- Location
- Philippines
Honestly, I'm still waiting on Voyager's entry on the books. Because outside of Swing By, we have absolutely no idea on whatever he could do.
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Crossover
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Voyager is probably going to be explored in the Requiem novels, but its not impossible that we'll see a Materials entry on him. But yeah the Materials tend to expand on Servants years after their introduced. One of the more recent ones covered Avenger Nobbu and Ruler Artoria (who is just a swimsuit changed Spirit Origin of Lancer Artoria if I remember correctly). Those are Servants introduced nearly 3 years ago at this point.
TL;DR: Basically don't count on @James D. Fawkes being able to work Constantine XI into this story. To use him properly without being completely off character or over/underestimating his capabilities is going to be a long time coming. We're looking at years away.
- Location
- United States
Windborne just mentioned it. They're refering to how Tamamo's NP works in Fate/EXTRA (the PSP games).
After she NPs, for the rest of the turn, all of her skills are free. And her primary skills are a set of 3 curses that inflict various effects if you use them over the correct enemy R-P-S choice.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Actually she does they are all just collectively under her Witchcraft EX. She's got hundreds of curses, but we mainly only see three, Fiery Heaven, Frigid Heaven, and Chaos Heaven (Fire, Ice, and Wind). There are others like Aphotic Cave where she basically absorbs any Prana based attacks directed at her, though too much is dangerous without prep work or using it to fuel either a Curse she's currently casting or her Noble Phantasm she could explode from trying to contain it.
There were plenty of reasons I was advocating for her to be Taylor's compatibility Servant, but her ability to do tons of things given enough lateral thought (which Taylor could easily provide) and preparation would have made for some really interesting fight scenes I think beyond just the "Sword Beam Spam" I've seen some Fics become, thankfully that hasn't yet happened here. But long story short is that Witchcraft EX is just the umbrella skill for her actual spellwork. But these sorts of details are what the FGO Materials books have in them. Sadly they don't come out nearly frequently enough.
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- Location
- Some City
so i fully realize that i'm like a month late to this particular portion of the discussion but i just re-read a bit that smoothed this portion out for me. Granted it's taken from jumpchain, but conceptually speaking it actually makes sense, so i thought i'd mention it for the sake of argument.
within the realm of Fate you have Heroic Spirits with rated characteristics...but the ratings very wildly with the specific property and subset of Fate you are looking at. Not just in the franchises- as a Servant in Fate/Stay Night would by the metrics of that setting be hopelessly outclassed by Servants in Fate Grand Order- but even within the same setting.
and given that it's judged by legend and concept and retelling, it's easy to create clear distinctions even as some are muddied.
Does it make sense to me that Caligula has A+ Strength? Not in the least. but would he be able to beat Herakles in a fight? I mean, maybe, but not in terms of raw strength. They may have a similar stat, but once you move out of game mechanics and start looking at what the Servants are known for by legend, Herakles would be the clear winner not only because his legend is so much more widespread but because strength specifically is what he was legendary for.
again, probably something that's been thought of already, but was going over some documents and felt i should chime in.
have a good night, everybody
"Too Many Gods" by James D. Fawkes
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Too Many Gods
The summoning circle glowed, surging. The familiar light grew blinding and the grinding wind whipped about as a figure formed in the center like a shadow cast in three dimensions.
The tempest collapsed inwards, flowing rapidly back towards the vague figure in the middle like a supernova in reverse, and it compressed down into the form of a young man, a study in strangeness and contradiction.
He looked vaguely East Asian, in a way that said one or both of his parents was at least half Japanese, but his hair was closer to brown than black and his eyes were a startling red that I had come to associate with the divine. He wore a friendly, easy smile, made sinister by the contrast of his sharper, less human features.
And contrary to his pale skin and obvious Japanese ancestry, he was dressed like something straight out of a sixties adaptation of Arabian Nights.
Except no, we'd seen this sort of dress before, hadn't we? This wasn't Arabian, this was Sumerian. The white cloth trimmed in gold, the ornate vest with a four-pointed star pattern on each side radiating wavy lines out from the center, the golden armor that was far more decorative than functional. It reminded me of Gilgamesh, the form of the wise king we had met just recently, not the terrible tyrant who swept aside everything in his way.
"Hey, there," he said, lifting one of his hands in greeting. "It looks like you've summoned me in the form of a Rider Servant. This is a bit different from how I usually manifest, but my true name is —"
The door to the summoning chamber burst open, prompting a squawked, "Hey!" from Da Vinci, but Ishtar paid her no attention, because her focus was entirely on the new guy. She pointed at him, face contorting into an angry snarl, and I prepared to intervene with Command Spells in case she tried to kill him.
"You! Why did you follow me to Chaldea, you idiot?"
"Little Ishtar is here?" the new guy blurted out.
"Stop calling me that!" Ishtar spat out. "You're seven minutes older, not seven years!"
The new guy just burst out laughing, and Ishtar's face morphed into an expression first of surprise, and then embarrassment. "W-where did that even come from?" she muttered to herself.
"S-Senpai, what's going on?" Rika asked me with quiet urgency.
I don't know, I didn't say. Whatever it was, it looked like it wasn't dangerous. Yet. I still wasn't sure that wouldn't change.
"Alright," the new guy said once he'd gotten it out of his system. "Let's try this again, now that my little sister can't burst in to interrupt."
"Again," Ishtar grumbled, crossing her arms almost petulantly, "who are you calling 'little' exactly? We're twins!"
"I'm a Servant of the Rider class." The new guy pressed a hand to his bare chest. "My true name is Shamash, god of the sun, justice, morality, and truth."
He smiled. "Just think of me as an older brother, here to look out for his younger siblings, yeah?"
The summoning circle glowed, surging. The familiar light grew blinding and the grinding wind whipped about as a figure formed in the center like a shadow cast in three dimensions.
The tempest collapsed inwards, flowing rapidly back towards the vague figure in the middle like a supernova in reverse, and it compressed down into the form of a young man, a study in strangeness and contradiction.
He looked vaguely East Asian, in a way that said one or both of his parents was at least half Japanese, but his hair was closer to brown than black and his eyes were a startling red that I had come to associate with the divine. He wore a friendly, easy smile, made sinister by the contrast of his sharper, less human features.
And contrary to his pale skin and obvious Japanese ancestry, he was dressed like something straight out of a sixties adaptation of Arabian Nights.
Except no, we'd seen this sort of dress before, hadn't we? This wasn't Arabian, this was Sumerian. The white cloth trimmed in gold, the ornate vest with a four-pointed star pattern on each side radiating wavy lines out from the center, the golden armor that was far more decorative than functional. It reminded me of Gilgamesh, the form of the wise king we had met just recently, not the terrible tyrant who swept aside everything in his way.
"Hey, there," he said, lifting one of his hands in greeting. "It looks like you've summoned me in the form of a Rider Servant. This is a bit different from how I usually manifest, but my true name is —"
The door to the summoning chamber burst open, prompting a squawked, "Hey!" from Da Vinci, but Ishtar paid her no attention, because her focus was entirely on the new guy. She pointed at him, face contorting into an angry snarl, and I prepared to intervene with Command Spells in case she tried to kill him.
"You! Why did you follow me to Chaldea, you idiot?"
"Little Ishtar is here?" the new guy blurted out.
"Stop calling me that!" Ishtar spat out. "You're seven minutes older, not seven years!"
The new guy just burst out laughing, and Ishtar's face morphed into an expression first of surprise, and then embarrassment. "W-where did that even come from?" she muttered to herself.
"S-Senpai, what's going on?" Rika asked me with quiet urgency.
I don't know, I didn't say. Whatever it was, it looked like it wasn't dangerous. Yet. I still wasn't sure that wouldn't change.
"Alright," the new guy said once he'd gotten it out of his system. "Let's try this again, now that my little sister can't burst in to interrupt."
"Again," Ishtar grumbled, crossing her arms almost petulantly, "who are you calling 'little' exactly? We're twins!"
"I'm a Servant of the Rider class." The new guy pressed a hand to his bare chest. "My true name is Shamash, god of the sun, justice, morality, and truth."
He smiled. "Just think of me as an older brother, here to look out for his younger siblings, yeah?"
TL;DR: Nasu and IRL mythology accidentally offered me the most ridiculously fitting situation imaginable, and together, this confluence set up Yukio to be basically the ideal vessel for Shamash. I had this idea a while back — long, long after I started FRW — and finally decided to put it down.
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Is this a "what-if" crossover with your other story, with your SI being divine-spirit compatible with Shemesh, and this Ishtar is blending the multiverse carelessly as Ishtar usually does such that her Rin host is siphoning the AU Rin's spirit?
Actually, would Shemesh be just as careless as his sister is about multiversal self-interaction shenanigans?
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Yes. I had to add the notes in a moment ago, because I realized that it might come off differently, but the context is that Nasu using Rin for Ishtar's host, Yukio being a siscon because he inherited my fondness for Rin, and real life mythology depicting Shamash and Ishtar as having a relationship that bordered on incestuous combined to make this unholy situation.
The icing is that it was entirely on accident. I didn't plan things to work out this way when I created Yukio. I'm just taking advantage of a series of coincidences that lined up too well to ignore.
taovkool
Forever Gone
- Location
- The Library, Department of General Works
I only know Shamash from Kevin Kaslana's sword. You know, that Honkai super soldier?
Who's Yukio?
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Ishtar's also a goddess of justice. Also, can't wait to see Gil's reaction.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Strictly speaking, Shamash should probably be a Ruler. But, well, that's saved for his Servant Universe self, or maybe his Summer self.
Star of Fate/Recursive Wisdom, which is a side project of mine that I'd like to give more love in the future.
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Axel
Tenno Wax
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- He
You mean Fire Moth
Also, I totally imagined Shamash as using Kevin as host
This actually brings up a good point. Especially in the future. There is something like 300+ servants in FGO.
This can be a future problem for some authors. Because what happens is that they feel that they have to make sure all of the servants get some screen time. This is because of reader demand and because, why have the character if they aren't being used. It starts to feel like, after the arc introducing the character is done, then all of a sudden you throw them away because you have to focus on too many other characters.
Plus, at 300+ characters, there is going to be enough background interaction going on, that you also can't really ignore them either. Especially with all of the strong personalities involved.
Right now, the number of servants is still small. And it seems like, based on the previous chapters, that you will stay focused on Taylor. Hopefully, this story will stay focused and not devolve into an unwieldy story where every single servant and character has to have their sections in every single chaldea chapter. Or the chaldea chapter becomes too many chapters because most of it is trying to give some of the servants actual screen time.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
The way I plan to handle that is firstly to keep the roster of Servants who actually come to Chaldea small, even if the ones the team bonds with is constantly growing. The other part of it is to try and give the closest knit group a chance to come along in each Singularity, so, for example, it's Emiya and Arash this time, but Bradamante might be along for Okeanos, and Siegfried for London, etc. I'm still ironing those parts out, but that's how I want to keep things from ballooning too much.
EDIT: To go into a little bit more detail, while there might be 10+ Servants introduced in each Singularity, maybe one or two will actually return to Chaldea with the team. Every now and again, there might be another summoning done as well, but if more Servants start showing up, I doubt they'll get more than a passing mention or something unless and until there's a situation that calls for them.
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Good luck! And I really do mean that. I do enjoy your stuff that I've read so I really do hope that you figure something out to keep it from ballooning too much. Because, unlike some people that enjoy reading Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones (book series) where there is hundreds of characters and you are required to have a wiki to remember each character, I absolutely hate those stories.
There was a research study about the number of people that a human brain can usually keep track of. And that is why I hate those stories. I want to be invested in these characters. But if you've got so many that you have to have a wiki open to keep track of them, well I've lost interest in being invested in them. They are now literal strangers.
So, yeah, I really hope you can keep it maintained and controlled! Best of luck to you!
AionVal
(Verified Figment)
- Location
- Beyond The Veil
Please make this a canon event!! I don't even care if he doesn't get much screentime, the Rin teasing must flow. It would be great for the downtime chapter between missions.
- Location
- USA
As an F:GO player, I imagine the story can go about the same way it does for us. I might have literally hundreds of servants in my roster- I generally use 12 of them.
Like, early game, where they are now? I got Herc and Siegfried in my first roll, they and Mash carried me through two signatures. I got lucky and picked up Drake and Aatlanta on the Oceans, and rounded my team out with Medea, Cursed Arm Hassan, or original flavor Cu depending on what I was up against all the way to Camelot. I picked up and eventually leveled Emiya Archer form, Carmilla Assassin, Berserker Lancelot... And all the event freebies... But that team then carried me until I picked up Enkidu and Amakusa before finishing the Temple.
That is, I also summoned darn near if not literally every 1, 2, and 3 star servant in the game, but they were rarely ever actually used- I think only Cursed Arm got leveled past 50- and while I did end up with a few more 4 and 5 stars than named here, if they weren't both outright better than anyone I currently was using and also a character I liked more, I didn't need to level up someone new when my team was already carrying me just fine.
Better and more liked means I dropped Atalanta the second I got Nobu and never looked back.
If there's no friend summons, the final slot on your actual party is forever filled by the story summons, like what's happening in this story. There may be over 300 servants in the game itself, but as far as actually going through the whole thing and especially for a story about the game, never having more than twenty at most actually brought to Chaldea is perfectly fine.
Chapter XLVI: A Flesh Wound
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter XLVI: A Flesh Wound
The ride back to camp seemed swifter than the ride there. Maybe it was because there was less of a sense of urgency to getting there as quickly as we possibly could, and maybe it was because we were all distracted by our thoughts after the battle.
Whatever the case, it felt like it took us half the time to get back as it did to find Caesar in the first place, and we arrived at the expeditionary force's base camp without fanfare early in the afternoon.
"Super Action Mom really is amazing!" Rika gushed as we dismounted to walk the last dozen or so yards back to camp. "She beat those two guys basically by herself! Girl power!"
"Are you going to insist on calling me that ridiculous nickname?" Aífe asked, sounding somewhere between frustrated and resigned. Like a mother who knew she wasn't going to win this battle. "It's quite literally three times as long as my actual name. Or my class title."
"Yes," Ritsuka informed her wearily. "Now that she's decided on a nickname, she's going to keep using it for as long as she can get away with it."
"Apparently, my actions don't count for much, do they," Emiya drawled.
"I mean, you're cool, too, Emiya," Rika said, "but you didn't basically solo two super badass Roman Servants back to back."
"I could have blown them both away with Caladbolg from four kilometers out," Emiya suggested. "Would that have been sufficiently 'cool' enough to earn me one of these vaunted nicknames of yours, Master?"
"I mean, would that have gotten them both at once?" Rika asked dubiously. "Your edgier version tried that back in Fuyuki, but Cu never let Edgiya actually get anywhere, so I have no idea how powerful that actually is."
I mostly tuned them out, listening with only half an ear as different possibilities about what had happened to Boudica's team flitted through my head.
We hadn't had contact with them since before our teams split up. They had farther to travel, so it seemed only natural that our team would make it back first, but I'd been expecting them to call once things were over, and the fact that she hadn't worried me.
"Edgiya?" Emiya recoiled.
"Just be thankful she's forgotten to call you her house-husband for now," Ritsuka whispered to Emiya.
At the back, Arash snickered behind his hand.
"Caladbolg took off three hilltops in the myth," Mash informed Rika at almost the same time. "Um, so that might not have been a good idea, would it? Then we wouldn't have had the chance for Caesar to tell us for sure where the Grail was located."
Had we underestimated the distraction team? The reading and the look Arash got had suggested a single primary Servant with a squad of lesser combatants as support, and that should have been an easy enough fight for the likes of Boudica and Spartacus. The longer it went on especially, the more advantageous it should be for Spartacus, and that was part of why I'd thought it best to send the two of them instead of just one alone or a third.
But Spartacus did have a weakness, one both Crawler and Lung had fundamentally shared as well: hit him hard enough before he could start ramping up, and you could take him out while he was still relatively weak and unthreatening. The difficulty with that was that you needed to have something that could deal that much damage all at once, and knowing that one way or another was difficult when we didn't know who the enemy Servant was.
That was why Boudica had gone with him. Defense to his offense.
"Hey, fellas!" Rika greeted the guardsmen at the entrance of the camp.
They returned it with a respectful, "Lady Rika," and then greeted each of the rest of us in turn. I gave them a nod, but my head wasn't in it.
Could they still be fighting? There hadn't been a way for us to check before, not without risking distracting them at a critical moment, but now that we were back at camp, we should be able to get Da Vinci to take a peek for us.
"All I'm saying is," Rika was saying, "we haven't seen you do that much cool stuff yet, Emiya. You tease us with these super special awesome secret techniques you've got squirreled away for the winter, but you never really show them off, you know?"
"Maybe if our fights weren't so close quarters all the time," Arash said genially. "I have to admit, I haven't been getting many chances to show off my archery skills, either."
"I'm guessing that sword I fired into Caesar's back right as he was about to sneak attack Aífe isn't counting, here?" Emiya asked sarcastically.
Rika's brow furrowed. "Yeah, that was kind of cool, wasn't it? But it wasn't…you know…all that flashy."
Emiya snorted. "Because style matters over substance."
"Why not both?" Rika asked cheekily.
"Why not, indeed."
"Hail, friends!" Marcus greeted us as we walked deeper into camp. He was dressed in full combat gear, kitted out with gleaming metal armor wrapped around his torso in segmented plates.
Both of the twins smiled broadly.
"Marcus!"
"How went the battle?" he asked. "Were you victorious?"
Aífe snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. "Was there any doubt?"
"Super Action Mom beat up both of those big, bad emperor dudes!" Rika told him.
Marcus lifted one eyebrow, befuddled. "Super Action Mom?"
A long breath hissed out of Aífe's nose.
"Storytime can wait," I interrupted, and Rika's mouth snapped closed with a click. "Marcus, has there been any news from Boudica and Spartacus?"
Marcus shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Have they yet to report back from their own battle?"
I'd figured as much. It was possible that they finished with their enemies long before us and started back sooner, but if they had managed to make it back already, there was no way we wouldn't have noticed.
"No, we haven't heard from them either."
"They did have to go almost twice as far as we did," Arash pointed out reasonably, and that was something I'd been thinking about, yeah. "That Servant's Noble Phantasm could also be a troublesome one."
"You don't think something happened to them, do you?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.
"There's no way of knowing."
Damn it, I wished we'd been more insistent about forming a formal contract. But Boudica had turned the idea down, saying that she wouldn't officially join up without Spartacus back when we first asked, and I hadn't seen the need to press the issue at the time. Not when I could barely understand Spartacus, let alone figure out how to convince him to put himself under our command. It seemed a minor miracle that he'd been willing to go along with our plan of attack.
"We should go help them!" Rika said. "If Queen Booty needs our help, we're wasting time standing around!"
Her heart was in the right place, but realistically, battles between Servants lasted minutes at best. Fights between regular people often ended within the first thirty seconds. With them almost fifty miles away, even on Aífe's chariot, the ride would take somewhere around ten minutes. If something had gone wrong, the only thing we'd get there to do was discover the aftermath.
The first thing we needed to do was establish whether or not we were worrying over nothing and whether or not Boudica and Spartacus had been defeated. Since Boudica was wearing Ritsuka's communicator, the presence of Servants around it would tell us who won and who lost.
If there were no Servants close to it… Getting to Lyon would have to be our first priority. A Servant who could take out both Boudica and Spartacus wasn't one we could just let go.
"Maybe we should try contacting them first?" Mash suggested.
"If they're still fighting, we could distract them," I told her. "Mash, set up a magic circle. Aífe, we need it stabilized. I'm going to check with Da Vinci and see if she can tell us anything."
"If it would help, I could scout in their direction, see if I can find anything," Arash suggested.
For an instant, I hesitated, reluctant to divide our forces again, but a moment later, I gave him a nod. "Any information you might be able to find would be useful. Be fast, and if you have a shot on the enemy, then take it."
He nodded.
"Roger that, Master."
He turned to leave, but I stopped him before he could vanish into the forest.
"And Arash?"
He paused and looked back at me over his shoulder.
"No unnecessary risks. We need to know what's going on more than we need you to kill the enemy Servant."
Translation: don't use your Noble Phantasm.
He nodded again. "Understood."
He bent his knees, and then he rocketed into the air, across the camp, and disappeared into the forest. I felt him rushing through my swarm, and it was only a matter of seconds before he was outside of my range. The moment he was gone, I turned back to Mash. "Magic circle."
She blinked, and then startled. "R-right!"
She rushed to the first clear space she could find, set her shield down, and started digging a plain circle into the trampled dirt with meticulous haste.
"Should we really be sending him out alone?" Ritsuka asked.
"Independent Action is the specialty of the Archer class," Emiya told him. "It might sound a little strange, but this sort of thing is actually where we Archers perform best. Have a little faith in him."
"Arash is a badass," said Rika, "but so was Queen Booty. And Spartacus! If that guy managed to beat them both —"
"Then Arash will retreat," Aífe cut in as she bent down next to Mash to start carving the necessary runes. "For all that he's celebrated as a martyr, a Heroic Spirit like him won't needlessly throw his life away fighting a battle he can't win."
"Worst case scenario…" I gestured to my Command Spells.
I hated the idea of having to use one, especially since it would take almost three whole weeks to replenish it, but if it was the difference between losing him and not, it would be a worthwhile trade.
"Magic circle complete, Miss Taylor," Mash reported. She and Aífe straightened up, and just as she said, the magic circle had been finished.
They stepped out of the way as I stepped over to it and flung out my hand. My fingers found my own communicator and pressed the activation button at the same time as I barked out, "Anfang!"
A pale, blue panel appeared over Mash's shield, and for a moment, it showed only the back wall of the Command Room and an empty chair.
"Incredible," Marcus breathed. "What kind of magic is this?"
And then a harried Da Vinci rushed into view and flung herself at the screen, filling up the entire panel with her face.
"Sorry, sorry!" She moved back and dropped into the previously empty chair. "Your call was a little unexpected, so I wasn't here to receive it!"
"Is Doctor Roman still asleep?" Mash asked.
"It hasn't been that long since your last call, you know," said Da Vinci wryly. "Not for us, at least. Less than an hour."
"Oh." Mash blinked. "Right. I forgot."
"Da Vinci!" Rika called, leaning forward like she was going to try and shake Da Vinci for answers through the hologram. "Is Queen Booty okay? What about Spartacus?"
Da Vinci blinked, bewildered. "Ah?"
"We gave them Ritsuka's communicator," I explained shortly. "We haven't heard back from them since we split up. Can you detect them at all?"
"Ah, yes, that would explain why Ritsuka's body has been in one place and his comms device another," Da Vinci said reasonably, nodding. "In any case, yes, I should be able to detect the presence of Servants if there are any in proximity to Ritsuka's communicator. I should even be able to get a rudimentary read of nearby Saint Graphs — in other words, I should be able to tell that it's Queen Boudica or Spartacus who's near it or not."
"Hurry!" said Rika, bouncing on her heels impatiently.
"Yes, yes, I'm going."
Da Vinci's fingers flew across the keyboard out of sight, and a moment later, something on her screen beeped. Her brow furrowed.
"That's odd."
My lips drew tight, and I braced for bad news.
"The readings are faulty," Da Vinci eventually said. "I'm not getting as much data back as I was expecting. That is, I can detect at least two Spirit Origins in close proximity to Ritsuka's communicator, but I'm having trouble getting more complete data."
"Could it be interference?" Ritsuka asked. "U-um, I mean, we need a magic circle to stabilize the connection, so maybe it's because they don't have one?"
"Not impossible," Da Vinci hedged, "but it's unlikely. The reason we have trouble contacting you inside of Singularities like this isn't really a problem with us receiving a connection from you as it is you guys have trouble receiving a return signal from us. When you're close to a Ley Line Terminal, the magical energy all converging on a single spot is like standing beneath a cell phone tower when you make a call. Similarly, these magic circles that are enhanced by Primordial Runes are like antennae that make it easier for you to receive a signal."
"I thought as much," Aífe said with a nod of her head. "After all, if you're constantly monitoring the Masters' vitals, then you would have no trouble at all picking up a communication signal."
"So if there's a problem with Senpai's communicator," Mash summarized, "it's on Queen Boudica's end, not yours."
Da Vinci nodded. "That's right. Unfortunately, the nature of any such problem was what we were trying to determine, so by existing, it serves as a confirmation of sorts that there's a problem in need of addressing in the first place."
"They're in trouble!" Rika insisted. "We need to go help!"
"Not necessarily," Da Vinci said, holding up one index finger as though she were lecturing a student. "Your communicators were never intended to be taken into combat by a Servant. It's entirely possible that the reason we're getting less information back than expected is because the communicator itself was damaged during combat. After all, Servants have different limits than humans, so all Queen Boudica would have to do is be a little too rough with it and it could break entirely."
A design flaw that I was sure Da Vinci herself would be rectifying as much as she could when we got back.
"You should have seen already, Master," said Emiya. "Although a monster like Aífe isn't quite the norm, that sort of speed and strength isn't so far outside of what most Servants are capable of."
"Unfortunately, Ritsuka and Rika have only really seen some of the extremes of Servants' capabilities," Da Vinci said with a wry smile. "Their first real experience with a Servant's raw physical power was King Arthur, after all."
"Suddenly, I understand Master's unrealistic expectations of my close combat skills," he replied dryly.
"You said two Servants?" I asked, addressing Da Vinci.
"Spartacus and Queen Boudica," Mash breathed, some of the tension in her shoulders easing.
"At least two, yes," Da Vinci confirmed. "Considering their opponent, however, and what sort of Noble Phantasm he likely had…"
It wasn't a guarantee that the "two" Servants she was detecting weren't just whoever it was and his duplicates. In fact, I thought with a chill, if he was clever enough, he might be using a pilfered communicator to listen in on our conversation right now.
"Do you have a heading for them?"
"It's not exact, but they seem to be returning your direction," said Da Vinci. "At speed, as well. The route they're taking means that I can't say for sure they're not going back to Caesar's base camp, but all things considered, it seems like Queen Boudica and Spartacus succeeded."
A general wave of relief washed over the group.
"Don't get too comfortable," I warned them. "If it's the enemy Servant, he might be looking for revenge for Julius Caesar."
"The Romans tended not to take rebellion well," Da Vinci added.
"Should we?" Marcus asked pointedly. "If you'll forgive my impertinence, is not the rebellion of these…Servants you've spoken of the entire reason all of us are here? Is not our goal to restore the Empire to its proper place?"
He wasn't wrong, but the reasoning was different. We didn't have to like or even support the Empire to know the importance of its place in history.
"I didn't think of it that way," Mash admitted. "For us, this is about fixing something that went wrong, but for you and Emperor Nero… It's a civil war, isn't it?"
"It's not as though Rome is particularly unfamiliar with those," Aífe said dryly. "Half of their emperors came to power by usurping the previous one or killing a rival for the position. The Empire couldn't go a decade without one rebellion or another."
"And that is why it is all the more important to deal with them swiftly and decisively," Marcus countered. "It may be true that there have been numerous rebellions throughout our history, and there will undoubtedly be more long after my bones are dust, but when we have peace and unity, true peace and unity, the splendor of Rome is the envy of the world."
My cheek twitched, but this wasn't a time to get into a fight about it, so I deliberately chose not to mention that Rome's splendor was often built off of the exploitation, conquest, and slavery of the peoples they invaded. Boudica and Spartacus may have been two of the most famous, but uprisings of the poor, the downtrodden, and the underclass weren't exactly uncommon in the Roman Empire.
"Whoever it is, Arash should see them coming long before they get here," I interjected, cutting off any argument before it could get started. "We should know who and what we're dealing with soon enough."
"And whether or not Boudica and Spartacus won," Mash said with quiet solemnity.
"Speaking of winning," Da Vinci segued, "congratulations are in order, are they not? Not only did you defeat Julius Caesar, but the mystery man who was with him turned out to be Lucius Tiberius, and you beat him, too!"
"I…" Mash opened her mouth, paused, brow furrowing as she thought about it, and then smiled a little. "I guess it really was something of a team effort, wasn't it?"
"Not for lack of a certain someone's trying," Emiya drawled.
"I make no apologies for who I am," Aífe replied stubbornly.
"Even when it nearly cost us the battle?"
"But it didn't," said Ritsuka. "And it was a team fight from the beginning, wasn't it? That Noble Phantasm that was affecting everyone…"
Right. Constantine the Great, presumably. "Pax Romana," Caesar had called it. A Noble Phantasm that enforced "peace" within his territory, or at least near as any one of us could tell it. We would likely have to see him and use Master's Clairvoyance to get anything clearer than that.
"There were some unusual readings in the Servants' Saint Graphs during the battle, but…" Da Vinci trailed off. "Perhaps you should explain what you mean about a Noble Phantasm affecting everyone."
Our group shared a look.
"We noticed it before we even found Caesar himself," Mash began.
Mash took point, but between our whole group, we explained some of the finer details of our battle with the erstwhile emperors, from Constantine's Noble Phantasm to Caesar himself to Lucius Tiberius. We covered the major moments and the important bits, and once that was done, what Caesar himself had told us before he faded away.
"Pax Romana," Da Vinci muttered when we were finished. "What a terrifying Noble Phantasm. In an ordinary Grail War, it would be hard to use, but here, with the entire breadth of his faction's breakaway empire under his heel…" She shook her head. "And then there's this court mage figure, said to be in possession of this Singularity's Holy Grail. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Professor Lev," Mash mumbled. "He's here."
"Fou, fou," the beast on her shoulder added mournfully.
"Caesar was expecting us," I chimed in, agreeing with Mash. "He called us 'Chaldeans,' and said he was expecting Mash, the twins, and me to be there, but he was surprised by Emiya and Aífe. Gilles and Jeanne Alter didn't seem to have any idea who we were in Orléans, but Caesar recognized us."
"And the only one who could have told him about us is Lev Lainur," Da Vinci agreed grimly. "Yes, that was my thought, as well. That doesn't mean Lev is necessarily here — he could have simply told Caesar and the United Empire that we were coming and what to expect — but this mysterious court mage fellow is quite suspicious."
It was still no guarantee. The signs all pointed to Lev, for now, but there wasn't anything ironclad enough to say it with absolute certainty. It might, in point of fact, just be a Caster class Servant and Lev had only been here long enough to drop off the Grail and warn the United Empire about our inevitable arrival.
I still wasn't sure I wanted it to be him. For Marie's sake…would it be better or worse if she got to confront him herself? If she got to watch as we took him down? Would she sleep easier if she saw his broken body with her own eyes, or would the burden be lesser just knowing he was gone?
We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
"Whoever this court mage is, it looks like we're going to have to take Constantine out before we go after the Grail," I said. "We can't afford for everyone's abilities to be diminished when we fight any of their Servants, especially their leader. He's going to have to be our first target when we invade the United Empire."
"We'll have to figure out where to look, first," said Emiya.
"Not hardly," Aífe disagreed. "A trump card like that… Isn't it obvious that he'll be sitting in the seat of their power?"
If he wasn't a strong combatant himself… No, even if Constantine had a good offense to go with such a powerful defense, if I was the one leading the whole thing, there were only two places I'd park him: somewhere out of the way, where he would be hard for the enemy to find, or right behind me, where my enemies would have to make their way through every other defense I could throw at them to take him out.
"As much as I'd like to disagree, the best place to put an important asset like that really is behind the strongest defenses you have." Da Vinci sighed. "Well. The alternative is… That is to say, the most surefire way to negate that advantage is to reduce the size of the territory under the United Empire's control."
My eyebrows rose.
"You mean beat them back," I said. "Through conventional warfare."
Da Vinci grimaced. "It's not palatable, I know, but it's the safer method."
"E-eh?" Rika squeaked. "B-but… H-hang on, that could take years!"
"Not necessarily," Da Vinci hedged. "In fact, with enough Servants, you could force them back to their capital in a matter of weeks."
"Unless they summon more to fill out their own ranks," Emiya pointed out. "Then it could become a protracted campaign. A war of attrition. They could win just because it's faster and easier for them to summon reinforcements."
Da Vinci sighed again. "Yes, there is that. Even if we sent the rest of our own Servants to help, we still have to think about our future missions, whereas for the enemy, this is all or nothing."
"It wouldn't solve the core problem, anyway," said Aífe. "Even if we beat them back to their capital city, it's the city itself where Pax Romana will be the biggest issue. Showing up with an army of Roman soldiers is just going to inflate the body count."
"The less people get hurt, the better," Ritsuka said firmly.
"Another good point," Da Vinci conceded. She hummed thoughtfully. "In the end, you're going to have to face him in his own territory, no matter what. If we had an Assassin class Servant and a good idea of where Constantine was… But, well, there might be something we can do about the one, but the other would be down to luck and chance at best."
"You have an idea?" I asked.
"I've been thinking about it ever since we first found that Singularity," Da Vinci confirmed. "Originally, I was going to bring it up after you made contact with Emperor Nero in Rome…but you landed far off course, and you might not be heading that way under other circumstances to begin with."
"Is there something important about the city?" Mash asked worriedly.
Da Vinci shook her head. "Not the city itself, no, but the nearby Mount Etna." Her lips tugged to one side. "Well, nearby, relative to where you are now and most of the rest of the Empire. Mount Etna is the center of a Ley Line Terminal that connects to all of the ley lines throughout the entirety of Western Europe. More than that, the Mount Etna ley line is also one of the most powerful."
"Should we attempt a summoning there, then?" asked Ritsuka.
That wasn't a bad idea, was it? Unless I was misremembering, Mount Etna was far to the south, near the bottom tip of Italy's "boot." It was close enough to the Mediterranean Sea, to Greece… If we attempted a summoning there, could we get a powerful, Grecian hero?
Fuck, imagine if we got Heracles.
"Perhaps, but that's not what I had in mind," Da Vinci replied. "We won't know for sure until we try, but if my theory is correct, we should be able to use the ley line as a sort of…signal booster. It might just be possible for us to scan the entirety of the Singularity and find out both where the Grail is, and where each and every one of the United Empire's Servants is located."
Mash took in a sharp breath. "That's incredible!"
Rika grinned. "I never did like hide and seek!"
"You're sure about this?" I asked.
It would be an amazing boon if true. Knowing where everyone on the map was wouldn't exactly solve all of our problems, but it would definitely give us a good idea of where and who to attack first.
"It's not a guarantee," Da Vinci hedged, "but on the chance I'm right, isn't it worth taking a look?"
It was. It definitely was.
"It's going to have to wait a little, no matter what," I said. "We need to meet with Emperor Nero first, see if he knows anything more about who and what to expect from the United Empire's Servants. After that, though, we can take a trip to Mount Etna and you can scan the whole continent."
"A few more days of waiting, then, at least on your end." Da Vinci smiled. "In the meantime, I have a certain special puppet to start putting together. A few hours might not get me very far, but I can at least get started, yes?"
And get Marie her body back.
"The sooner the better."
"Aw, yeah!" Rika cheered. "One step closer to saving Director Marie!"
Da Vinci's smile tilted a little. "Well, it's not going to happen instantaneously. In fact, I might not be done even after you guys have wrapped everything up in that Singularity. But yes. One step closer to saving Director Animusphere."
"This Director of yours must be quite the person, to inspire such loyalty," Aífe noted.
Da Vinci's smile wavered and became strained.
"W-well," she hedged, "she's definitely a…unique personality, that's for sure. Most importantly, though, is that she tries her hardest and never accepts anything but everyone's best efforts!"
A very polite way of saying that she doesn't think she's good enough and tries too hard to meet her own high standards.
Aífe grinned. "She sounds like my kind of woman, then."
"Then," said Da Vinci, "with any luck, you'll be able to meet her soon enough." She turned back to me and the twins. "For now, we'll leave things here. If anything important happens, feel free to contact us again. If not, then I'll expect to hear from you after you meet Emperor Nero. We can go over plans and options at that time."
"Right!" said the twins and Mash.
"I'll see you again soon!" Da Vinci waved. "Ciao ciao!"
Her image flickered and disappeared. As soon as she was gone, Rika giggled, grinning. "The Director's coming back!"
"She might even be back by the time we finish things here," Ritsuka said, smiling.
"Coming back? Saving?" Aífe asked, bemused. "Is this Director of yours away, or in some kind of trouble?"
The twins stopped and shared a look. Several expressions crossed their faces.
"Director Animusphere was badly injured during the sabotage that resulted in our first Rayshift to the Fuyuki Singularity," I told her, saving them from answering. "She needs a very specialized prosthesis and a very specific kind of surgery, and Da Vinci hasn't had the resources for either until recently."
Aífe nodded. "Hence the crabs."
"Yeah. I —"
Master, came Arash's mental voice.
I held up a finger. "A moment."
I found Boudica and Spartacus, he reported. The good news is, they managed to defeat the Servant and his squad of Pseudo-Servants.
Pseudo-Servants?
I didn't ask. It wasn't important, just then. And the bad news?
Borrow my eyes for a moment, he said instead of explaining.
I frowned, closed my own eyes, and pushed my consciousness down the thread of our contract. A moment later, I was looking out of his eyes into a patch of forest, and a large, musclebound Spartacus, covered head to toe in blood and for once not smiling, had in his arms a bundle of white and red — Queen Boudica. Her face was haggard and drawn, and one arm was curled against her chest while the other ended abruptly at the elbow, wrapped in white bandages that were stained with splotches of crimson.
Is that —
It seems we underestimated the assault team, Arash said grimly, confirming my thoughts before I could finish forming them. Spartacus and Boudica's victory wasn't without cost.
But they did win. That was the most important part.
His eyes swung around, and through them, I saw a very familiar mountain pass, one that we had come through at another time, when Thiers was a small but flourishing city.
We'll be back in about ten minutes, he continued. We should be entering your range soon.
I retreated from his eyes and opened my own again. Is there anything we can do about it?
Unless you happen to know a thing or two about spiritual surgery, he told me, then I'm afraid not.
A grimace pulled at my mouth.
Things could never be that easy, could they?
Next — Chapter XLVII: Doppelganger (Twisted Mirror)
The ride back to camp seemed swifter than the ride there. Maybe it was because there was less of a sense of urgency to getting there as quickly as we possibly could, and maybe it was because we were all distracted by our thoughts after the battle.
Whatever the case, it felt like it took us half the time to get back as it did to find Caesar in the first place, and we arrived at the expeditionary force's base camp without fanfare early in the afternoon.
"Super Action Mom really is amazing!" Rika gushed as we dismounted to walk the last dozen or so yards back to camp. "She beat those two guys basically by herself! Girl power!"
"Are you going to insist on calling me that ridiculous nickname?" Aífe asked, sounding somewhere between frustrated and resigned. Like a mother who knew she wasn't going to win this battle. "It's quite literally three times as long as my actual name. Or my class title."
"Yes," Ritsuka informed her wearily. "Now that she's decided on a nickname, she's going to keep using it for as long as she can get away with it."
"Apparently, my actions don't count for much, do they," Emiya drawled.
"I mean, you're cool, too, Emiya," Rika said, "but you didn't basically solo two super badass Roman Servants back to back."
"I could have blown them both away with Caladbolg from four kilometers out," Emiya suggested. "Would that have been sufficiently 'cool' enough to earn me one of these vaunted nicknames of yours, Master?"
"I mean, would that have gotten them both at once?" Rika asked dubiously. "Your edgier version tried that back in Fuyuki, but Cu never let Edgiya actually get anywhere, so I have no idea how powerful that actually is."
I mostly tuned them out, listening with only half an ear as different possibilities about what had happened to Boudica's team flitted through my head.
We hadn't had contact with them since before our teams split up. They had farther to travel, so it seemed only natural that our team would make it back first, but I'd been expecting them to call once things were over, and the fact that she hadn't worried me.
"Edgiya?" Emiya recoiled.
"Just be thankful she's forgotten to call you her house-husband for now," Ritsuka whispered to Emiya.
At the back, Arash snickered behind his hand.
"Caladbolg took off three hilltops in the myth," Mash informed Rika at almost the same time. "Um, so that might not have been a good idea, would it? Then we wouldn't have had the chance for Caesar to tell us for sure where the Grail was located."
Had we underestimated the distraction team? The reading and the look Arash got had suggested a single primary Servant with a squad of lesser combatants as support, and that should have been an easy enough fight for the likes of Boudica and Spartacus. The longer it went on especially, the more advantageous it should be for Spartacus, and that was part of why I'd thought it best to send the two of them instead of just one alone or a third.
But Spartacus did have a weakness, one both Crawler and Lung had fundamentally shared as well: hit him hard enough before he could start ramping up, and you could take him out while he was still relatively weak and unthreatening. The difficulty with that was that you needed to have something that could deal that much damage all at once, and knowing that one way or another was difficult when we didn't know who the enemy Servant was.
That was why Boudica had gone with him. Defense to his offense.
"Hey, fellas!" Rika greeted the guardsmen at the entrance of the camp.
They returned it with a respectful, "Lady Rika," and then greeted each of the rest of us in turn. I gave them a nod, but my head wasn't in it.
Could they still be fighting? There hadn't been a way for us to check before, not without risking distracting them at a critical moment, but now that we were back at camp, we should be able to get Da Vinci to take a peek for us.
"All I'm saying is," Rika was saying, "we haven't seen you do that much cool stuff yet, Emiya. You tease us with these super special awesome secret techniques you've got squirreled away for the winter, but you never really show them off, you know?"
"Maybe if our fights weren't so close quarters all the time," Arash said genially. "I have to admit, I haven't been getting many chances to show off my archery skills, either."
"I'm guessing that sword I fired into Caesar's back right as he was about to sneak attack Aífe isn't counting, here?" Emiya asked sarcastically.
Rika's brow furrowed. "Yeah, that was kind of cool, wasn't it? But it wasn't…you know…all that flashy."
Emiya snorted. "Because style matters over substance."
"Why not both?" Rika asked cheekily.
"Why not, indeed."
"Hail, friends!" Marcus greeted us as we walked deeper into camp. He was dressed in full combat gear, kitted out with gleaming metal armor wrapped around his torso in segmented plates.
Both of the twins smiled broadly.
"Marcus!"
"How went the battle?" he asked. "Were you victorious?"
Aífe snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. "Was there any doubt?"
"Super Action Mom beat up both of those big, bad emperor dudes!" Rika told him.
Marcus lifted one eyebrow, befuddled. "Super Action Mom?"
A long breath hissed out of Aífe's nose.
"Storytime can wait," I interrupted, and Rika's mouth snapped closed with a click. "Marcus, has there been any news from Boudica and Spartacus?"
Marcus shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Have they yet to report back from their own battle?"
I'd figured as much. It was possible that they finished with their enemies long before us and started back sooner, but if they had managed to make it back already, there was no way we wouldn't have noticed.
"No, we haven't heard from them either."
"They did have to go almost twice as far as we did," Arash pointed out reasonably, and that was something I'd been thinking about, yeah. "That Servant's Noble Phantasm could also be a troublesome one."
"You don't think something happened to them, do you?" Ritsuka asked worriedly.
"There's no way of knowing."
Damn it, I wished we'd been more insistent about forming a formal contract. But Boudica had turned the idea down, saying that she wouldn't officially join up without Spartacus back when we first asked, and I hadn't seen the need to press the issue at the time. Not when I could barely understand Spartacus, let alone figure out how to convince him to put himself under our command. It seemed a minor miracle that he'd been willing to go along with our plan of attack.
"We should go help them!" Rika said. "If Queen Booty needs our help, we're wasting time standing around!"
Her heart was in the right place, but realistically, battles between Servants lasted minutes at best. Fights between regular people often ended within the first thirty seconds. With them almost fifty miles away, even on Aífe's chariot, the ride would take somewhere around ten minutes. If something had gone wrong, the only thing we'd get there to do was discover the aftermath.
The first thing we needed to do was establish whether or not we were worrying over nothing and whether or not Boudica and Spartacus had been defeated. Since Boudica was wearing Ritsuka's communicator, the presence of Servants around it would tell us who won and who lost.
If there were no Servants close to it… Getting to Lyon would have to be our first priority. A Servant who could take out both Boudica and Spartacus wasn't one we could just let go.
"Maybe we should try contacting them first?" Mash suggested.
"If they're still fighting, we could distract them," I told her. "Mash, set up a magic circle. Aífe, we need it stabilized. I'm going to check with Da Vinci and see if she can tell us anything."
"If it would help, I could scout in their direction, see if I can find anything," Arash suggested.
For an instant, I hesitated, reluctant to divide our forces again, but a moment later, I gave him a nod. "Any information you might be able to find would be useful. Be fast, and if you have a shot on the enemy, then take it."
He nodded.
"Roger that, Master."
He turned to leave, but I stopped him before he could vanish into the forest.
"And Arash?"
He paused and looked back at me over his shoulder.
"No unnecessary risks. We need to know what's going on more than we need you to kill the enemy Servant."
Translation: don't use your Noble Phantasm.
He nodded again. "Understood."
He bent his knees, and then he rocketed into the air, across the camp, and disappeared into the forest. I felt him rushing through my swarm, and it was only a matter of seconds before he was outside of my range. The moment he was gone, I turned back to Mash. "Magic circle."
She blinked, and then startled. "R-right!"
She rushed to the first clear space she could find, set her shield down, and started digging a plain circle into the trampled dirt with meticulous haste.
"Should we really be sending him out alone?" Ritsuka asked.
"Independent Action is the specialty of the Archer class," Emiya told him. "It might sound a little strange, but this sort of thing is actually where we Archers perform best. Have a little faith in him."
"Arash is a badass," said Rika, "but so was Queen Booty. And Spartacus! If that guy managed to beat them both —"
"Then Arash will retreat," Aífe cut in as she bent down next to Mash to start carving the necessary runes. "For all that he's celebrated as a martyr, a Heroic Spirit like him won't needlessly throw his life away fighting a battle he can't win."
"Worst case scenario…" I gestured to my Command Spells.
I hated the idea of having to use one, especially since it would take almost three whole weeks to replenish it, but if it was the difference between losing him and not, it would be a worthwhile trade.
"Magic circle complete, Miss Taylor," Mash reported. She and Aífe straightened up, and just as she said, the magic circle had been finished.
They stepped out of the way as I stepped over to it and flung out my hand. My fingers found my own communicator and pressed the activation button at the same time as I barked out, "Anfang!"
A pale, blue panel appeared over Mash's shield, and for a moment, it showed only the back wall of the Command Room and an empty chair.
"Incredible," Marcus breathed. "What kind of magic is this?"
And then a harried Da Vinci rushed into view and flung herself at the screen, filling up the entire panel with her face.
"Sorry, sorry!" She moved back and dropped into the previously empty chair. "Your call was a little unexpected, so I wasn't here to receive it!"
"Is Doctor Roman still asleep?" Mash asked.
"It hasn't been that long since your last call, you know," said Da Vinci wryly. "Not for us, at least. Less than an hour."
"Oh." Mash blinked. "Right. I forgot."
"Da Vinci!" Rika called, leaning forward like she was going to try and shake Da Vinci for answers through the hologram. "Is Queen Booty okay? What about Spartacus?"
Da Vinci blinked, bewildered. "Ah?"
"We gave them Ritsuka's communicator," I explained shortly. "We haven't heard back from them since we split up. Can you detect them at all?"
"Ah, yes, that would explain why Ritsuka's body has been in one place and his comms device another," Da Vinci said reasonably, nodding. "In any case, yes, I should be able to detect the presence of Servants if there are any in proximity to Ritsuka's communicator. I should even be able to get a rudimentary read of nearby Saint Graphs — in other words, I should be able to tell that it's Queen Boudica or Spartacus who's near it or not."
"Hurry!" said Rika, bouncing on her heels impatiently.
"Yes, yes, I'm going."
Da Vinci's fingers flew across the keyboard out of sight, and a moment later, something on her screen beeped. Her brow furrowed.
"That's odd."
My lips drew tight, and I braced for bad news.
"The readings are faulty," Da Vinci eventually said. "I'm not getting as much data back as I was expecting. That is, I can detect at least two Spirit Origins in close proximity to Ritsuka's communicator, but I'm having trouble getting more complete data."
"Could it be interference?" Ritsuka asked. "U-um, I mean, we need a magic circle to stabilize the connection, so maybe it's because they don't have one?"
"Not impossible," Da Vinci hedged, "but it's unlikely. The reason we have trouble contacting you inside of Singularities like this isn't really a problem with us receiving a connection from you as it is you guys have trouble receiving a return signal from us. When you're close to a Ley Line Terminal, the magical energy all converging on a single spot is like standing beneath a cell phone tower when you make a call. Similarly, these magic circles that are enhanced by Primordial Runes are like antennae that make it easier for you to receive a signal."
"I thought as much," Aífe said with a nod of her head. "After all, if you're constantly monitoring the Masters' vitals, then you would have no trouble at all picking up a communication signal."
"So if there's a problem with Senpai's communicator," Mash summarized, "it's on Queen Boudica's end, not yours."
Da Vinci nodded. "That's right. Unfortunately, the nature of any such problem was what we were trying to determine, so by existing, it serves as a confirmation of sorts that there's a problem in need of addressing in the first place."
"They're in trouble!" Rika insisted. "We need to go help!"
"Not necessarily," Da Vinci said, holding up one index finger as though she were lecturing a student. "Your communicators were never intended to be taken into combat by a Servant. It's entirely possible that the reason we're getting less information back than expected is because the communicator itself was damaged during combat. After all, Servants have different limits than humans, so all Queen Boudica would have to do is be a little too rough with it and it could break entirely."
A design flaw that I was sure Da Vinci herself would be rectifying as much as she could when we got back.
"You should have seen already, Master," said Emiya. "Although a monster like Aífe isn't quite the norm, that sort of speed and strength isn't so far outside of what most Servants are capable of."
"Unfortunately, Ritsuka and Rika have only really seen some of the extremes of Servants' capabilities," Da Vinci said with a wry smile. "Their first real experience with a Servant's raw physical power was King Arthur, after all."
"Suddenly, I understand Master's unrealistic expectations of my close combat skills," he replied dryly.
"You said two Servants?" I asked, addressing Da Vinci.
"Spartacus and Queen Boudica," Mash breathed, some of the tension in her shoulders easing.
"At least two, yes," Da Vinci confirmed. "Considering their opponent, however, and what sort of Noble Phantasm he likely had…"
It wasn't a guarantee that the "two" Servants she was detecting weren't just whoever it was and his duplicates. In fact, I thought with a chill, if he was clever enough, he might be using a pilfered communicator to listen in on our conversation right now.
"Do you have a heading for them?"
"It's not exact, but they seem to be returning your direction," said Da Vinci. "At speed, as well. The route they're taking means that I can't say for sure they're not going back to Caesar's base camp, but all things considered, it seems like Queen Boudica and Spartacus succeeded."
A general wave of relief washed over the group.
"Don't get too comfortable," I warned them. "If it's the enemy Servant, he might be looking for revenge for Julius Caesar."
"The Romans tended not to take rebellion well," Da Vinci added.
"Should we?" Marcus asked pointedly. "If you'll forgive my impertinence, is not the rebellion of these…Servants you've spoken of the entire reason all of us are here? Is not our goal to restore the Empire to its proper place?"
He wasn't wrong, but the reasoning was different. We didn't have to like or even support the Empire to know the importance of its place in history.
"I didn't think of it that way," Mash admitted. "For us, this is about fixing something that went wrong, but for you and Emperor Nero… It's a civil war, isn't it?"
"It's not as though Rome is particularly unfamiliar with those," Aífe said dryly. "Half of their emperors came to power by usurping the previous one or killing a rival for the position. The Empire couldn't go a decade without one rebellion or another."
"And that is why it is all the more important to deal with them swiftly and decisively," Marcus countered. "It may be true that there have been numerous rebellions throughout our history, and there will undoubtedly be more long after my bones are dust, but when we have peace and unity, true peace and unity, the splendor of Rome is the envy of the world."
My cheek twitched, but this wasn't a time to get into a fight about it, so I deliberately chose not to mention that Rome's splendor was often built off of the exploitation, conquest, and slavery of the peoples they invaded. Boudica and Spartacus may have been two of the most famous, but uprisings of the poor, the downtrodden, and the underclass weren't exactly uncommon in the Roman Empire.
"Whoever it is, Arash should see them coming long before they get here," I interjected, cutting off any argument before it could get started. "We should know who and what we're dealing with soon enough."
"And whether or not Boudica and Spartacus won," Mash said with quiet solemnity.
"Speaking of winning," Da Vinci segued, "congratulations are in order, are they not? Not only did you defeat Julius Caesar, but the mystery man who was with him turned out to be Lucius Tiberius, and you beat him, too!"
"I…" Mash opened her mouth, paused, brow furrowing as she thought about it, and then smiled a little. "I guess it really was something of a team effort, wasn't it?"
"Not for lack of a certain someone's trying," Emiya drawled.
"I make no apologies for who I am," Aífe replied stubbornly.
"Even when it nearly cost us the battle?"
"But it didn't," said Ritsuka. "And it was a team fight from the beginning, wasn't it? That Noble Phantasm that was affecting everyone…"
Right. Constantine the Great, presumably. "Pax Romana," Caesar had called it. A Noble Phantasm that enforced "peace" within his territory, or at least near as any one of us could tell it. We would likely have to see him and use Master's Clairvoyance to get anything clearer than that.
"There were some unusual readings in the Servants' Saint Graphs during the battle, but…" Da Vinci trailed off. "Perhaps you should explain what you mean about a Noble Phantasm affecting everyone."
Our group shared a look.
"We noticed it before we even found Caesar himself," Mash began.
Mash took point, but between our whole group, we explained some of the finer details of our battle with the erstwhile emperors, from Constantine's Noble Phantasm to Caesar himself to Lucius Tiberius. We covered the major moments and the important bits, and once that was done, what Caesar himself had told us before he faded away.
"Pax Romana," Da Vinci muttered when we were finished. "What a terrifying Noble Phantasm. In an ordinary Grail War, it would be hard to use, but here, with the entire breadth of his faction's breakaway empire under his heel…" She shook her head. "And then there's this court mage figure, said to be in possession of this Singularity's Holy Grail. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Professor Lev," Mash mumbled. "He's here."
"Fou, fou," the beast on her shoulder added mournfully.
"Caesar was expecting us," I chimed in, agreeing with Mash. "He called us 'Chaldeans,' and said he was expecting Mash, the twins, and me to be there, but he was surprised by Emiya and Aífe. Gilles and Jeanne Alter didn't seem to have any idea who we were in Orléans, but Caesar recognized us."
"And the only one who could have told him about us is Lev Lainur," Da Vinci agreed grimly. "Yes, that was my thought, as well. That doesn't mean Lev is necessarily here — he could have simply told Caesar and the United Empire that we were coming and what to expect — but this mysterious court mage fellow is quite suspicious."
It was still no guarantee. The signs all pointed to Lev, for now, but there wasn't anything ironclad enough to say it with absolute certainty. It might, in point of fact, just be a Caster class Servant and Lev had only been here long enough to drop off the Grail and warn the United Empire about our inevitable arrival.
I still wasn't sure I wanted it to be him. For Marie's sake…would it be better or worse if she got to confront him herself? If she got to watch as we took him down? Would she sleep easier if she saw his broken body with her own eyes, or would the burden be lesser just knowing he was gone?
We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
"Whoever this court mage is, it looks like we're going to have to take Constantine out before we go after the Grail," I said. "We can't afford for everyone's abilities to be diminished when we fight any of their Servants, especially their leader. He's going to have to be our first target when we invade the United Empire."
"We'll have to figure out where to look, first," said Emiya.
"Not hardly," Aífe disagreed. "A trump card like that… Isn't it obvious that he'll be sitting in the seat of their power?"
If he wasn't a strong combatant himself… No, even if Constantine had a good offense to go with such a powerful defense, if I was the one leading the whole thing, there were only two places I'd park him: somewhere out of the way, where he would be hard for the enemy to find, or right behind me, where my enemies would have to make their way through every other defense I could throw at them to take him out.
"As much as I'd like to disagree, the best place to put an important asset like that really is behind the strongest defenses you have." Da Vinci sighed. "Well. The alternative is… That is to say, the most surefire way to negate that advantage is to reduce the size of the territory under the United Empire's control."
My eyebrows rose.
"You mean beat them back," I said. "Through conventional warfare."
Da Vinci grimaced. "It's not palatable, I know, but it's the safer method."
"E-eh?" Rika squeaked. "B-but… H-hang on, that could take years!"
"Not necessarily," Da Vinci hedged. "In fact, with enough Servants, you could force them back to their capital in a matter of weeks."
"Unless they summon more to fill out their own ranks," Emiya pointed out. "Then it could become a protracted campaign. A war of attrition. They could win just because it's faster and easier for them to summon reinforcements."
Da Vinci sighed again. "Yes, there is that. Even if we sent the rest of our own Servants to help, we still have to think about our future missions, whereas for the enemy, this is all or nothing."
"It wouldn't solve the core problem, anyway," said Aífe. "Even if we beat them back to their capital city, it's the city itself where Pax Romana will be the biggest issue. Showing up with an army of Roman soldiers is just going to inflate the body count."
"The less people get hurt, the better," Ritsuka said firmly.
"Another good point," Da Vinci conceded. She hummed thoughtfully. "In the end, you're going to have to face him in his own territory, no matter what. If we had an Assassin class Servant and a good idea of where Constantine was… But, well, there might be something we can do about the one, but the other would be down to luck and chance at best."
"You have an idea?" I asked.
"I've been thinking about it ever since we first found that Singularity," Da Vinci confirmed. "Originally, I was going to bring it up after you made contact with Emperor Nero in Rome…but you landed far off course, and you might not be heading that way under other circumstances to begin with."
"Is there something important about the city?" Mash asked worriedly.
Da Vinci shook her head. "Not the city itself, no, but the nearby Mount Etna." Her lips tugged to one side. "Well, nearby, relative to where you are now and most of the rest of the Empire. Mount Etna is the center of a Ley Line Terminal that connects to all of the ley lines throughout the entirety of Western Europe. More than that, the Mount Etna ley line is also one of the most powerful."
"Should we attempt a summoning there, then?" asked Ritsuka.
That wasn't a bad idea, was it? Unless I was misremembering, Mount Etna was far to the south, near the bottom tip of Italy's "boot." It was close enough to the Mediterranean Sea, to Greece… If we attempted a summoning there, could we get a powerful, Grecian hero?
Fuck, imagine if we got Heracles.
"Perhaps, but that's not what I had in mind," Da Vinci replied. "We won't know for sure until we try, but if my theory is correct, we should be able to use the ley line as a sort of…signal booster. It might just be possible for us to scan the entirety of the Singularity and find out both where the Grail is, and where each and every one of the United Empire's Servants is located."
Mash took in a sharp breath. "That's incredible!"
Rika grinned. "I never did like hide and seek!"
"You're sure about this?" I asked.
It would be an amazing boon if true. Knowing where everyone on the map was wouldn't exactly solve all of our problems, but it would definitely give us a good idea of where and who to attack first.
"It's not a guarantee," Da Vinci hedged, "but on the chance I'm right, isn't it worth taking a look?"
It was. It definitely was.
"It's going to have to wait a little, no matter what," I said. "We need to meet with Emperor Nero first, see if he knows anything more about who and what to expect from the United Empire's Servants. After that, though, we can take a trip to Mount Etna and you can scan the whole continent."
"A few more days of waiting, then, at least on your end." Da Vinci smiled. "In the meantime, I have a certain special puppet to start putting together. A few hours might not get me very far, but I can at least get started, yes?"
And get Marie her body back.
"The sooner the better."
"Aw, yeah!" Rika cheered. "One step closer to saving Director Marie!"
Da Vinci's smile tilted a little. "Well, it's not going to happen instantaneously. In fact, I might not be done even after you guys have wrapped everything up in that Singularity. But yes. One step closer to saving Director Animusphere."
"This Director of yours must be quite the person, to inspire such loyalty," Aífe noted.
Da Vinci's smile wavered and became strained.
"W-well," she hedged, "she's definitely a…unique personality, that's for sure. Most importantly, though, is that she tries her hardest and never accepts anything but everyone's best efforts!"
A very polite way of saying that she doesn't think she's good enough and tries too hard to meet her own high standards.
Aífe grinned. "She sounds like my kind of woman, then."
"Then," said Da Vinci, "with any luck, you'll be able to meet her soon enough." She turned back to me and the twins. "For now, we'll leave things here. If anything important happens, feel free to contact us again. If not, then I'll expect to hear from you after you meet Emperor Nero. We can go over plans and options at that time."
"Right!" said the twins and Mash.
"I'll see you again soon!" Da Vinci waved. "Ciao ciao!"
Her image flickered and disappeared. As soon as she was gone, Rika giggled, grinning. "The Director's coming back!"
"She might even be back by the time we finish things here," Ritsuka said, smiling.
"Coming back? Saving?" Aífe asked, bemused. "Is this Director of yours away, or in some kind of trouble?"
The twins stopped and shared a look. Several expressions crossed their faces.
"Director Animusphere was badly injured during the sabotage that resulted in our first Rayshift to the Fuyuki Singularity," I told her, saving them from answering. "She needs a very specialized prosthesis and a very specific kind of surgery, and Da Vinci hasn't had the resources for either until recently."
Aífe nodded. "Hence the crabs."
"Yeah. I —"
Master, came Arash's mental voice.
I held up a finger. "A moment."
I found Boudica and Spartacus, he reported. The good news is, they managed to defeat the Servant and his squad of Pseudo-Servants.
Pseudo-Servants?
I didn't ask. It wasn't important, just then. And the bad news?
Borrow my eyes for a moment, he said instead of explaining.
I frowned, closed my own eyes, and pushed my consciousness down the thread of our contract. A moment later, I was looking out of his eyes into a patch of forest, and a large, musclebound Spartacus, covered head to toe in blood and for once not smiling, had in his arms a bundle of white and red — Queen Boudica. Her face was haggard and drawn, and one arm was curled against her chest while the other ended abruptly at the elbow, wrapped in white bandages that were stained with splotches of crimson.
Is that —
It seems we underestimated the assault team, Arash said grimly, confirming my thoughts before I could finish forming them. Spartacus and Boudica's victory wasn't without cost.
But they did win. That was the most important part.
His eyes swung around, and through them, I saw a very familiar mountain pass, one that we had come through at another time, when Thiers was a small but flourishing city.
We'll be back in about ten minutes, he continued. We should be entering your range soon.
I retreated from his eyes and opened my own again. Is there anything we can do about it?
Unless you happen to know a thing or two about spiritual surgery, he told me, then I'm afraid not.
A grimace pulled at my mouth.
Things could never be that easy, could they?
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Originally, this chapter was going to focus a lot more on the titular "flesh wound," but, well, the characters got to talking, and they filled up 3500 words before I knew it, so I went, "Yeah, let's let them keep going until they've covered everything they need to cover." By that point, the titular wound had almost been pushed entirely out of the chapter.
Good trouble to have, I think.
I still think this is one of Septem's weakest chapters, especially the opening part of it, but I think the pacing needed it to be this way. Next chapter, however, has a surprise or two in store and we'll start moving towards this Singularity's more major conflicts. If I had to make an estimate, this is about the halfway point for Septem.
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.
Good trouble to have, I think.
I still think this is one of Septem's weakest chapters, especially the opening part of it, but I think the pacing needed it to be this way. Next chapter, however, has a surprise or two in store and we'll start moving towards this Singularity's more major conflicts. If I had to make an estimate, this is about the halfway point for Septem.
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.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
Yeah this definitely wasn't a particularly strong chapter, if only because it didn't focus on the thing the chapter title is about. Since we knew about her losing part of her arm already it loses the shock factor of a proper title reveal like you've done in the past. That said it wasn't a terrible chapter either, its a good laid back chapter and those are completely necessary. It's frustrating when it's read week to week waiting on the next chapter, but if read back to back like a normal story it's a good thing.
- Location
- Leeds
I hope they managed to get Homer,
double up on the shakespeare buffs with a blind poet equally or more useless in a fight and continue their trend of not getting the heroes they want to summon.I see they've had to resort to bribery to get Rika into the chariot.
With the arm problem, there may be a prototype prosthetic lying around Chaldea from Taylor's arm problem. Maybe they could send that over?
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Hell Taylor might just give up the one she's using.
Now im just thinking of Taylor taking her arm off in front of the twins with no warning and asking if it will do!!