make sure you get some sleep yourself. As long as the Rayshift is functioning properly, we can worry about the other systems later, and we need you at the top of your game when we go to take out Saber, in case we have to make an emergency escape. There's no telling how quickly this Singularity will collapse."
Romani laughed again, like he'd been told off and ordered around so much that he'd gotten used to it. "Roger that, Director."
The instant he was gone, the Director and I set upon the rations and started sorting them out with Mash's help. Some of them were flavorless, tasteless MRE bars, the kind high in energy but which were like chewing mud, and we set those aside for later, in case we needed the boost tomorrow. Some of them, though, were dehydrated meals, complete with instructions on how to prepare them.
"Good thing Romani sent us lots of water," I muttered. "I'm not sure I want to trust the pipes around here."
"Probably a good idea," the Director agreed.
The twins had nodded off at some point, snoring lightly, with Rika's head resting on Ritsuka's shoulder, and somehow, I managed to convince the Director to leave them be as we found the kitchen and started the process of rehydrating our food. A quick thing, it turned out. Once we got the pots and pans and got the water to boiling, it only took about ten minutes.
The Director went to rouse the twins while I got plates and silverware out for everyone, and together, we sat on the floor around the coffee table in the living room and quietly ate. Even Rika was uncharacteristically subdued — she looked like she was barely keeping her eyes open as she shoveled strips of chicken into her mouth like she wasn't even tasting them.
There didn't seem to be any point in washing dishes that weren't ever going to be used again, so we just stacked them up in the kitchen sink, and Mash quietly led Rika and Ritsuka upstairs to find a bed to sleep in. Even she seemed to finally be feeling the fatigue, although she was handling it much better than the twins did.
When she came back downstairs, I announced, "We're going to need to organize shifts."
The Director looked like I'd just told her she was going to have to run all the way back to the church.
"The Director can take the last shift in the morning," I said, taking pity on her. "Caster, can you —"
Caster waved me off. "Don't worry about it, Master. Servants don't need to sleep, so I'll keep watch the entire night. The rest of you can get a full night's sleep."
I wanted to be suspicious, but at that point, even I was getting too tired to put up a fight about it. Mash tried to hide a yawn behind one hand.
"We'll leave keeping watch to you, then," I agreed.
"Thank God," the Director mumbled.
"In terms of defenses, though," I went on, "do you think you can fix the bounded field?"
Caster grinned. "I'll do you one better," he told me. "I'll upgrade it, while I'm at it. If that copycat bastard can get through it when I'm done with it, he'll deserve to have managed it."
Not…exactly what I wanted to hear, but probably as good as I was going to get.
"Alright," I said. "We'll leave you to it, then."
With that taken care of, Mash, the Director, and I headed upstairs. Mash, quietly, pointed out where the bedrooms were, then the room where the twins were sharing a bed and went to join them. I guess, as their Servant, she wanted to stay as close to them as possible, and I couldn't fault that. The Director just marched towards the closest one and went in without pomp or ceremony, and that left me to pick the last one.
Red carpeting stretched across the floor as I entered, with dark wood furniture and paneling on the walls that gave it a kind of elegant, old fashioned feel. Three windows were set into the walls, two on one side and one on the other, with canary yellow floral print curtains, and a comfortably large four poster bed sat in the middle, adorned with similar sheets. A mirror hung above a small vanity between two of the windows, and next to the third sat a chest of drawers. In one corner was a small table and two chairs, and with a jolt, I realized there was a cup of unfinished tea sitting there, leftover from this room's last occupant.
Suddenly, I was aware that there had been another person here, once, living in this room and sleeping in this bed, another person with a life, dreams, goals, ambitions, a family. Someone who hadn't planned on dying and hadn't known she wouldn't be returning when she left. I felt like an intruder, stepping over her grave.
I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
There was nothing I could do for her, now. The only thing I could do was to fix this Singularity and make sure her death hadn't gone unanswered.
That conviction was still burning in my gut after I'd slipped my shoes off and crawled in between her sheets. Tomorrow, I was going to go and get her justice.
I could still smell her perfume on her pillow.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
And we're back. The funeral was very nice, for what it was, and I'm doing okay. There're still a few things to take care of, like getting all of her stuff moved out of her old apartment, but I'm holding up and fine to write, so it's back to schedule.
Check that Rin reference at the end. Even when she doesn't show up in person, I can't help giving my dearest Rin-chan a nod in the text.
Completely different topic, Gramps' banner from next March got moved up, and I'm not in a good place to roll too seriously for him, because I thought I'd have another year to save up (in more ways than one). This is his last major banner scheduled, too. Fuck. I'm gonna have to forget about my Summer 3 rerun targets and use all that Anni 4 bonus SQ for him, aren't I?
Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
I wasn't sure how long I'd been asleep before a tugging sensation vaguely in the area of my chest woke me up.
It was hard to describe it, exactly. "Tugging" was as good a word as I managed, but it didn't fit perfectly. Pulling? Maybe… It wasn't like someone had stuck me with a hook and yanked on it, but it wasn't like someone had taken a fistful of my shirt and dragged me along with it, either.
The one thing that could be said for sure was that it was constant. Like… Like gravity, almost. An indescribable force that held me and inexorably pulled me along as it willed.
I didn't want to wake up, but the tugging wouldn't let me roll over and go back to sleep. A deep groan vibrated up my chest and out of my mouth as I buried my face into my pillow, and I sucked in a long breath through my nose, only to be hit by a smooth, floral scent that instantly jolted me wide awake with the reminder —
This was not my bed. I was not in Chaldea.
I leapt out of bed without a thought, but my legs tangled in the sheets I'd covered up with at some point, and I fell instead into an ungraceful heap on the floor with a yelp.
There was no time to lick my wounds, though. Not when I could now recognize the sensation inside of me as Caster drawing on my magical energy, and especially not when I could hear his voice shouting from outside as though he was in battle.
No, he must have been.
"Yah!" a feminine voice joined his.
Mash, too.
Had Archer come down from the mountain to ambush us? Or worse, had Archer and Saber decided to settle the issue here and now, instead of waiting for us to go to them?
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I scrambled for my shoes, hastily slipping them on as I hopped for the door to my borrowed bedroom. I had to use the knob for balance as I pushed it open, and immediately, I discovered that everyone else was already awake, as well, because all the doors were open and all the rooms empty.
Once more, I could only lament the loss of my powers. Three years ago, the mere act of my teammates waking up would have been enough for my passenger to jolt me awake, too.
I ripped down the hallway, racing as fast as my legs would carry me, and I took the stairs two at a time in my haste to get out the front door. My heart thundered anxiously in my chest, and my mind whirled a mile a minute as I tried to come up with some kind of tactic I could use to catch the enemy off guard while I had the element of surprise.
The front door practically flew open, and I nearly ripped it off the hinges with my prosthetic arm — and then I had to catch myself to stop from bowling the Director over, because she was standing right there.
Saying I succeeded wouldn't be wrong. Saying I failed wasn't wrong, either. I managed to avoid the Director, but my momentum was too much to stop, so all I wound up doing was skirting around her and tripping over my own feet to land behind her.
The blow to my pride was more painful than the one to my knees. Or my elbow. Or my shoulder.
"Hebert," the Director said neutrally without looking at me. She didn't sound stressed or worried, and I might even have called her tone thoughtful. Or contemplative. "Good, you're awake."
"Director?" I asked as I pulled myself to my feet. "What's going on?"
My gaze turned out to the street, where Caster and Mash were going back and forth, or really Caster was peppering Mash with spells and she tried to block them. Well, succeeded. She wasn't doing anything else, but none of Caster's spells were hitting anything except her massive shield. Further behind, the twins were watching the whole goings on, safely out of the line of fire.
"Caster decided that it's too risky to confront either of the remaining Servants guarding the Grail without Mash having access to her Noble Phantasm," the Director explained. "To that end, he's trying to train her how to use it, although his methods…leave something to be desired."
I eyed the spar, although calling any fight between two Servants a spar sounded ridiculous.
"No luck, so far?"
"None," the Director confirmed. "His only real advice was for her to reach really deep and shout it out from her soul… or something utterly ludicrous like that. They've been at this for almost an hour, now."
Caster chose that moment to let up and relax, and as he did, so did Mash, panting like she'd run a marathon.
"Alright, Girlie," he called over to her. "Take a breather. This isn't working, so I need to think up another plan. In the meantime, you've earned a bit of a break, so relax a little."
Mash sagged, and the twins, seeing that it was over, jogged up to join her. I couldn't quite hear what they were saying, but the tone of their voices sounded supportive, so I could only guess they were trying to lift her spirits. Mash, at least, seemed to appreciate the gesture.
"Yo, Princess!" Caster waved as he came our direction. "Good to see you're awake. Maybe I should start calling you Sleeping Beauty?"
"Hard to sleep with all of the racket you were making, Caster," I said sardonically. I nodded over at Mash. "How is she?"
He glanced over in her direction and sighed, scratching compulsively at the back of his head.
"I don't get it," he lamented. "This sort of thing worked fine when my mentor used it on me."
"Mentor?"
He chuckled. "That witch… She was the kind of woman to kick your ass, then lecture you about what you did wrong, then kick your ass until you got it right."
My brow furrowed. "Your mentor was a woman?"
"Scariest woman in Ireland," Caster confirmed. "Ah… Well, maybe second scariest, although that really depends on who you asked. My master was a terrifying, bloodthirsty warrior, and she put fear in the hearts of men and gods alike…but of all the things she put me through, fighting Aífe on her behalf was easily the closest I ever came to death under her teachings."
"Fighting Aífe…" the Director trailed off, and then she jerked, staring at Caster with wide eyes. "Wait a minute! An Irish hero, learned under a fierce female warrior, got into a fight with another woman warrior named Aífe — you're Cúchulainn of Ulster!"
Caster blinked at her.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said as his mouth pulled into a grin. "You've heard of me before, Boss Lady? I guess I'm more famous than I thought I was."
"Why are you a Caster?" she blurted out. "Gáe Bolg might not be as synonymous to you as Excalibur to King Arthur, but it's easily your most famous Noble Phantasm! There's no way you shouldn't have been summoned as a Lancer!"
Caster smirked. "Unless the Lancer class was already taken."
"Medusa — she should have been a Rider!" the Director protested. "Pegasus has a cleaner attachment to her legend than…whatever she had as a Lancer! No, that was the scythe that killed her, wasn't it?"
Now that I thought about it, it probably was, wasn't it? Maybe that wasn't what had twisted her into the cruel monster we'd faced, but I couldn't imagine any Servant would be particularly thrilled at the idea of wielding the weapon that killed them, to say nothing of the conceptual and psychological mess of walking around with the very thing you were supposed to be weak to.
"Are you forgetting, Boss Lady?" Caster asked, amused. "This place is a Singularity. Nothing here is as it should have been, and that includes the Servants and their classes."
"Ugh!"
The Director grunted, massaging her temples as though that would somehow force the world to start making sense, again.
"And Mash?" I asked Caster, dragging the conversation back to the relevant part.
Caster grimaced and placed his hands on his hips.
"Well, frankly, I'm not sure what she is. She's obviously not a Caster or an Assassin, she doesn't have any form of madness, so she's not a Berserker. No spear, so not a Lancer, no sword, so not a Saber, and no bow, although that last one isn't as much of a disqualifier for the Archer class as it should be. I guess she could be a Rider, but that doesn't help too much, does it? On the other hand, whatever she is, that shield is obviously her Noble Phantasm."
"Obviously," I agreed.
"Even just that would be a huge advantage," he went on. "But just flinging spells at her until she manages to pull it out hasn't been working, and that's the only way I really know how to do this. Unless…"
I didn't like the sound of that.
"Unless?"
"Well, now… That just might work, won't it?"
"Caster?"
Caster grinned, a thing of teeth and edges, like a shark. "Fear for her own life just ain't enough, is it? It's not a part of her temperament. I've known a few folk like that."
I really didn't like where he was going with that, not if that meant what I thought it meant.
"Caster —"
He flicked at me, and whether it was a hastily drawn rune, some other spell, or just his raw strength, it was enough to send me flying into the Director. She squawked as we went down in a tangle of limbs, and I scrambled to climb back to my feet, but I couldn't get my footing fast enough, because Caster had already stepped back out into the street.
"Girlie! New plan! If we can't get your Noble Phantasm up by putting your life in danger —"
CASTER! I projected at him as firmly as I could. I reached out for him with my hand, as though I could hold him back — and when I saw the red markings on the back of it, realized my only option. By the power of my Command Spell —
Don't go wasting any of those, now, Princess! Caster sent back. Just put a little faith in your Servant, yeah?
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" the Director shrieked.
"— then we'll just have to put your Master on the line!"
A giant arm made of flaming branches manifested and slammed its hand against the pavement, as though lifting itself up from the ground. More and more of it appeared. A shoulder, a head, a torso, until a blazing, wooden giant towered over Mash and the twins. A burning effigy of a human being.
Should I stop him? Should I trust him? He was right, Mash needed her Noble Phantasm, but was that what this was about, or was he just pulling a trick to eliminate a potential threat? Had he truly escaped whatever corruption had claimed the other Servants, or was all of that a ploy just to get us to trust him?
Why would he do it now, instead of murdering us in our sleep?
"Caster!" shouted Mash, hefting her shield. She stepped in front of the twins to protect them.
"CASTER, STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!" the Director screamed.
"I won't change my aim, Girlie!" Caster said, ignoring us. "If you move out of the way, those Masters of yours will get smushed!"
"HEBERT!" the Director screeched at me. "STOP HIM, RIGHT NOW!"
"Now, show me that Noble Phantasm of yours!"
"HEBERT! COMMAND SPELL!"
I hesitated. I knew I had trust issues. In the right circumstances, I could connect with people faster than I'd ever believed, but most of the time, I was suspicious enough for three people.
Could I trust Caster? I didn't know for sure. Whatever logic I tried to apply, people were inherently irrational, and that included me. In the end, however, whether I trusted him or not, if nothing else, this would all be meaningless if I didn't sell the illusion, too.
"Caster! As your Master, by the power of my Command Spell —"
"Wicker Man!"
Three people screamed as the giant's fist descended. One of them screamed in my ear, and I was sure it was going to be ringing for the next hour as a result. One of them was Rika, who had huddled in her brother's arms as he futilely tried to shield her with his own body.
One of them was Mash.
It was hard to see from my angle, but what happened was unmistakable, regardless. There was no invocation, no incantation, no true name shouted to the heavens, but the glowing blue barrier that formed between Mash's shield and the giant's fist couldn't be anything else than her Noble Phantasm, and the giant's fist just…stopped. With the sound of a massive gong ringing, it collided with that barrier and went no further.
A moment later, the giant faded away like smoke, and an ashen-faced Mash looked at us, at Caster specifically, from behind the spoke of her shield, eyes wide.
And Caster? Caster kept on grinning.
"There we go! Knew that would do the trick! Geez, Girlie, that was more painful than pulling teeth! Didn't expect all of you to come out of that completely unscathed, though. Nice! That must be one hell of a Noble Phantasm!"
"It was a trick?" the Director demanded, her voice an octave higher than usual.
"Sorry about that," said Caster, not sounding nearly as sorry as any of us would probably have liked him to be. "It had to be convincing. If the Girlie over there looked at you two and realized neither of you was freaking out, she would've known I wasn't serious. As long as everyone else believed it, she did, too."
"Caster, you jerk!" Rika shouted. "I can't believe I actually thought you were cool!"
Caster just laughed.
"Sorry I frightened you, Little Missy! It's like I said, though. This is just the way I was trained, so it's the only way I know how to teach."
"That just makes me question your teacher's sanity, too!"
"I…I did it," said Mash, and then louder, "I did it!"
Ritsuka set a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You did," he told her, although there was a faint tremor in his voice that belied exactly how scared he had been.
Beep-beep!
"H-hey, what's going on, there!" Romani shouted as his image appeared next to Ritsuka. "I just detected two massive surges of energy from Caster and Mash! Did you run into another Servant?"
The Director sighed as she dusted herself off and walked over to their group. I picked myself up and followed.
"Caster was helping Mash learn to manifest her Noble Phantasm," she explained, and then tossed a glare Caster's way and acidly added, "although he chose the most asinine, ludicrous, sideways method of going about it!"
"He used his Noble Phantasm against her!" Rika chimed in indignantly.
"Senpai!" Mash lamented.
"He what?" Romani demanded furiously. "Caster, you lunatic! Just what kind of game are you playing, using your Noble Phantasm against Mash?"
Caster brushed it off with another laugh. "I'm not going to be lectured by the likes of you."
"As questionable as his methods were," the Director said, shooting him another glare, "and they were very questionable, it's undeniable that they produced results. Even so…"
She scrutinized Mash's shield, eyes narrowed, like she was looking for something that she knew wouldn't be there.
"Yeah, that's a problem, isn't it?" Caster agreed. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "She managed to deploy her Noble Phantasm, but she didn't tease out its true name."
"Not entirely unexpected, considering her circumstances," the Director hedged, "but not ideal, either. Inconvenient doesn't feel like a strong enough word for it."
"Does she need to know its true name?" asked Ritsuka.
"A Noble Phantasm can only be unleashed to its fullest potential through the invocation of its true name," Romani explained patiently, although he was still scowling at Caster. "At the very least, the efficacy of her Noble Phantasm will drop without it."
The Director shook her head. "It might not matter for now, but at the very least, she needs some method of focusing it. An incantation."
"Like a spell?" I said.
The Director nodded.
"Exactly. It won't get anywhere close to what you could expect from the true name invocation, but at the very least, we can increase the performance by giving it a more concrete image. Let's see…"
She clicked her tongue.
"Since it's a pseudo-deployment of your Noble Phantasm, an image of its true form… Let's call it Lord Chaldeas."
I grimaced. Romani's image blinked, and then a moment later, he laughed. "Of course you would choose something like that, Director."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" the Director spat. "Do you have a problem with my choice in names, Romani?"
Seriously? I knew my own naming conventions weren't exactly going to be winning any contests anytime soon, but even I had to call that one unoriginal.
"The bastion that defends the foundation of mankind's survival," Mash said quietly. "Lord Chaldeas… I like it. Th-thank you, Director!"
Romani's face blanched. "W-Well, whether it's unoriginal or not, what matters is that it resonates with Mash, right? As long as she has a connection to it, the strength of that connection is the most important part."
"You should know better than to question my decisions," the Director said haughtily. "Did you think it was just about glorifying my own family's legacy? I put more thought into it than just that!"
"Fou! Fou!"
The sudden squeaking of a high pitched voice startled me, and racing up the street was a tiny bundle of white fur with long, rabbit-like ears and a bushy tail. It even wore a little cape with a kind of ribbon tied into a bow at the front.
"Oh, there you are, Fou!" Mash said. She bent down, offering out her hand, and the little critter bounded onto her palm, up her arm, and settled itself in on her shoulder. "You must have gotten worried when Caster and I used our Noble Phantasms, didn't you? Look, we're fine."
"How long has that been here?" I asked incredulously.
Fou hissed at me like I'd delivered some great insult. That was probably the thing about it that worried me the most: its obvious intelligence.
"He was with Senpai and I when we arrived," Mash explained. She reached up and gave the thing a few pats, which seemed to mollify it. "He ran off for some reason earlier, but we couldn't go looking for him, because the Director was in trouble." She smiled at it. "I guess he managed to take care of himself just fine, didn't he?"
"Fou!" it agreed.
"And how did it get here?" I asked her. "This isn't somewhere you can just…take a casual stroll to."
Mash blinked. "You know, I'm not sure. I guess he must have been in the room with us and got Rayshifted. Although… Before the explosion, the last I saw of him, he was running off somewhere in Chaldea. Maybe he just followed Senpai."
"That's because Fou already knows how awesome we are," Rika proclaimed brightly. She offered her hand out, and Fou nipped playfully at her index finger. Ritsuka chuckled warmly next to her.
"It's been here this whole time?" the Director asked disbelievingly. "How did it get past all the skeletons?"
Mash looked up at nothing in particular and she pursed her lips thoughtfully.
"He must be too small, so they couldn't catch him. After all, if they were capable of getting tired, Master could have outrun them, too."
"Heh." Caster chuckled like he knew something we didn't. "Skeletons are the lowest of the low, when it comes to magical monsters. Someone like you could pick them apart, Boss Lady. They're only really a threat to mages in numbers."
The Director's eyebrow twitched. "In any case!" she said loudly. "Now that the issue of Mash's Noble Phantasm has been resolved, we need to come up with a plan to take out Archer and Saber so we can retrieve the Grail."
At that moment, Rika and Ritsuka's stomachs rumbled, and both of them flushed, smiling awkwardly. The Director turned to me like she was hoping I would be the sensible one who could go on regardless, but the very second she did, my own stomach loudly voiced its protests, and her face fell.
"…After we've had some breakfast."
"Do you need any more supplies?" Romani asked.
The Director's brow furrowed, but she shook her head.
"Being prepared to pull us out at a moment's notice is a better use of the Rayshift system than topping up supplies that we hopefully won't need in an hour or two. How is that looking, Romani?"
"Well, we haven't gotten everything back in tip-top shape, but it should be fine if we're just bringing you back to Chaldea. As for the rest of the facility… We're still working on it, but we've at least managed to restore one of the primary generators, so we're not relying solely on the backups, anymore."
"Good." The Director nodded. "Keep an eye on the readings, Romani. We might not have time to contact you if things fall apart too fast."
"Be careful," said Romani. "And… good luck. All of you."
He flickered out of existence after one last parting glare at Caster. The Director swept her gaze over the rest of us, like a general taking stock of her troops.
"We'll eat first, and then we'll make our plans on the move. Don't leave anything behind, because I don't intend for us to come back to this house. We'll correct this Singularity today."
"Roger that, Boss Lady!" Rika said with a salute.
Ritsuka only let out a fond but exasperated sigh.
Our little group squeezed back into the Second Owner's house, and we had a quick, relatively light meal with rehydrated scrambled eggs as the main dish. For an instant, as I dug into it, a pang tugged on my gut, and I half expected a middle-aged man with a receding hairline to sit down with us, carton of orange juice in hand.
It didn't happen, of course. If he had survived Gold Morning, then we'd been separated in the aftermath, and all I could hope for was that he hadn't been caught up in this end of the world, either.
The Director let us sit and digest for about twenty minutes after we were all done, and then she hustled us out the front door again and ordered Caster to lead us to the Grail.
"It's a bit of a hike," he warned us with obvious humor. "Well. No more so than your trip to the church and back, but those steps up the mountain are gonna make it seem a whole lot longer."
"Your schadenfreude is showing, Caster," I told him.
He laughed. "Just telling it like it is, Princess. You sure you're all up for this?"
"It's not like we have a choice," the Director said darkly. "One way or another, we either die here or fix this Singularity."
"Bring it," Rika challenged him.
Caster smirked and shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The path he took us on was definitely the main road, but it was anything but straight, and the destruction that had been dealt to the city became ever more obvious the further we went. There had been stretches of upturned pavement in the business district, too, but in the residential district and as we got into the outskirts of town, there were places where huge chunks had been ripped out entirely.
It reminded me, to an extent, of Scion. The difference was, Scion's blasts had tended towards precision. Even the attacks that leveled continents or wiped out cities entirely were mostly edged with lines like the cuts of a scalpel. This damage, these holes, they were jagged, gaping wounds, like an explosion had gone off or some natural disaster swept through.
Japan was famous for its earthquakes, wasn't it?
Navigating across twenty-foot gaps bridged by fifteen-foot craters slowed us down more than I liked, and having to have Caster ferry us across one at a time might have made it easier than climbing up and down the sides, but no less tedious.
Along the way, we passed by a large building four stories tall, surrounded by a bunch of other buildings and standing across the stretch of a large courtyard. The windows were all blown out and the whole place was dark, but it was still otherwise intact, and with a funny jolt in my belly, I realized it was a school.
Winslow had been a lifetime ago. Three lifetimes, if you counted both the Wards and Chaldea as separate from those hectic two months as Skitter. And still, seeing that beaten up old building left an indescribable knot in my gut.
Or maybe it was just coming face to face with yet more evidence of all the lives destroyed in this place.
"What can we expect from Archer and Saber?" the Director asked as we went.
"Well, naturally, Saber's more impressive, in the raw power sense," said Caster. "She's the type to hammer you into submission with overwhelming strength, and if that doesn't work, she'll whip out her Noble Phantasm and reduce you to smithereens. Girlie here is gonna be the MVP in that fight. If that shield of hers is half as strong as it looks, we'll need it just to stay alive."
"Does she have a weakness?" I asked.
"She's not particularly fast. Well, no more so than any Servant of her level is," Caster answered. "She's also kind of straightforward. Not the kind to come up with some grand scheme sixteen moves ahead of you to trap you, you know? Of course, when you're throwing around as much power as she does, you don't need to be all that clever."
A classic Brute, then, with maybe Blaster thrown in for her Noble Phantasm. She would hit like a runaway train, but there were ways to maneuver around her. If we could lead her into a trap, we could win.
"She sounds really strong," said Ritsuka, a thread of worry in his voice.
"Senpai…" Mash murmured.
"A Servant like Saber excels across the board," Caster said. "That's just the way it is with big legends, Boyo. She's not unbeatable, though. That's the thing you have to keep in mind. In a fight like this, the only ways to lose are dying or giving up."
"Caster's right," I agreed. "I can't say I know what fighting King Arthur is going to be like. But I've fought enemies like that, before. I beat them then, we can beat her now."
Caster sent me an appraising look, like he was trying to discern how much of that was a lie. The best part was that none of it was a lie at all.
"Really, Senpai?" Rika asked. "How'd you beat someone so strong before?"
"I wanna hear about this, too," Caster added. "What kind of enemy did you beat, Princess, and how?"
If he was expecting me to come up with some tall tale or bluster my way through an admission of exaggeration, what I gave him instead must have been disappointingly blunt and simple.
"I beat a dragon. First, I rotted off his dick, and then I carved out his eyes."
The Director stumbled, a look of horrified mortification on her face, and from behind me, I heard only Mash's high pitched squeak and silence.
Even Caster didn't seem to know how to take that, at first, going by the utterly stupefied expression he wore, but once he got over the surprise, he burst out into a deep belly laugh.
"I sure picked an interesting Master, alright!"
If that's what you think now, I can only imagine what you'd say if you heard about Scion.
"S-Senpai sure is intense," Rika whispered.
"Th-that's one way of putting it, Rika," her brother replied.
"Our best bet against an enemy like Saber is to pull her into a trap. Force her to overcommit, and while she's focused on Mash, have Caster use his Noble Phantasm."
"Oh?" Caster grinned again, shark-like. "That's pretty underhanded, Master. Some might call that dishonorable."
"Would you?" I asked him pointedly. "I remember reading about your myth during our primer courses at Chaldea. Aífe had you dead to rights, until you tricked her into looking away."
"Heh!" Caster chuckled. "Like I said, fighting her was the closest I ever came to death while I was learning under my teacher. Honor's fine and all, but when the stakes are high and you can't afford to lose, all bets are off. You do whatever it takes to make sure you get to wake up tomorrow, and if you're going to die no matter what, you make it count."
"Glad we agree."
He gave me another appraising look, and then he shook his head and sighed. "Man. If you had been my Master in a regular Grail War, we would've swept the whole field together. You know, you're my kind of woman."
I stumbled as heat flooded my cheeks, and next to me the Director sputtered, a look of shocked indignation on her face.
"Caster, are you hitting on her?" she demanded shrilly. "H-how dare you! D-don't think I don't remember your legend, you… you… you dog!"
Caster just laughed.
"His legend?" Rika asked.
"The name Cúchulainn means 'Hound of Culann,' Senpai," Mash explained patiently. "It's the name he was given after he slew a guard dog and offered to take its place until a new one could be raised. However, I think what the Director is referring to is… Um, what I mean, Senpai, is that Cúchulainn is rather famous for… Well…"
"He slept with just about every woman he met," I said bluntly.
"Not every woman," Caster corrected, but he didn't sound particularly upset about the accusation.
"Enough of them that 'Hound of Culann' was an appropriate moniker," the Director grumbled.
"Eep!" Rika squeaked, and when I glanced back at her, she'd slung an arm across her chest, like she was trying to block it from his view. Caster's lips pulled into a smirk.
"You're a little too young for me, Little Missy, don't worry. You're safe from this horny old guard dog."
My lips pulled into a grimace — that was certainly an image I didn't need in my head.
"We've drifted away from the original point," I said, steering the conversation back on track. "Saber is a straightforward powerhouse. What about Archer?"
Caster sighed. "Sorry to say, he's the exact opposite. He's a conniving bastard with a penchant for sneak attacks and underhanded tricks. Even so… If you don't mind, Master, I'd like for you to leave fighting him to me. I've got a score to settle with that copycat."
"What happened to honor being pointless when too much was at stake?"
"That guy doesn't have any either, so it's not about that," Caster said. "Besides. This is the kind of guy to take pot shots at Masters instead of fighting Servants straight up. The only way I can keep you all safe is if you're all huddled behind Girlie's shield while I fight."
"This guy…sounds more like an Assassin than an Archer," the Director said. "Do you know his true name?"
"Haven't the slightest clue," said Caster. "The one time I fought him for real, the guy tried to nail me with several counterfeit Noble Phantasms from several different places and eras. Nearly got me with Caladbolg, of all things, although having seen the original myself, it was obviously a fake."
"A Heroic Spirit…capable of using imitations of other Servants' Noble Phantasms?" she muttered thoughtfully. "Could it be… No, but why would someone like that be an Archer, of all things? I'd expect that from a Caster."
Caster shrugged.
"Whoever he is, he's crafty and he's not above cheap shots."
In other words, he sounded a lot like me. Leveraging whatever advantage you had, attacking weak points, using tricks and traps to catch the enemy off guard — that was the sort of thing I had done, back when I had my powers. Harder to do now.
If we were going up against someone like that…
Yes. In my days as Skitter, targeting the weaker enemies instead of trying to take the strongest head on, that was exactly something I would have done.
"The instant you look like you need help, we're stepping in, duel or no duel."
Caster grinned. "I'd expect nothing less from you, Princess."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Yes, most of the next dozen chapters are around this length or longer. I actually underestimated how much was going to happen in this chapter, and as a result, even though Emiya was supposed to get his pitched battle this chapter, it got pushed back to next chapter.
Cu is right, though. If Taylor had been his Master in Stay Night, they would have bumrushed through everyone except Gilgamesh and probably Herk.
I honestly forgot about Fou. This was the best place I could figure to pull him into the narrative, even if he's just silently "there."
Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
We wound up detouring back to the school for a short while and taking a break while we tried to hammer out a more concrete plan. Caster himself took several hunks of rock and rubble while we talked and carved out runes on their surfaces, and then he handed them out amongst the group — except for Mash, who didn't really have anywhere to stash them except her shield and wouldn't be able to make much use of them in the first place.
Our attack plan still wound up more rudimentary than my liking. Even when Caster elaborated more on what our enemies were capable of, it didn't really give us more to work with in terms of how we could handle them. Not when we were so very limited in what we could all do ourselves.
In the first place, Saber had high level magic resistance, more than the weakened, diluted version Medusa had sported. Even Caster himself hadn't been able to touch her with his spells, and if he couldn't, then my dinky, little Gandr would be worthless, and we didn't have the time or the energy to waste trying to teach the twins anything of worth, either, since they weren't even spellcasters like me.
The Director… Well, neither of us was particularly surprised that we would be useless against someone like King Arthur. It rankled, deep inside, and it made me feel weak and powerless, especially when so much of my cape career had involved punching above what was supposed to be my weight class, but that fight would inevitably come down to the Servants in our group.
If only, I found myself wishing, Cúchulainn had indeed been summoned as a Lancer. It would have been easier to have him as a frontline fighter instead of playing a mostly useless support for Mash.
About half an hour after we entered the husk of the school's main building, we left it and continued our journey. By some strange twist of fortune, the road actually got steadier and more intact the further and further away we got from its two main districts. As we approached the edge and the forest that marked it, the divots and gaps disappeared almost entirely, and it took us half as long to make the second half of the trip as it had to reach the school.
At last, we made it to the base of the mountain, and in front of us now was an enormous stretch of stairs. The path was so long that I couldn't actually make out the top, not in the dark and the gloom of the perpetually smoky sky, and just from what I was seeing alone, there had to be over a thousand steps. Maybe over two thousand.
I wasn't the only one who was intimidated. The look of dismay on the Director's face, the shock on Rika's, and Ritsuka's worn down resignation seemed a good mirror for my own thoughts.
Caster, of course, thought it was hilarious.
"I told you," he said, grinning. "The actual distance isn't the same, but the stairs up the mountain will make it feel a lot longer than it is."
"That's not helping, Caster," I told him.
"You're all making it a bigger deal than it actually is." He waved it off as though warding away an unpleasant smell. "We don't actually have to go all the way to the top. The cavern where the grail is hiding is only about halfway up."
"Only halfway, he says," the Director grumbled. "Half of infinity is still infinity, you know!"
"My feet hurt just looking at it," Rika complained. "Mash, carry me!"
"W-what?" Mash stammered.
Ritsuka looked up, tilting his head back as he tried to glimpse the top. "There isn't another way up?"
"You could cut straight through the forest," Caster allowed, "but that's just making it harder on yourself. Sorry to say, there's no escalator to take you up, here. You've just gotta use good, old-fashioned leg power."
Rika groaned.
My lips pulled tight. "We don't have a choice. Unless you want to stay down here and wait for the skeletons to come get you while the rest of us take care of the Grail."
"It's not that, Senpai," said Ritsuka. "It's just… Rika and I didn't train for any of this."
I got the sense he wasn't just talking about the stairs, and I sympathized, I really did. There were a lot of things I wasn't prepared for when I started out, no matter how much I'd tried to be. My first night as a cape had been a textbook case of things going wildly out of my control. Even so…
"Training or not, it's here and now, and it's on us. We can't afford to give up and let someone else try, because there isn't anyone else. If we don't do it, that's it, it's over."
"If you two can't face this much down, then you might as well forfeit your contract with Mash," the Director added, "because you won't be Masters of Chaldea."
That, more than anything, seemed to galvanize them, because their spines straightened and both of them looked to the Director with fierce determination. Even the goofy Rika was suddenly deadly serious, the perpetual smile hiding in the corners of her mouth gone.
"We'd better get going, then," she said.
"Oh?" Caster grinned. "Looks like the two of you do have some steel in you, after all."
He turned back towards the stairs.
"That Archer bastard is probably waiting for us. No matter what, there's no way he won't notice us coming, so however it lands, he'll try and ambush us before we make it inside the cavern. Girlie, you've got the most important job here: keeping our Masters safe."
"Understood!" said Mash.
"This is it," Caster said. "From here on out, there's no turning back, so I hope you're all ready."
We started up the stairs and towards the Grail's hiding place. One way or another, this whole nightmare would be over soon. If I had my way, every single one of us would wake up from it, even if it cost me my arm again.
The twins' resolve lasted maybe the first hundred steps, and by then, they were grunting and panting, beads of sweat dripping down their faces. The Director, despite her earlier words, lasted maybe twenty or thirty more before she too started to really show the strain. They struggled onwards even so, but the seemingly interminable climb was really taking its toll. Even my legs were burning from the effort.
It was maybe fifty more before it began getting to me, too. At that point, Rika, Ritsuka, and the Director were all lagging behind; the Director was several stairs below, and every following one seemed to take more out of her, while the twins were maybe twenty below her, with Ritsuka barely outpacing his sister.
Mash…wasn't unaffected, but she was doing better than any of us. Caster was completely unfazed, of course.
I made it to the next landing, looked ahead at how far up we still had to go, looked back at how far we'd come, and then said, "Maybe we should take a break."
Mash let out a relieved sigh, but the rest of our exhausted entourage were far less reserved, and three loud groans tore out of their mouths to let me know exactly how much they appreciated the idea. So I went to the next stair up and plopped down, massaging my burning thighs and flexing my toes to try and restore feeling in them.
The Director was the first to make it up, and she sat down next to me, reclining against the stairs that stretched above us, no matter how uncomfortable it must have been. Ritsuka and Rika joined us a couple minutes later, only they just threw themselves onto the ground and laid there, huffing and puffing.
Caster chuckled, leaning on the thick head of his staff. "I always forget just how fragile and weak humans are, these days. Guess people just aren't as strong or as durable as they used to be."
"Of course not," the Director scoffed breathlessly. "The definition of human limits has been solidified in the last thousand years. The things people could do back when you were alive are far and away beyond those of us in the modern era. That's the price for the proliferation of the human species and the advancement of its knowledge."
"I guess so," he said, shrugging. "I can't say I understand how all of that stuff works. I'm just a warrior. My only concern was always just how hard I needed to punch someone or how clever I needed to be to outthink him."
"Director," I said, "you have those ration bars, right? We should take a minute to eat and regain some of our energy."
The Director looked at me, and then she grimaced — no, they didn't taste that great, but we weren't exactly in a position to cook a full meal, out here. She leveraged herself back up with a grunt and started digging into the schoolbag we'd filched from the Second Owner's house to hold what we could of our leftover supplies.
"Here." She handed me a ration bar that I accepted, and then she tossed two more at the twins with a lot less care. "Hey, you two! Eat up! This is the last chance we'll have to eat before the final battle, and we're going to need all the strength we can get!"
Grumbling, Rika and Ritsuka pulled themselves up into a sitting position and unwrapped their ration bars. Rika had barely bitten into hers when her face twisted with disgust.
"Blegh!" she spat. "This tastes like sawdust!"
Ritsuka's sour expression said that he very much agreed.
"Eat it!" the Director ordered, pointing at them with her own bar. She rummaged about in the bag again and pulled out a bottle of water that she tossed Rika's way. It landed unceremoniously in her lap. "Wash it down with that, if you have to, but just eat it!"
After a quick reach back into the bag, she pulled out another bottle and handed it to me. I clutched my ration bar between my teeth and twisted the cap on the bottle open.
We took another half an hour to rest and let the ration bars digest, and then we started up the stairs again. As we went, though, the air started to get thicker instead of thinner. It washed down over us like the breath of a sleeping giant, warm and oppressive and pungent, even though the only thing that I'd been able to smell since we'd arrived in Fuyuki was the acrid smell of the smoke and flames.
"We're almost there," Caster said another two flights of twenty stairs later. His face was drawn and serious, all hints of levity gone. Mash hefted her shield, shifting it so it was more in front of her and she could block at a moment's notice.
Eventually, Caster stopped us and led us off the stairs and through a hidden path in the forest. There was the sense of something straining as we walked it, like the gossamer strands of a spider's web, trying to tug us back towards the steps we'd been climbing.
Then, all at once, it broke, and we were standing in a clearing where a large cavern sat in the mountainside, supported around its mouth by manmade columns and tiles.
The center of Fuyuki City's spiritual ground, the largest concentration of magical power in the city… If that was the best place to build the system that summoned the Servants, it made sense the Grail would be there, too, and the obvious human touches to it spoke to that.
"The chamber holding the Holy Grail is through there, deep inside the mountain," Caster told us solemnly. "Now, everyone, I need you to get in there and get behind Girlie. Now."
Mash startled and gasped, spinning about. "A Servant!"
Caster stepped past the group and back away from the mouth of the cavern, and with a shout, he waved his staff and carved a circle of runes in the air. They'd barely formed when something dark and almost invisible glinted and impacted, bouncing off as the barrier shattered like glass.
Whatever it was gleamed as it landed tip-first in the dirt, jutting up, a long, narrow shaft with twists and knots to its shape that didn't belong on an arrow, and yet that was the only thing it could be. Before our very eyes, it disintegrated, just dissolved into tiny flecks of light that flickered out of existence.
Archer. He'd come to intercept us before we could enter the cavern to fight Saber, as expected.
"Eek!" Rika squeaked.
"Behind Mash!" I shouted, and the group of us huddled up and piled in behind Mash, who brandished her shield and thrust it forward, planting the bottom spoke in the dirt for stability.
Another arrow whistled through the dark, and this time, Caster didn't bother deflecting it, he just leaned to the side, reached out, and plucked it from the air as it passed him. With a better look at it, now, I could see how the barbed tip curved sharply on the back ends and dipped into an undulating shaft that eventually terminated into a pronged butt. There was no fletching, and a moment later, it disappeared the way the first one had.
It probably said something that I didn't bat an eye, but then, powers hadn't really ever followed logic, either, so maybe it wasn't all that strange I didn't find it strange.
"You gonna come out, Archer?" Caster called into the forest. "Or are you going to sit in the bushes until I burn them to the ground and make you come out?"
Another arrow shot through the air. Caster knocked it aside effortlessly.
"Come on, Archer! We've played this game before! You already know you can't hit me with these! All you're doing now is wasting time!"
Protection from Arrows. Of course. As long as it was a projectile, Caster shouldn't have any trouble with it at all.
A moment of silence was the enemy Servant's response, and then Caster leapt out of the way as shafts of steel rained down from just above the treetops, thudding as they sank into the ground — Mash grunted as what had to be a full half of the barrage clanged off the front of her shield, bouncing, twirling, and eventually landing, many of them broken and snapped in half, in the dirt.
They weren't arrows, like I might have expected. They were too long, with bladed edges, handles at the bottom end, and prongs jutting out from where the handle transitioned into the main body of the weapon.
"Are those…swords?"
In hindsight, it should have been less surprising, considering Caster had already said that this guy could recreate Caladbolg, which was definitely a sword. I just hadn't expected something like this when Caster said he could rapidly produce more ammunition.
"That's so metal!" whispered Rika.
Ritsuka grunted and a disgusted groan vibrated in the back of the Director's throat. "That was a terrible pun!"
What kind of Archer was this? I… Maybe if you stretched the definition of what an archer was, but…
Caster was the only one unfazed. "Come on, Archer! That didn't work last time, either!"
At last, a figure appeared on the branch of one tree, a large, black bow in one hand and a sword held by the pommel between two of his fingers in the other. He was… Tall, broad-shouldered, with bronze skin and shocking white hair — attractive, if I was being entirely honest, and I might have spent longer tracing the curves of those muscles of his if he wasn't an enemy — but the thing that stood out the most about him was the jagged red lines that stretched up one side of his neck and over his face, while more zigzagged down one arm.
They looked like Lichtenberg scars, only redder and starker. Like someone had cracked open his skin, and what lay beneath wasn't muscle and bone, but rust and flames. The only thing missing was the glow.
Caster grinned. "That's more like it. Coming to protect Saber, like always?"
Archer dropped out of the tree and stepped forward to the edge of the bluff that overlooked the cavern, his expression cold, closed off, and utterly devoid of anything resembling emotion. He observed the entire group dispassionately, like a machine calculating the task ahead.
"There's no wish upon the Grail to be fighting for anymore," Archer said, disinterested, like he was reciting something he'd read out of a textbook. "In that case, the least I can do is the mundane work of chasing off intruders. You should understand that, Caster."
"What you're saying is that you're her guard dog, is that it?" Caster said sardonically. "Is that your idea of a joke? Or maybe you meant it as an insult!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Like I'd believe that!"
Caster swung his arm, drawing runes in the air, and blasts of fire shot out for Archer, who leapt from his perch to avoid them and landed in the ravine that sheltered the cavern. His feet had barely touched the ground before he was setting his stance, setting the sword in his hand across that enormous bow, and I could only watch as it streamlined down into an arrow identical to the first two that had been fired our way.
"Hu!"
That arrow shot off at Caster with a crack of displaced air, but Caster batted it away just like everything else Archer had thrown at him.
"Haven't I already said that won't work? Ha!"
Caster drew more runes, and more bolts of fire shot at Archer, whose bow vanished and was replaced by a pair of twin swords that he used to deflect Caster's fireballs. The flames rolled off the flats of the blades — one white and one black — and guttered out.
"Heh!" Caster grinned. "Finally starting to take me seriously, are you?"
"Who knows?" Archer said. "Maybe I just don't have the time to spend playing around with you."
He started walking, always keeping Caster in front of him, and across from him, Caster circled in the opposite direction until neither of them had their backs to us.
"You're going to make me sad, Archer," Caster teased. "After all, we're Servants. No matter what Saber does, our time back on Earth is limited. Shouldn't we go out having fun?"
"There's no point in something like that. Killing the lot of you is just my job. Enjoyment has nothing to do with it."
Archer's steely eyes — they were, quite literally, the gray of polished steel — flickered over in our direction, like a lion considering a gazelle or a snake a mouse, and I didn't need to be a genius or have any particular strategic acumen to realize his intent. Caster didn't miss it, either.
"Not so fast!" Caster shouted, and he jabbed his staff into the dirt as runes drew themselves at his feet. Four in particular, although I wasn't versed enough in runes to recognize their combined purpose on sight. "Your opponent here is me, you bastard!"
Archer stiffened and grunted, and he spat, "Ath nGabla."
"Ath nGabla?" asked Rika. "What's that?"
"It's a special runic spell used by Cúchulainn," the Director explained quickly. "It forces the opponent to fight a one on one duel to the death. Once you're bound by it, you can't retreat and you can't surrender. You either win or die. In his legend, he used it to hold off an entire army by forcing them to engage him one at a time."
"That's right, Archer." Caster's grin was full of teeth and edges. "There's no more running away. One way or another, we're finishing this battle here and now."
"If you're that eager to die…" Archer settled into a stance, brandishing his twin swords. "I guess the only thing I can do is oblige you."
"If you think you can manage it…"
Caster swung his arm again, drawing yet more runes.
"…that suits me just fine!"
The world exploded as they kicked off the ground. Hunks of soil and rock flew from where they'd both been standing, and somewhere in the middle, they met, arms a blur, moving so fast that I couldn't even keep up with what was happening.
Against all sense, Caster had abandoned his runes and was instead wielding his staff like a polearm, but Archer was fending him off with his pair of swords instead of putting distance to try and find something that Caster couldn't avoid. Their metal rang and shrieked with each blow, each so rapid that they began to overlap as both Servants got faster and faster.
"This is insane," the Director murmured. "A Caster fighting like a Lancer, and an Archer fighting like a Saber."
This wasn't part of the plan, I wanted to tell Caster, but I couldn't afford to distract him, so I could only bite my lip and keep silent. We'd agreed, he could fight Archer one on one and have his duel, but a deathmatch curse had never been a part of that. We needed him to fight Saber too much to risk him losing and getting killed. Caster's wishes be damned, I'd intended to intervene the instant it looked like he was about to die.
Now, he'd made that impossible. Had he done it specifically so that I couldn't, because I'd told him that I would if I had to?
My eyes flicked back and forth as I tried to keep track of the fight, but they were just moving too fast. Their bodies were little more than red and blue blurs as they danced across the gorge, and their weapons were essentially invisible. The only reason I could see Caster's staff was because it had burst into flame at some point, leaving a glowing trail in its wake.
It wasn't that I couldn't see the logic. A one on one deathmatch curse ensured Archer couldn't target us and draw us into the fight, which meant we were safer here than without it. It also meant Archer couldn't just run away and ambush us later, he had to finish it now, one way or the other. As long as Caster won, we could be certain we wouldn't have an enemy at our backs.
But I didn't like that Caster had made the decision without me, and I didn't like that it meant the only thing I could do was sit on the sidelines and watch.
The seconds ticked by. The fight kept going, a lightning fast melee where neither side seemed to have the upper hand. Every few blows, one of Archer's swords would shatter with the crack of breaking glass, but before I could even blink, it was replaced with an exact duplicate. They were stuck in a stalemate where neither of them could advance, because the match was simply too even at close range.
But it could only last for so long. The more intense the fighting got, the stronger the tug inside of me got, and the more magical energy Caster drained to keep going. Faster and faster, it dwindled — I'd thought before that he could have three more fights of the sort of intensity he went at it against Medusa before I had to worry, and it looked like he was determined to prove that he could still kick it up a notch.
Another one of Archer's swords went flying, the hilt in one direction and the shattered pieces of the blade another, and in that brief fraction of a second, Caster looked over at me and his eyes met mine. Could he tell he was draining me so fast?
"Where are you looking?"
Archer, sensing an opening, reversed his grip on his remaining sword and mercilessly thrust it into Caster's chest.
The rest of my group gasped.
"No!" said the Director.
"Caster!" Rika screamed.
Caster froze, hunched over the blade in his chest, face carved into a rictus of shock — and then vines sprouted from the wound, wrapping around Archer's hand, and Caster's body turned brown and coarse, like the bark of a tree from his head to his feet to his clothes. Before our eyes, his back cracked open, and Caster, whole and unharmed, stepped away from his own corpse.
"Thought you had me there?" Caster's grin was a thing of victory. "Don't think you can take me out that easily, Archer!"
He stabbed his staff into the wooden statue of himself, and it caught ablaze instantly, pouring flames from every crack and crevice like some mockery of a funeral pyre. Archer grunted and tore himself free, putting as much distance between them as he could; the burns that marked his hand and forearm were red and inflamed, but mostly superficial. For a Servant, they were probably nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
"Where are you going?" Caster demanded.
He slammed the butt of his staff against the ground, and a line of fire ignited across the gorge towards Archer, who leapt out of the way and into the air. The remaining sword disappeared, and Archer's bow rematerialized as he formed another longsword on its string.
It was a different sword from before. Not basic steel and rudimentary structure, like you might see on any old sword from medieval Europe, but a drill-like spiral that terminated in a narrow point and had a dark blue hilt. Even from where I was, I could tell that this thing was something special, just from the sense of foreboding, of weight, it carried.
I realized as he started to come back down — if he fired that off and Caster dodged, it would come and hit Mash. Us.
"Like I'd let you!" Caster shouted and smacked his palm into the dirt.
A wooden hand thrust itself out of the ground, and Archer, who was still in the air, couldn't dodge to avoid it as it reached up and took hold of him, hoisting him higher into the sky.
Cage of Scorching, Consuming Flames
"Wicker Man!"
The wooden hand ignited and the arm it was attached to swung down. Archer, who was trapped between its fingers, couldn't escape as it smashed into the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the mountainside, shattering with a burst of white hot flames. Shards of wood splattered across the gorge, skittering over the dirt, still flickering with the embers of the Wicker Man, and then they dissolved away.
In the crater made by the Wicker Man's fist, Archer's body lay, chunks of him missing entirely, half his torso gone, one arm torn off from the elbow down, one leg mangled and twisted in sickening angles. He didn't move, didn't seem to be breathing or even conscious, and then, he flaked away into little motes of light that winked out of existence.
He was dead. Again. Still. However the fuck that worked with Servants.
And the instant he was gone, I felt as though whatever force I hadn't realized was keeping me steady disappeared with him, and I sagged against the spoke of Mash's shield, arms and legs trembling, and panted for a breath I hadn't even known I'd lost.
"Taylor?"
"Miss Taylor?"
"Senpai, are you okay?"
I swallowed thickly around my tongue. My body burned. My nerves throbbed. Sweat dripped down my forehead, down the back of my neck, down the front of my shirt. I had to blink to refocus my vision, because it was blurring around the edges.
"I'm fine," I said belatedly, slurring a little. Fuck. What was wrong with me? "Jus… Just give me a…"
Footsteps. A familiar presence, cool and welcoming. I looked up into red eyes, trying to keep myself from collapsing to my knees.
I was ashamed to admit that Mash and her shield were probably the only things keeping me upright.
"Sorry about that, Master," Caster said, sounding honestly contrite. "I took a little more energy from you than I should have."
"It's…"
What was I supposed to say to that?
"It's fine."
"It's not fine!" the Director squawked. "Caster, we still have another fight to go through, you know! How are we supposed to face Saber when one of our Masters is like this?"
"Give her a few minutes to adjust," Caster said, unconcerned. "I'm guessing she never pushes herself, right? Or more like, she keeps ironclad control over how much she stresses her magic circuits. She's just not used to channeling that much of her magical energy all at once."
My cheek twitched. I resisted the urge to scowl at him, that he could so easily see through me. He wasn't wrong, though, in either sense; even as he spoke, I could feel the pain and weakness fading as my magic circuits cooled and returned to normal. It was like I'd said, I'd only need a minute or so to recover my breath and my strength.
To take the focus off of me, I said, "Ath nGabla."
Caster grimaced and sighed. "Yeah, I figured you'd be mad about that," he said ruefully.
"Of course we're mad!" the Director spat indignantly. "Do you have any idea how reckless and irresponsible —"
"Director," I cut in, "a scolding would be more meaningful coming from his Master, wouldn't it?"
Her mouth snapped shut and her cheeks went a little red as she scowled.
"I'm not mad you did it," I told Caster calmly. "I'm mad you made the decision by yourself."
I don't disagree with your reasoning, I continued silently, projecting my thoughts along the connection between us, nor do I disagree that it was probably the right decision. I disagree with you having done it without consulting anyone when you're essential to our fight against Saber. If we lost you, our chances of winning would plummet.
"Geez," Caster chuckled awkwardly, looking younger for it than he had at any point thus far, "sometimes, Master, you remind me of my teacher, but sometimes, you just remind me of my wife."
"Are you flirting with her again?" the Director demanded.
"If talking about all of the other women they've loved is the way modern men flirt, Boss Lady," said Caster, "then I can see why it is a catch like you is single."
Rika gave a delighted laugh even as the Director's face turned a bright, cherry red, her mouth flapping silently, because she was at a literal loss for words.
"That was flirting," Caster added unnecessarily.
"In any case," I said before the conversation could devolve again, "are you good to keep going, Caster?"
He grinned. "Heh. Shouldn't I be asking you that? Don't worry so much, Master. You've still got those three Command Spells, right?"
He gestured in the direction of my left hand, where the web of red markings stood out against the pale skin of the back of my hand. They looked even more like blood than they ever had before.
"In that case," he went on, "you've got an emergency stash of backup magical energy. If I'm running low, just use one of those to give me a quick boost. No point in hoarding them during the last battle of the Holy Grail War, right?"
Unless he decided to stab us in the back afterwards, that was. But I was beginning to think that Caster, that Cúchulainn, just wasn't that kind of person. Could you call that trust? Maybe.
I took a deep breath and pushed myself off of Mash's shield, and I didn't collapse, although I wasn't back up to one-hundred percent, either. That was only natural, though. It wasn't like I was going to regain all of the magical energy Caster used up in just five minutes.
"Ritsuka, Rika, are you ready?" I asked.
Rika went ramrod straight, and Ritsuka startled a little at being addressed. "A-ah, yes, Senpai?" Ritsuka said uncertainly.
"Tip-top, running on all cylinders, Senpai!" Rika chirped.
It was going to take some getting used to, being addressed like that. Most of the rest of Team A hadn't thought much of me, although Wodime had never been exactly mean and Beryl… Beryl had just been weird. Like he could see something in me the others didn't, and he didn't want to risk whatever he thought that was coming out.
"Mash?"
Mash was the only one of them who treated me like I had any experience with anything more strenuous than bookwork.
"All parameters are normal, Miss Taylor," she replied.
"Then let's get going," the Director said. "Mash, take point. No sense in taking any risks this late in the game."
She looked over at me and I nodded. "Right."
"Understood, Director."
Mash hefted her huge shield again and swung around to face the cavern. She held it out in front of her to ward off any ambushes and started cautiously into the cave. A moment later, we all fell into step behind her.
The cavern turned out deeper than I'd expected. I wasn't quite sure how long we wound up walking for, but the roughly hewn pathway we walked along was winding and continued on for quite a while. It was also much roomier than I'd thought it would be, as well — stalactites hung from the ceiling, and stalagmites framed the sides, but there was easily enough space for our entire group to walk side by side, if we'd been so inclined, and more than enough space for Mash to swing that shield any which way she liked.
We must have traveled a whole mile into the mountainside before we saw the ominous glow ahead, and the tension in the party ratcheted up a notch as we kept going to the end of the tunnel and stepped out into a vast, utterly enormous chamber.
If I'd thought the tunnel was big, the chamber it led to was ridiculous. Easily large enough to fit an entire army, with a ceiling so far up that, even lit by that ominous glow, it was shrouded in darkness and shadows. It reminded me of Erebor or the Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings, and it was certainly big enough for an underground castle or city to be built inside of it.
At the back of the cavern was a raised ridge, a circular thing that stretched from one side to the other, like the nest of some giant serpent, and standing on the lip of that ridge, overlooking us and the rest of the chamber, was a young woman.
She was black all over, from her dress to the armor she wore over it to the exquisite sword she rested her hands on whose tip was planted in the dirt. A shock of platinum blonde hair sat on her head, and eerily glowing yellow eyes peered down at us from out of a pale-skinned face.
The thing that stuck out the most about her was the sheer power she exuded, an aura of darkness that permeated the entire chamber and could be felt even from its entrance. Her sheer presence seemed to fill the room and soak into the ground, choking the life away and pressing down on us.
And yet, there was something grand and majestic about it, something larger than life and almost noble. I could believe this woman, small and young as she was, could have been King Arthur.
"Welcome, Chaldea," the young woman said. Her voice was cold and void of emotion, but there was something in there that I was almost tempted to call friendly. "I am the Servant Saber. I stand guard here, to defend this place against all trespassers and those who would covet the power within."
And behind her, a massive pool of magical energy churned, so dense and so powerful that it was visible to the naked eye. It dwarfed Saber a thousand times over, a million times over, not only in sheer volume but in quantity and quality. There was so much of it that I couldn't have hoped to make use of it in the course of a hundred lifetimes, let alone a single one.
Even as a novice spellcaster, I knew enough about magic to tell that this thing was the real deal, the authentic article. Not the cup of Christ from the Last Supper, but an omnipotent wish-granting device that could make any dream a reality. Without a doubt, this was —
"If you wish to claim your prize, you must first step over my corpse," Saber said with the unshakeable conviction of the mountain around us. "That is the only way you can take this Holy Grail."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Cu has been one of the best parts of Fuyuki. The interplay he has with the cast, particularly Taylor and Olga, is just so amazingly fun, both to write and read. Also, Ath nGabla is criminally underused, for something that is actually incredibly useful.
Really liking lots of stuff happening in Orleans. That moment in chapter 17 is a bit of an anticlimax, but there was no way Taylor was passing that up.
Other news: things are picking up a bit, but I'm still not where I'd like to be, so if you can lend a hand, Ko-fi link is down below. Please and thank you. September is getting ever closer.
Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
"A magical energy reactor of that scale," the Director muttered, chewing on her thumbnail again. "I read about this in our records about Fuyuki, but… Seeing something capable of generating and processing that much raw magical power for your own eyes is a different thing entirely."
"I was expecting a golden cup," Ritsuka mumbled.
"This is such a ripoff," Rika agreed. "Why even call it a Holy Grail, then?"
The Director scoffed. "Ignorant neophytes, the both of you! The term Holy Grail is used for two primary purposes. Firstly, because it's convenient shorthand when talking about a device of this magnitude that can brute force wishes through its raw power. What else are you going to call an omnipotent wish-granting device? And secondly, because giving something a label like that defines it and reinforces its purpose. If you give something a name, you can give it shape."
"Which further reinforces the Holy Grail's power to grant wishes," Mash added.
"Exactly."
Powers weren't that different, were they? They were less precise, because I guess passengers didn't understand humans all that well, but why did Lung transform into a dragon? Why had my power limited my control to arthropods, to bugs, to creepy crawlies? Why had Sundancer's power shaped into a spheroid ball of fused plasma?
Why had Echidna's mishmash of parts all featured terrestrial animals?
Because passengers had based our powers on human concepts through human lenses.
Up on the ledge, Saber lifted her sword out of the dirt —
"She's coming!" I warned everyone, and Mash stepped further forward, hefting her shield defensively, as the Director and the twins huddled closer together.
— and with a single leap, she cleared almost half the distance between us. She landed roughly, more akin to the classic superhero "three-point" landing than something graceful. There was a reason that landing was so iconic, though, and Saber proved that in the way she didn't flinch, didn't wince, and didn't seem at all inconvenienced by it. No pain, no discomfort, just a smooth transition back to her feet.
Power. That landing was all about power.
"That Servant, too," the Director whispered, eyes locked on Saber. "That level of magical output is just unreal. It's on a completely different level from the other Servants so far. Can you even call her a mere Servant anymore?"
"In the legends, King Arthur is said to be the embodiment of the Red Dragon," I said. "The living representation of Britain."
Well, Wales, technically, but that had been lost as more and more of Europe adopted the mythos and added to it.
"A dragon in human form… No, maybe not that far, but something like it? She'd have one foot in humanity and one foot in the Phantasmals." The Director grimaced. "Her magic circuits… No, they'd really be more like a nuclear reactor than something as simple as circuits."
"It's like I told you before," said Caster, face solemn, "Saber is completely different from that Archer. She doesn't need complex tactics and convoluted strategy. If she can't overwhelm you with her raw strength, then she'll just blow you away with her Noble Phantasm."
Saber stepped towards us, casually, leisurely, except that really wasn't the right way to describe it. The absolute confidence, the almost predatory gleam in her yellow eyes, it was more like a lion stalking its prey.
And we were the poor gazelle, in that case.
"How interesting," Saber said as she came closer. She was looking at Mash and completely ignoring the rest of us. "That shield… I know the knight to whom it belongs, and you are most certainly not him, strange girl. And yet you most certainly wield it, and you are most certainly a Servant of some kind. Perhaps you are a distant descendent of his, borrowing his powers through possession?"
I couldn't see the look on Mash's face, but I could imagine the thoughts going through her head.
So, the Heroic Spirit who originally owned that shield was a knight — although, with that armor, that was kind of self-evident — and he was someone King Arthur had known in life, or at least known of, and seemed to respect. The only problem was, King Arthur's tale had been rife with knights of all sorts from all kinds of different places, so that didn't exactly narrow it down, and there was nothing to say that he was one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table and not an enemy.
The possibilities had narrowed, but not by enough.
"…He passed his powers down to me at the last second to save my life, but he didn't tell me his name," Mash admitted quietly, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from scolding her for giving that away so readily.
"I see," said Saber, and there was something like fondness in her voice, but it was so faint that I wasn't sure I wasn't imagining it. "Yes, that sounds like him. Doubtlessly, he intends for you to come into his power through your own growth. Very well then, strange girl."
Saber hefted her sword and brandished it, gripping the hilt with both hands. "I will test the strength of your resolve and your worthiness to inherit his mantle! Prepare yourself!"
There was no time to react. I didn't blink, but Saber moved so fast that she appeared to teleport; in an instant, she'd crossed the distance and stood in front of Mash. I could only see her by the flutter of her dress and the ominous shape of her sword, Excalibur, from over the spoke of Mash's shield.
Not that fast, my ass, Caster!
She easily outpaced every other Servant we'd fought, so far.
CLANG
The sound of the impact was thunderous and felt like it rattled the bones in my body and shook the ground beneath my feet. If I'd had any fillings in my mouth, I was sure they would have been vibrated loose by that attack alone.
Mash gasped and had to thrust her left foot back to absorb the blow, and it seemed a miracle to me that her shield hadn't gone flying in the face of something that strong. The only Brute I'd ever known with that level of raw strength was Alexandria.
CLANG — CLANG — CLANG — CLANG — CLANG
Saber didn't give her the chance to recover or rest. She didn't attack with the blinding speed Archer, Medusa, and Caster had used in battle, but each swing seemed to shake the whole world with its power, and my ears rang with the screech of Mash's shield as her arms buckled beneath each blow. If I hadn't seen capes who had shrugged off attacks equally as powerful — if I hadn't fought Behemoth and watched him survive a blast that Phir Se had said could destroy the Indian subcontinent — just the fact that shield wasn't a ruined mess would have been impressive on its own.
Even still, Mash was obviously outclassed. Her shield would not break, but her body was a different story entirely.
"Come on!" Saber stopped long enough to goad her, and then delivered another bone-shaking strike.
CLANG
"Is that all you're capable of?"
Another swing of Excalibur. It streaked through the air like black lightning.
CLANG
Mash grunted, her knees trembling and her arms shaking, not with fear, but with effort. Each attack should have sent her flying, but somehow, she was not only staying on her feet, she was managing to block them all.
"Can you do nothing more than clutch to that shield?"
CLANG
"If you wish to claim the Grail, you must first go through me!"
CLANG
"That isn't possible if you can't even take one step forward!"
CLANG
Mash gasped and fell to one knee. One hand still held the handle of her shield, and the other was braced against the left spoke as though that was the only thing standing between her and annihilation — and in a very real sense, it was.
"Mash!" the twins both cried out.
It was only sheer luck that the Director and I managed to grab hold of them before they could rush to Mash's aid.
"What do you think you're doing?" the Director shrieked. "You two are just Masters! The only thing you'll accomplish by going to her side is to get yourselves killed!"
"But!" Ritsuka tried to protest.
"She needs us!" Rika shouted.
"Have faith in Mash," I told them, "and remember the plan."
The both of them scowled and looked towards Mash, fists clenched and shaking. I couldn't say I didn't understand how horrible it was to feel so helpless, so unable to do anything.
It was only the reminder that there was a plan and I couldn't have hoped to change anything in a fight against Saber with my own power that kept me from racing to get involved, myself.
Come on, Caster, I thought. I'm not sure how long Mash can take this.
"Stand up!" Saber barked at Mash. "Do you think the fight is over simply because you can't go on? Servants fight to the death!"
CLANG
Mercilessly, she delivered another harsh blow. Mash's shield held, but her arms nearly didn't.
"The knight who wielded that shield was invincible!"
CLANG
Mash gasped, elbows quivering.
"As long as his heart remained stalwart, so too did his shield!"
CLANG
Mash's hand slipped, and she scrambled to move it back into place as her shield threatened to collapse on top of her.
"If your heart is so feeble that you can't even withstand this much —"
CLANG
"— then you are not worthy to inherit his legacy!"
"Give the girl a break, Saber," Caster's voice echoed. "She's only been a Servant for a little over a day. We only managed to tease out what her Noble Phantasm even looked like a few hours ago."
Saber stopped cold and whipped around, looking off to the side, where Caster stood. The ground beneath him glowed with a series of runes, his second Noble Phantasm.
Caster grinned. "Besides. She's not the only one here, you know. You still have me to contend with, too. Our Grail War isn't over."
Now.
I palmed the runestone he'd carved in preparation for this moment, and I threw it over the edge of Mash's shield, right into Saber's face.
"What —"
My eyes squeezed shut. "Anfang!"
The flash of light was so bright, I could see it through my eyelids. Saber let out an agonized screech.
"Now, Mash!"
"Y-yes!"
I heard her pull herself to her feet, and I managed to get my eyes back open just in time to see her swing her massive shield at Saber and send her enemy flying backwards. It couldn't have been more than a superficial injury, because Saber easily rolled back to her feet, squinting her eerie yellow eyes at us as she snarled.
"You!"
Mash planted her shield in the dirt and braced herself.
Human Order Foundation
"Lord Chaldeas!"
Lines of blue light drew themselves in the air in front of her, forming an enormous magic circle, and a translucent barrier rippled into existence, large enough to cover an entire house, to encircle the Second Owner's mansion. It looked flimsy, if I had to admit to it, but this had blocked Caster's Wicker Man, so I had to hope this would be enough to protect us, now.
Not a moment too soon, because Caster's voice shouted soon after.
Great God Carved Seal
"Ochd Deug Odin!"
Another flash of light detonated, brighter and more intense than my flashbang, and I had to look away, shielding my eyes in the crook of my elbow as my retinas burned from the overload. An explosion ripped through the air, a low, loud, thunderous boom that shook the cavern around me more than Saber's strikes could have ever hoped to, and I felt every particle of my body vibrate from its passing.
But behind the barrier of Mash's Noble Phantasm, we were completely unaffected.
The moment came and went. It took a few seconds, but I pried my eyelids back open and blinked blearily over the spoke of Mash's shield as she gasped and her barrier vanished. A cloud of debris wafted through the cave, and we stood in the center of a clear spot, like the eye of a hurricane.
"Did we get her?" Ritsuka asked quietly.
"There's no way she survived that!" Rika said confidently.
"Quiet," I ordered them. "Don't relax, yet."
The dust and dirt kicked up by Caster's Noble Phantasm began to disperse, and despite my own words, I couldn't help the uncomfortable squirm in my gut as I saw what lay in the middle of it all.
"No way…"
Slowly, Saber pulled herself to her feet, using her sword as a crutch. A miasma of dark energy curled around her lovingly, and even as I watched, the dark burns on her skin healed over and the rips in her clothing mended themselves as though time itself were being rewound.
I gritted my teeth. Just what did it take to put her down?
"We did a lot of damage, Master," said Caster, suddenly right next to me. "Unfortunately, Saber won't go down so easily. She must have let loose a surge of magical energy right before my Noble Phantasm hit, and it was enough to absorb the brunt of the damage."
"Just what kind of monster is she?" the Director demanded, horrified.
Saber turned in our direction, and although her face hadn't really changed that much the entire time, there was something in her expression that I could only call furious.
"I see," she said lowly, coldly, like the deadly frost before a blizzard. "It seems I underestimated you Chaldeans and your talent for trickery. Very well. If you're going to resort to your Noble Phantasms, allow me to respond in kind."
She took hold of Excalibur with both hands, and the miasma swirling around her surged instead into her sword. It erupted into dark light, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size, until she held a pillar of ominous black that dwarfed both her and us more than a dozen times over.
With my Master's Clairvoyance, I could see it for what it was, now. A++, Anti-Fortress. A weapon designed for blowing away enemy castles and fortifications, more than enough to destroy both us and the mountain we were standing inside of.
There was no way to survive it. No way to get out of the way in enough time. The instant that came down, we were all dead, the same as we would have been if it had been one of Scion's beams instead.
We only had one chance of making it through this. A slim one. But when had that ever stopped me?
"Shit!" Caster swore, recoiling. "Hey, Girlie, now would be a good time —"
"Mash!" I shouted over him. "Noble Phantasm! Now!"
Mash planted her feet and braced herself.
"EX —"
"Lord —"
"— CALIBUR!"
"CHALDEAS!"
The barrier drew itself into the air, just in time for the pillar of light to come down. I heard Rika scream next to me, and Ritsuka shouted something I didn't make out as the wind swept my hair back. A torrent of black light raced for us, large enough, massive enough that it would have scattered our composite atoms to the four winds — except Mash's shield was stopping it. The main mass of the beam held fast in the air, suspended by Mash's Noble Phantasm, and the spillover washed around us to the far edges of the barrier like water off an umbrella, leaving us untouched as it carved away at the mountain.
Even that would have been enough to kill us, if it had been close enough.
"We're… We're alive?" the Director whispered incredulously.
As though to prove her wrong, cracks began to form in the barrier, leaking that ominous light between them. Mash grunted and held her ground, digging her feet even further into the dirt beneath her, but it didn't seem to be doing any good. The cracks kept growing in size, spreading out like a spiderweb from the central point of the barrier.
"Shit," said Caster. "Girlie, this Noble Phantasm of yours is impressive if it's holding up this long, but I don't think this'll be enough."
I grimaced. There's nothing you can do?
He glanced at me, frowning. Sorry, Master. If I'd had a few seconds to prepare, I might've managed to give it a boost.
The stark, red ink of my Command Spells glared up at me. I didn't have too many options.
But, callous as it might have been, Servants were replaceable. Living people weren't.
Caster —
My thoughts were ripped away as the twins tore past us, racing to support Mash.
"What do you two think you're doing?" the Director screeched.
They ignored her, and they both each placed one hand on each of Mash's shoulders. She looked back at them. "M-Master! Senpai, no!"
"By the power of my Command Spell," Ritsuka shouted, and my eyes went wide as I realized he'd had a similar idea as me.
"Mash!" Rika said.
Together, they ordered, "Block Saber's Noble Phantasm no matter what!"
A flash of red light. A second. In an instant, two absolute orders were burned, angled towards a single purpose. The Director had always told me that a Command Spell properly used could turn the tide of the battle, but —
"Yes, Master!"
Before my eyes, the cracks sealed over, good as new. Mash screamed, but this wasn't a desperate scream or one of pain, this was more like a battle cry, and the barrier in front of her morphed, growing, as the vague pane of light evolved, gained definition. More lines drew themselves across it, forming rectangles, stacked one on top of the other.
Bricks, I realized. They were forming bricks.
More and more and more, they filled in, ghostly, phantasmal, but there, until at last, they formed a single castle wall. A rampart, with parapets at the top.
"…Incredible," the Director whispered.
It did not leak. The ominous light didn't crack it, didn't break it, didn't spill through. The rampart held strong, sturdy and unbreakable, bolstered by Mash's resolve and the bravery of her Masters, and some part of me knew, knew there could only be one castle that had earned such fame throughout all of history, one castle that could belong to an Arthurian knight, one castle so iconic that it became a Heroic Spirit's calling card.
But it escaped me. The name on the tip of my tongue refused to manifest.
The torrent of light petered out, weakening and dying away until there was nothing left, and across from us, Saber's face was wide-eyed and shocked. She was frozen at the end of her swing.
I didn't waste any time —
Caster —
And I instantly burned two of my own Command Spells.
"Kill Saber right now!"
"Roger that!" Caster grinned, slamming his hand against the dirt.
The mountain rumbled again as a figure made of wood burst up out of the ground fist first. Saber recovered just barely fast enough to avoid its first swipe and leapt out of the way, but the second caught her in midair, and a fist bigger than she was took hold of her, squeezing tightly until she yelled.
A flash of dark light, and Saber burst through the fingers gripping her, but the wooden effigy only brought its other hand around to hold her close as the door in its chest swung open to admit her.
"Wicker Man!"
The door swung shut, trapping Saber inside. The flames coating the Wicker Man's limbs grew brighter and more intense, white hot, and the effigy compacted down, throwing itself to the ground with a thunderous thud as its body exploded. The shattered remains of its branches cracked and tumbled across the cavern, and then disappeared.
And through it all, somehow, Saber remained.
"That didn't kill her?" the Director demanded hysterically.
"No, she's done," said Caster calmly. "Her body's healing, but that's just superficial. Her Spiritual Core is ripping itself apart as we speak."
"He's right," Saber said as she climbed slowly back to her feet. Particles of light slowly drifted away from her body, like she was disintegrating before our eyes. "That last attack of yours was enough. You've beaten me."
She sighed. "It seems my resolve simply wasn't enough. Yes, of course — as long as I stand alone, the end result will always be the same, won't it? Mere raw power wasn't enough to protect the Grail."
She took a deep breath, and then she pinned our entire group with her yellow eyes. "Be proud, warriors of Chaldea, for this is your victory. However, do not think your Grand Order ends with me. This Singularity is merely the first step on your journey. You will have much more to face before your quest reaches its conclusion."
She vanished. Between one blink and the next, she was just gone, and her ominous presence disappeared, too. Something clattered to the ground where she'd been, but I couldn't see it clearly enough from my position.
A glimmer of light caught my eye, and I turned to see Caster glowing and fading away, too. He blinked, looking down at himself, and turned to me with a rueful grin.
"Caster!" Rika said, panicking.
"Looks like this is my curtain call, too," said Caster. "Don't worry, Little Missy. It only makes sense, doesn't it?"
"The Grail War is over," the Director agreed. "There's nothing tying you to this world any longer."
"Sorry I can't stay around to help with the cleanup," he said. He looked at Ristuka. "Hey, Boyo."
Ritsuka jolted and straightened up. Caster pointed at him, grinning. "You're the only man around, so you need to toughen up and become reliable, got it? That Servant of yours is something else, but she's only as good as her Master, so you've gotta make sure you're the best." He turned to Rika. "Little Missy, you've got guts and spunk. Keep that heart of yours as pure as it is and everything else will follow. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" Rika chirped. Was she…? She was actually crying. "I-I'll do my best!"
The Director, next. "Boss Lady, you've got one helluva team. Make sure you treat them right, and maybe ease up on them here and there, yeah?"
The Director huffed. "I'll give them exactly what they've earned and never anything more!"
"As I expected of you!" Caster laughed. And at last, he turned back to me. "Princess."
"Caster."
"I can tell, you're not used to being on the sidelines, are you?" He shook his head. "You were itching to throw yourself into the fight the entire time. Man, if only you'd been alive in my day, we would've torn it up like nobody's business."
"S-stop flirting with her!" the Director ordered him, face flushed.
Caster just laughed her off. "Well, our time together might've been short, but we won, huh? Just like I promised."
"We did."
He shook his head. "Man, you really are like her, aren't you? Do me a favor, Master. Next time you summon me, make sure it's as a Lancer, okay? Then I'll show you what I'm really made of!"
Like Saber, he vanished, leaving no trace behind except the handful of runestones we'd never gotten the chance to use.
To the spot he'd just occupied, I said quietly, "Thank you, Cúchulainn."
Beep-beep!
"Director!" Romani said. "Servant readings have disappeared! A-and the interference is clearing up, too! Did you beat her?"
"Like a drum!" Rika said cheerfully.
"Saber has been defeated, Doctor Roman," Mash reported. "Caster…has disappeared as well."
"Vital signs are good. There's some strain, but you all just got through the fight of your lives, so I'm not surprised." Romani faltered. "Ah, Director? Are you there? I-I still don't have a good read on you, so…"
"That Servant," the Director said slowly. "Saber. She mentioned us. Greeted us by name. Chaldea. Grand Order. How did she know those terms?"
My eyes went wide. "That's… That's a very good question."
I'd been too focused on the plan at the time to give it any thought, and maybe I was just too used to Thinkers who knew way more than they really should, but now that the rest of it was taken care of… How had Saber known who we were and what our mission was called?
"Director, now might not be the time," said Romani. "I'm still detecting a massive magical energy source in your vicinity."
"Another Servant?" I asked sharply.
Romani's head shook.
"No, nothing of that sort. I'm not detecting a Saint Graph or a Spirit Origin on that level outside of Mash, so you're probably looking for —"
"Master?" Mash walked cautiously forward to where Saber had stood, and she picked up —
The Director gasped. "Is that?"
"The Holy Grail," a new voice boomed.
My heart stopped.
No. No way. After everything that happened, for that person to appear at the end —
Up on the ridge where Saber had stood was another figure, a tall man with a top hat and long, shaggy hair. He looked down at us, his hands folded behind his back.
"That Saber… If only she'd done as she was supposed to, instead of desperately clinging to this era. I suppose you lot did me something of a favor in eliminating her, although I never expected this ragtag group to make it this far."
"Professor Lev?" Romani choked out.
"Lev?" the Director breathed, disbelieving, but it quickly changed to relieved affection. "Oh, Lev, thank goodness! You're alive! When I heard you'd died, I didn't know what —"
She rushed off towards him, but I threw my arm out, and the air left her mouth in a sudden huff as she ran straight into it.
"H-Hebert," she gasped, "what are you doing? That's Lev!"
"I'm not so sure about that," I told her, never taking my eyes off of him. I refused to even blink. "And even if it is…I don't think he's on our side."
"W-what?" the Director demanded furiously. "What are you even saying? Have you lost your mind!"
"Oh?" Lev grinned. It made Caster's most menacing seem downright friendly. "If you don't mind my asking, what gave me away?"
Fuck.
I swallowed, mind racing, because he'd just confirmed it, and the only one we had here who could defend us was a tired Mash. If Lev was anything other than what he looked like, that probably wouldn't be enough to save our lives.
The only thing I could do was buy time. Time for Romani to Rayshift the whole lot of us out of here.
Damn it, I missed having my powers. Siccing thousands of bugs on him might have wound up no more effective against him than they were against Scion, but at least it would have given me a better toolkit than my dinky little Gandr and a prosthetic arm that could grab stuff from far away.
"It's the fact that you're even here to begin with," I said. "One person surviving that bomb in the command room, I could buy. Under the right circumstances, one person in a million could survive something like that, just by the luck of their positioning. Maybe she was just far enough on the edge of the blast to be blown into the Rayshift chamber and fell unconscious when she landed. Maybe she was shielded by someone else's body and survived the brunt of it that way. They're long odds and I wouldn't bet on them, but I could believe it."
I'd been one of those long odds, before. The one-in-a-million. The girl who survived the things that should have killed her by simply being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. By all rights, I should have been dead long before that final offensive against Scion, and I'd only made it through some wild combination of being exactly where I needed to be to get rescued and just refusing to let myself die.
That was why I hadn't given it much thought, before, back when Romani said he'd thought the Director had died with Lev and the rest of the staff in the command room when the bomb detonated. She could have been that one in a million.
But two people hitting that jackpot simultaneously? Without a precog making sure things went a certain way, those odds were just too long.
"Yes, one in a million odds," Lev said. "Like Romani being waylaid by two washout Master candidates just long enough to avoid getting caught in the blast, or one of Team A's coffins cracking open in just the right way for its occupant to avoid injury. You can only imagine how furious I was to find out the both of you survived, Romani, Taylor Hebert."
"Lev?" the Director whispered. I could practically hear the desperate denials running through her head as she tried to find any excuse to make sense of what he'd just admitted to.
"You as well, Olga. How vexing it was to find you here. In spite of the fact that I planted the bomb right beneath your feet, somehow, you're still alive." He grinned again. "Well, for a certain value of that word. After all, although your spirit was transferred here to this Singularity, the only reason that was even possible is because there's no longer a body tying you down in the present. Olga Marie Animusphere had no aptitude for Rayshifting while she was alive."
The sound of Marie's heart breaking was almost audible.
"Y-you're lying," she breathed, barely a whisper. "Y-you…you can't be Lev. Lev would never — !"
"It's the truth," Lev told her cruelly and with relish. "The instant this Singularity collapses and Chaldea Rayshifts you all back, you will simply dissipate, Olga. Your consciousness will unravel and your spirit will return to nothingness. There is no body for you to return to. You have, quite literally, reached a dead end."
"Director…" Mash mumbled.
"Director Marie," Rika said worriedly.
"I'd suspected as much," Romani admitted quietly. "The shock of the blast, and even if she survived that, the fall out the observation window alone would be enough to kill a human being, especially if she landed head first. We… The bodies at the center of the detonation were too badly damaged to identify, but…"
"And you…didn't say anything?" the Director demanded, voice quivering.
"When you showed up in Singularity F, I just wanted to believe…"
That all of the evidence was wrong and she had miraculously survived. Yes, I understood that impulse well.
"Isn't it sad, Olga?" said Lev. "You wished with everything you were to have the chance to inherit your father's dream and Rayshift, but you only gained the ability to do so at the moment of your death, when your spirit was no longer weighed down by your flesh. How delightfully ironic. Poetic, even."
He thrust out a hand, and the Director's body glowed as her feet left the ground. The rest of us recoiled as though we might be caught up in it if we touched her.
"W-what are you doing, Lev?"
"But that's just too depressing an ending, don't you think? So I'll give you one, last parting gift, and let you touch the Chaldeas you've so coveted."
A snap of his fingers, and behind him, a rift opened up in the air, widening to an utterly enormous size until, on the other side, we could see —
"Is that —"
"Chaldea?"
The Director screamed as she was carried forward — but I wasn't going to stand there and watch Lev do whatever he was about to do to her. I broke out into a sprint, and with my stronger, prosthetic arm, I grabbed the Director around the waist and dug my feet into the dirt.
It didn't even seem to slow things down. The Director was still being carried towards the rift in space, and my shoes dug twin furrows as I fruitlessly tried to hold her back.
"Romani!" I shouted. "Get us out of here!"
"R-right! But if I do that —"
"Just do it!"
Lev laughed. "If you cherish your director so dearly, Hebert, I will gladly award you the same fate as her. You can go together, and side by side, experience an infinite living death as you're absorbed into Chaldeas! Such a gift! You will be the only two humans to ever live who get to experience falling into a black hole!"
"Romani!"
"G-give me a second, I'm trying!"
My feet left the ground.
"Miss Taylor!"
"Senpai!"
A hand grabbed my free arm, and another took hold of my hip, and together, they anchored me. I couldn't afford to look, but I heard the metallic thud as Mash's shield was planted into the ground behind us. I had no idea if it helped at all.
"This is fine!" Lev cackled. "Yes, all of you! If you can't let go of your comrades, then you will die as they do! Chaldea's last hope, the last remaining Masters it can field, and its only Servant, dead at the starting gate!"
"Romani!"
"H-hold on!"
And still, we moved forward. I couldn't tell if it was slower than before. I couldn't tell if we were accomplishing anything. All I knew was that my feet were back on solid land and still digging trails through the dirt.
As long as that was the case, it wasn't over, yet.
"I don't want to die!" the Director sobbed loudly. "I don't want to die! I haven't done anything yet! I haven't accomplished anything! N-no one has loved me or praised me, everyone hates me —"
"ROMANI!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.
"I-I'm going as fast as I can!" Romani shouted back, panicking. "I have your signatures locked on, but the instant I bring you back —"
"IF YOU DON'T DO IT NOW —"
"Step aside, Romani!" someone else on the other end ordered him urgently. I couldn't spare the concentration to put a name to a face. "I have an idea, but I only have a narrow window to make it work!"
"H-huh? Are you sure?"
"Of course not! But I don't see you coming up with any better ideas, and if we do nothing…!"
"Understood! I'll leave it to you!"
My heels dug in along the ground, dragged closer as the force tried to pull me in. My magic circuits strained, burning under the abuse I was putting them through. Mash was screaming with me, one of her arms wrapped around my waist, and in the corner of my vision I saw the whip of Rika's red hair flailing in the nonexistent wind.
The cavern rumbled. Great hunks of rock and dirt fell around us as the entire place destabilized. Chaldeas glowed ominously through the rift in space. Lev, unperturbed, watched us with a triumphant grin.
"Rayshift in three!"
I gritted my teeth. My muscles strained. My arm was starting to go numb from the effort of holding onto Marie, but sheer iron will kept me from letting her go.
"Two!"
My legs wobbled. My knees threatened to give out. My body was reaching its limit. At any moment, I would —
"One!"
The world opened up beneath us, and we fell through a canal of stars.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
So long, Cu. Until we meet again.
What became of the Director? That, I'm afraid, will have to wait for 2 weeks. Next up is Interlude OMA, and the week after is Chapter X: Monolith. I didn't...plan for there to be a 2 week cliffhanger when I wrote those, but it seems that's how it turned out.
Ugh, not being able to roll for Summer 3 rerun. Dantes last solo banner for the foreseeable future, and he's stuck at NP1, so at NP1, he'll have to remain. Ditto Summer Jeanne. Ah, well.
Special thanks to everyone who has helped me out, and especially to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable. If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
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