Funny you should mention that. I went for more MHXX NP levels, and then for event CEs earlier in the week, and I was beset by three rainbows — my third Yang, then Van Gogh, and then Nemo. I fear I've used up all of my luck for the foreseeable future.
I was spooked by Saber Lancelot and Mordred. I'm not even a little upset by that, but I was hoping for Gogh and got a pair of sabers. I do agree with Xbox432 about half expecting him to Psudoservant summon WoB using Nero as a catalyst.
You know, I'm probably in the minority, but I'll be sorry to see Aife go. I really liked her chemistry with Taylor, and hoped to see her interact with Scathath during the America Singularity.
You know, I'm probably in the minority, but I'll be sorry to see Aife go. I really liked her chemistry with Taylor, and hoped to see her interact with Scathath during the America Singularity.
Man i love this story but I just want taylor to finally do something that Taylorey like you know? I was expecting this to be the big moment where she finally showed her background in god killing
And get splattered for her trouble. Taylor's not about to get into a fist fight with what might as well be a dead serious Leviathan. The one time she tried that Levi was jobbing and still instantly shattered her back and left her drowning in less than a foot of water.
Memes has EMIYA as the Pipes Hero compared to Nameless' Wrought Iron Hero
Its actual origin is in the actual VN where at the beginning all Shirou can do is besides Structural Grasping is Reinforcement, but can only seem to do that on a random pipe he has laying around his workshop.
In Night 1, he uses a poster holder (IIRC), a kind of pipe to fend off Cu Chulainn before he accidentally summons Artoria, so there you have the origin for the pipe meme. Of course, someone on a Reddit thread posted that the first pipe infrastructure was actually found in Mesopotamia, so they said that Gil would canonically have the First Pipe in his Gate of Babylon.
Morning dawned the way it always did in Chaldea: crisp, cold, and lonely. The perpetual daylight of the Antarctic summer and the eternal night of its winter meant Chaldea had to invent its own day-night cycle based on Greenwich Mean Time, although some lights were always on. It added a bit of disorientation to waking up in the blackout conditions of my room and stepping into a brightly, starkly lit hallway.
Someone really should have told the architect who designed Chaldea that bland, uniform hallways and floors done in bright, sterile colors weren't exactly conducive to stable mental health for a bunch of people who literally couldn't step outside to get a breath of fresh air and sunshine without freezing to death.
On the day of the Rayshift into the mysterious new French Singularity, breakfast was a somber affair. The twins ate in mostly silence, solemn as they adjusted to the weight of what was coming, as the reality of it set in, and once more, I didn't have any words of reassurance for them as I ate my own meal.
They'd had a taste of it, now. Any platitudes would ring as hollow to them as they would to me.
I was already ready to go, so I made my way to the Command Room after breakfast, but the twins and Mash still needed to get suited up, so I wound up waiting with Romani, again.
"Any change?" I asked him immediately.
He smiled wryly at me. "Good morning to you, too. Why, yes, I did sleep fairly well, thank you for asking." He shook his head. "No, we don't have any new information on this strange Singularity. Right now, it looks like it's going to keep growing as fast as we were expecting it to, which is both good news and bad news. Good news, you should have as much time as we told you that you would. Bad news, you only have as much time as we originally said you would."
I'd never really ascribed to that way of thinking, but it looked like, at least here, no news was good news indeed.
"Guess we'll just have to make do, then."
Romani sighed. "I really wish I could tell you more, but this is all revolutionary technology as it is. Asking it to be even more revolutionary is just too much."
We lapsed into silence as the rest of the room went about their tasks, filling the air between us with the clack of keyboards, the hum of computer fans, and the omnipresent underlying rumble of the air filtration system that kept the entire facility clean, healthy, relatively comfortable, and most importantly, hermetically sealed from the harsh cold of the Antarctic tundra.
It was several long minutes before the twins and Mash finally made their appearance, dressed up and ready to go.
Romani smiled. "Good, you're all here."
Ritsuka looked around curiously. "This is it? I thought we would be bringing Servants along with us, this time."
"There's something Da Vinci wants to test once you get into the Singularity." Romani shrugged. "Whatever you can say about her and her eccentricities, she is a legitimate, bonafide genius, so I'm going to trust her to know what she's doing. Bradamante, Arash, Emiya, and Siegfried will be on standby and ready to go at the slightest notice, but to start with, we're just sending in you four."
"Did she say what it is she wants to test?" I asked.
Romani only gave another shrug. Of course. That secretive pain in the ass was invaluable, but sometimes, her tendency to leave something unexplained until she had more than just a vague guess reminded me of Lisa a little too much, and not in a good way.
"In any case, I'd like to very quickly go over the details again, so bear with me," said Romani. "Roughly two days ago, a new Singularity began to form in France in the city of Rennes, year 1898. At this time, we have no idea if it's connected to the resolved Singularity centering around Orléans, but we're leaning towards no. We have about a week until it reaches full maturity and becomes a larger problem, so you'll have about ten days inside the Singularity itself to find the Grail, retrieve or destroy it, and resolve the Singularity itself. Any questions?"
Rika raised her hand.
"Yes, Rika?"
"Was indoor plumbing invented by 1898?"
Romani opened his mouth, paused, and then thoughtfully told her, "You know, I'm not sure about that."
"It depended on the household," Da Vinci said from behind us as she stepped into the room. "Families that were better off could afford to have the necessary facilities installed, but the lower classes tended to share public toilets, at least in the cities. So if you're lucky enough to find a wealthy family to put you up for the week, yes, Rika, you should be able to use an actual toilet instead of an outhouse."
Rika sighed. "Suddenly, I'm really liking this Singularity."
"Do you want to tell her or should I?" I asked sardonically.
"Yes, well." Da Vinci coughed into her fist. "Rika, even the families who could afford it at the time rarely had showers and often bathed once or twice a week instead of daily."
Rika turned to her with horror written across her face, and then to Romani. "Is it too late to offer to stay behind?"
Romani laughed. "It won't be any worse than 15th century France, Rika. It might be a little less comfortable than what we have here at Chaldea, but not nearly as much so as in the last Singularity."
Rika heaved a deep sigh. "Fine. Let's get this over with."
"To the Rayshift chamber, then?" Da Vinci suggested with a smile.
We all filed out and made our way to the Rayshift chamber, with Romani staying behind at the console in the Command Room. As when we went to Orléans, four Klein Coffins were ready and waiting for us, rising up out of the floor as we stepped into the room.
It wasn't any more comfortable psyching myself up to climb into mine than it had been last time, and even Da Vinci's quiet words of comfort did little to ease my nerves, but it had to be done, so I swallowed my discomfort and forced myself to relax as much as I was able as the lid came back down and locked me in.
A cold sensation swept down my body again, and the cool, unbothered voice of the computer counted down to the moment of the transfer with a calm I envied just then, but in spite of my (completely irrational) fears, no toxic sludge bubbled up from under my feet to drown me in blood, vomit, and rot.
And then the universe opened up beneath me, and I was falling through a sea of stars.
For an instant, I hung, suspended between one moment and the next, racing through the void between galaxies, swimming through the radiant dust of a quasar, pulled inexorably to something great and vast and dark. The gravity of a naked singularity took hold of my entire being and squeezed me down into a speck no smaller than an atom, and I saw the center of the universe made manifest.
But the moment passed and I slammed down against the ground, stumbling as my knees had to suddenly support my weight again.
A pair of nearby groans told me Ritsuka and Rika had made the journey as well, and Mash called out to them with a quiet, "Senpai?"
"Here," Ritsuka answered her.
"In flesh if not in spirit," Rika added queasily.
"Miss Taylor?"
"I'm here, too," I replied.
Something was weird, though. I could sense bugs again, but it was almost…less? No, it was more like my range had been cut in half from what it was in the previous Singularity, and on top of that, my control was more sluggish, too. My powers had always had that component of fine control, although parsing the senses of my bugs had come later and never quite equaled my human sight, and now, it was like my ability to command them was diminished, somehow.
I blinked and realized that my eyes had been closed the entire time. Considering how dark it was, it might not make a difference to even keep them open, because unlike Fuyuki, where everything was on fire, and Orléans, where we'd dropped into things midday, here, we'd been Rayshifted into sometime far past sunset. There weren't even faint smears of orange and purple on the horizon.
"Whoa, who turned out the sun?" Rika said.
I looked up at the full moon, large and ripe and swollen, the only source of light around. "Give it a minute or two for your eyes to adjust and you'll be seeing just fine."
"Were we supposed to show up in the middle of the night?" Ritsuka mumbled.
"I don't think there's any way of controlling it, Senpai," said Mash. "Since the Singularities are essentially unobservable prior to the Rayshift, what time we show up locally isn't possible to determine for certain."
As they chattered, I swept my attention around our landing zone, a wide open promenade and flat field on what looked like the edge of the city. Six-story townhouses were cramped together on the opposite end from us, packed into neat rows that framed half of the field. When I brought up my map, the label for where we were standing said, "Champ de Mars."
A huff burst out of my nostrils. It seemed Da Vinci had forgotten to translate the French labels, this time around.
"Mash," I said, turning back to her, "are you feeling okay?"
She blinked at me, and then her face cycled through surprised to concerned. Her brow furrowed and she looked down at herself.
"Now that you mention it, Miss Taylor," she said, "I am feeling somewhat off. I think…sluggish would be the right word? I don't feel quite as strong as I did in Orléans and Fuyuki."
Acting on a suspicion, I narrowed my Master's Clairvoyance on her and nearly had to recoil at what I saw.
"Ritsuka, Rika, check Mash's stats," I barked at them.
The two of them glanced at me, confused, and shared a look, and then they did as I said and squinted at Mash with their own Clairvoyance. A moment later, they both flinched.
"Whoa, what the hell?" Rika squawked.
"What happened to her?" said Ritsuka.
"You're seeing it, too?"
So I wasn't the only one.
"Master?" Mash questioned.
Beep-beep!
"And we're connected," said Romani. "Everything's all green, and you guys are… Wait a minute, am I seeing this right?" He turned away and called over his shoulder. "Da Vinci! What the hell is going on, here?"
"Something the matter, Romani?" Da Vinci's voice came from out of sight.
"You bet there is! Come and take a look at this! Mash's parameters have been cut nearly in half!"
Da Vinci entered the camera's line of sight, and she came up from behind Romani, leaning over his shoulder to look at whatever he was seeing on his screen.
"I thought so," said Da Vinci. "This is exactly what I was afraid of, then."
"Miss Da Vinci?" Mash asked.
"You know what's happening?" I said. Was this that irregularity she had thought might be going on before they sent us in?
"Whoever is operating the Grail over there is a nasty piece of work," Da Vinci said grimly. "They're using it as a sort of insulator to keep the Counter Force from interfering. By weakening the foundation responsible for the summoning of Heroic Spirits, it's harder for Servants to manifest, and those that are summoned have their power drastically reduced. That's why Mash is feeling weak, right now. The very fabric of the Singularity itself is rejecting the Heroic Spirit inhabiting her body."
Her lips pulled up into a slight smile, a thing of pyrrhic triumph. "Fortunately, that means that any Servants fighting on the enemy's side should also be much weaker than normal, too."
"Which really just puts us back on even footing," I pointed out.
"It does," Da Vinci acknowledged. "But this problem goes further than you think. This Singularity's rating is really underselling the threat, here. Once it fully matures, it will definitely be as much of a problem as any of the other Singularities we've discovered. I'm willing to provisionally assign a revised Human Order Foundation Value of A+."
Mash gasped. "A+?"
My eyebrows started to climb. If I remembered right, Orléans had only had a value of C+, and that one had embroiled all of France at a fairly critical time in history. This place that didn't have any real impact on French history at a time when basically nothing was happening would eventually get bad enough to be upgraded to A+?
Rika raised her hand. "For those of us who haven't spent their entire lives preparing for this stuff?"
"The ranking of the Human Order Foundation Value given to a Singularity measures the level of deviation from proper human history," Mash explained shortly. "The higher the rank, the more significant the deviation. But, Miss Da Vinci, I thought the deviation was relatively minor. Wasn't there nothing of real importance in danger of being overturned?"
"That was a grave underestimation," Da Vinci answered. "Listen. You can think of Heroic Spirits as existences which affirm human history. The more prolific the Heroic Spirit, the more they reinforce the progress of mankind. What this Grail — and the person in control of it — is doing is denying Heroic Spirits, thereby denying human history. A singular Grail in just one Singularity doesn't have the power to do that on its own, but the domino effect it could have over the course of the next century could unmoor a number of important advancements, both technologically and societally."
Resulting in any number of deviant histories, all of them assuredly equally as bad and equally as unrecognizable to someone of the modern era. Like the USSR never collapsing or World War Three with China or something.
In other words, nothing good, no matter how you looked at it.
"Isn't that what all Singularities do?" Ritsuka asked. "I thought that was why we needed to correct them."
"Right, but those ones are more strategically placed," Da Vinci replied. "The other Singularities we detected act on specific moments or specific timeframes to unmoor pivotal points in human history. Without a resurgent France in the Hundred Years War, for instance, the enlightened philosophies of liberty and equality that gave rise to a number of future nations might be delayed by a hundred years or more. Mankind's progress would stagnate. The world as you know it might never come into existence at all.
"What this Singularity does is more insidious. It's not unmooring a particular moment or a pivotal timeframe, it's instead weakening the grasp of the Counter Force. That might not sound like much for our modern world where Heroic Spirits rarely form, but you'd be surprised how often it nudges circumstances to prevent a tragedy or squash a problematic event. Have you heard the poem, For Want of a Nail?"
Ritsuka and Rika both shook their heads. Guess that sort of thing hadn't been included in their education on the English language and literature.
"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost," I recited. "For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail."
It felt strange to think of it, but… Wasn't that exactly what had happened with Earth Bet, too? Scion was a pretty big nail.
"The point that little poem is making is that the smallest of things can cascade into historic changes," said Da Vinci. "Normally, the Counter Force corrects those sorts of problems, both directly and indirectly. If, on the other hand, it can't…"
A tingle went down my spine, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I turned away from the group and looked out into the dark, searching for something, anything that might be out there with my eyes as my bugs spread out in waves to check for the things my eyes couldn't.
There was something out there. I didn't know what or how I knew, because I couldn't even sense it with my bugs, but I was sure of it.
"Then those little problems that would normally be handled can lead to bigger problems that push mankind off course," Mash concluded. "But even with a Grail, wouldn't accomplishing something like that on a large scale be essentially impossible? A city might be small enough, but isolating the entire country like that just seems like too much."
It was just too dark. Even with the moonlight giving me more to work with, I couldn't see clearly past maybe twenty feet, and my connection with my bugs was still tenuous and diminished, giving me nothing more than a vague picture of where they were and what they were doing. It was like looking up at the stars through a foggy telescope or trying to see through frosted glass. I had a blurry outline and nothing more.
Damn it, what was happening with my powers?
"If the culprit stays in Rennes," Da Vinci pointed out. "As the Singularity grows and whoever he is becomes more secure in his position, it's possible he might move on to Paris or even further out into Europe. Can you imagine what might happen if he goes to Germany during World War Two and involves himself in the Third Reich? Without the Counter Force to nudge things into going the right way for the Allies, it could create a scenario where England and America are defeated by Germany and the Western world is solidified under Hitler's totalitarian leadership."
"And that would be bad," Romani added unnecessarily. "It might be a bit of an extreme example, but that's the sort of thing that could — Taylor?"
"Something's wrong," I said lowly. "We're not alone out here."
"I'm not detecting any — what?" Romani cut off, baffled. "What sort of lifeform…"
"Incoming!" Da Vinci shouted over him, and just in time, because something large leapt out of the dark towards us, headed straight for Rika.
"Master!"
Mash threw herself in its path, and the thing smashed into her shield with a dull thud and an off-putting shriek as its claws scraped along the metallic surface. It rebounded away from her with a guttural growl, giving the rest of us a good look at it.
Him, that was. He was a gaunt figure with pasty white skin, dressed in the clothing of the era: hardy working boots, slacks, a shirt, and a thick, woolen overcoat. A local, it was easy to deduce, a native citizen of Rennes, only the face was off, with sunken cheeks and eyes and a thin-lipped mouth drawn back over a set of elongated incisors.
Strangely, my first thought was, You've got to be kidding me.
"A vampire?" Ritsuka asked incredulously, sounding as disbelieving as I felt.
The thing threw itself at Mash again, howling wordlessly, and she grunted under the force of its strength as it scrambled for purchase on the edges of her shield. Like it was trying to claw past it or rip it out of her hands so it could get at her directly.
"A ghoul, to be more precise," Da Vinci said, "although the readings are a little strange. They're the offspring of what you might call true vampires, Dead Apostles, and they're basically mindless husks that exist only to consume blood. They're usually pretty weak, easily dispatched by any mage with any real competence."
"He doesn't…feel very weak!" Mash grunted, bracing her feet as much as she could.
I started to pull my bugs back to assist her, because there was no way I was getting in swiping range of a Brute with fingernails like lion's claws that didn't break when they met whatever metal Mash's shield was made out of, but their response was sluggish and slowed. My hand went to my dagger, just in case, and I stepped back on the off chance the ghoul decided that the twins or I made a better, easier meal, just to give myself some more space.
The instant she sensed an opening, Mash pushed forward and bashed the ghoul straight in the face, but the ghoul wasn't stunned for more than a second. Before Mash could take advantage of that weakness, it had surged back in with twice the energy and fury, clawing at her shield with renewed strength as it gurgled wordlessly.
"Maybe it's the full moon?" Romani suggested.
"Is that a question or an answer?" Rika demanded.
"Well, Dead Apostles are supposed to gain strength under the light of a full moon, so…"
"Are we sure that's what we're looking at?" I asked.
The ghoul had given up on ripping Mash's shield away and had moved on to pounding its fists against it, like if it just hit hard enough for long enough, it could make it through to the girl on the other side. A distant buzz in the background told me that my swarm was finally starting to arrive, although my grip on even something as simple as their locations was startlingly tenuous.
"You can be a vampire without being a Dead Apostle," Da Vinci said. "But you can't be a Dead Apostle without first being a ghoul."
That was very helpful, thank you, Da Vinci.
"Is there anything we can do to save him?" Ritsuka asked. "Can we fix whatever was done to make him like this?"
"No."
But it was not Da Vinci who answered.
Something else leapt out of the dark, and silver glimmered in the light of the moon above. Black cloth fluttered like the wings of a bat. Something long and thin flashed out, and with a meaty squelch, it sank into the ghoul's chest like a hot knife through butter, deep enough that it came out the other side and the pointed tip thunked against Mash's shield.
The ghoul reacted as though it had been stabbed, because it had been, and it stumbled backwards, driving itself further onto the blade of the sword protruding from its body. The hands that had been scrambling for purchase on Mash's shield instead went to the almost bloodless wound, grasping at the sharp edge that had cut through him.
"You poor thing. You were drained almost dry, weren't you?"
But whatever supernatural strength had let him pound on Mash quickly fled, and as he gasped for breath that wouldn't seem to come, his knees fell out from under him and he collapsed to the ground.
The woman who had stabbed him didn't let him fall all the way. With her sword still pierced through his heart, she caught him in her arms and eased him down, guiding him into her lap.
"Shh," she whispered, and I could only watch, bewildered, as she tenderly stroked his cheek. "It's over now. No more hunger, no more suffering."
"Ah… ah… ah…"
"Just let go. Go on, now. There's no need to hold on anymore."
The ghoul's grasping fingers weakened, falling limp to his sides, and with a final gasp, he at last fell still, motionless and lifeless. The woman carefully pulled her blade free with a sickening ringing sound, and from a pouch on the belt that held her sword's sheath, she produced a bloody red cloth that she used to wipe it clean.
Once her sword was back in its sheath, she set the dead ghoul down on his back and folded his hands over his stomach until it looked like he was resting peacefully. He looked remarkably human in death, I realized. With his crazed eyes closed and the fangs that marked him for what he was hidden behind his lips, he could have been mistaken for an ordinary man.
"Once you've been cursed like this, there's nothing that can undo it," the woman said as she stood. Her voice was a sultry alto, and it perfectly suited the sort of sexy adventurer getup she was wearing, from the leather bustier to the tight breeches all the way to the black cloak she wore over her shoulders. "The only mercy you can give is to end it as quickly as possible."
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"My readings are detecting a Servant," Romani cut in, "of the…Assassin class? Her Presence Concealment is pretty high, no wonder we didn't detect her earlier!"
"A native Servant?" Mash mumbled. "I thought the Counter Force didn't have a strong enough grasp on this Singularity to summon any of its own."
And that meant that this could very easily be one of the Servants summoned by the guy holding onto the Grail. An enemy.
One who had plenty of opportunity to kill most of us Masters before we even knew she was there, and yet she killed the ghoul that was attacking us instead. Just what the hell was going on here?
"My name is Serenity," the woman said, finally turning to us with bright, amber colored eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dark. "And if you strangers want to survive this place, you're going to need my help."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Surprise! Happy Halloween!
I'm not ready to give a serious go at doing Under the Moonlight just yet, so I've decided to try and make this my NaNoWriMo project. My goal is to get at least eight chapters of this "event" written out by the start of December, and I'll hopefully have finished the event itself by New Year's. The ideal is to take only about ten to fifteen chapters to cover everything and about as many words as Orleans or Fuyuki. We'll see how well that holds up, because I'm already waffling on it when I look at the logistics of what it'll mean to get 45K out alongside the main story in just one month.
A reminder: this event technically takes place between Orleans and Septem, so we'll be going a bit backwards on some things, but I'm not super dedicated to dating characterizations to how they were after Orleans. Things might feel more like they just came out of Septem as a result.
Hm... despite the Class, doesn't seem to be Hassan of Serenity. We haven't been shown/told her hair/skin colors, but her eyes are... blue? purple? curse my color blindness... and she uses throwing daggers rather than any type of sword.
So either this is someone else using 'Serenity' as an alias, or it is Hassan and she's been affected by something in-Singularity.
Yeah, the description sounds nothing like Hassan of Serenity at all.
Unless she's been Halloween Alted into being a sexy vampire hunter, but I'm not sure why that would change her eye colour.
A mysterious woman of unknown origin, possessed of a simple but striking beauty. She wields a sword and a dagger and dresses like an adventurer from the Middle Ages, and she practices a style of swordsmanship that is as deadly as it is elegant.
In spite of being a Servant and possessing a fairly standard Assassin Class Saint Graph, she claims she is not a Heroic Spirit, but she doesn't offer many details beyond that. Since she is unfamiliar with many of the things Servants are granted as a matter of course, could it be she isn't a Heroic Spirit at all, but something entirely different?
Offering only her name, "Serenity," and the claim that it is "as real as any other she ever had," she is a secretive individual, and although she obviously knows more than she lets on, she shares it infrequently and cautiously, as though every bit of knowledge must be handled with great care.
Is it truly possible to trust someone like that?
Bond 1
Height/Weight: 170cm ・ 57kg
Source:Under the Moonlight
Region: France
Alignment: Lawful Good
Gender: Female
The trick is to have something to hold onto. A drive, a purpose, a reason not to fall. For me, that's revenge.
Bond 2
Her heart is hard to know. Although her demeanor is friendly and easygoing enough, the true depth of her emotion is something she is loath to share, and she guards herself jealously.
Perhaps it is an inevitable consequence of who and what she is. When heartbreak is inevitable and frequent, being selective upon whom she endows her true affections must be a mechanism of survival.
Surely, she has already loved and lost many times over.
Even though she possesses the pragmatism to reveal important details when they are too important to remain secret, she still gives away only what she is and holds close who. To reach the woman inside of her who has hurt so much and covered it up with dogged determination and slow-burning patience — such a thing might be likened to scaling the walls of a castle.
Bond 3
■ Mystic Eyes: A
Possesses Mystic Eyes that enchants the souls of those who the user looks at and of those who looks at the user. Should a person make eye contact, she can exert her will upon them with the slightest effort and enslave them to her own desires.
However, her reluctance to use them means that this skill is functionally sealed. Although the block is mental rather than mystical, it takes truly extraordinary circumstances to force her to resort to this.
■ Vampirism: B
Derivation of vitality through the consumption of blood. By drinking the blood of others, it is possible for her to restore her own health and energy, irrespective of the Master's supply of magical power.
As a vampire in the truest sense, this is less a quirk of her nature and more her main method of sustenance. However, she is careful not to cause undue harm or influence on those she drains, so this skill is lower than it would be if she didn't restrain herself.
Bond 4
?
Bond 5
?
Clear main story of "Fleeting Lunar Phantasia"
Extra
?
I wasn't originally planning on adding this, but congrats, you guys convinced me.
oh, we seem to have a mystery on our hand, the case of the mysterious "Serenity", is she servant? pseudo servant? demi servant? class card user? who knows, but i am eager to find out
oh, we seem to have a mystery on our hand, the case of the mysterious "Serenity", is she servant? pseudo servant? demi servant? class card user? who knows, but i am eager to find out
I guess we're assuming it's not a variant Hassan of Serenity? She isn't technically a proper heroic spirit since she never became the old man of the mountain, so maybe that's it?
Keep in mind it's not the Human Order that's weakened, just the counter force. At least, that's what we know so far.
Incidentally, this makes it substantially easier to reach the Root. So another possible divergence is the discovery of another true magic.
It could be that the counter force is boosting her ability normally. It could also just be that it's closer to modern day, and her power is a form of magecraft, though that's unlikely for how extreme it was. The point is, I don't think it's soft confirmed.
If you had told ten year old me exactly how excited I would get to find maps of a random city in France from a hundred and fifty years ago, I'm not sure I would have believed you, even if you explained why. But Rennes, France is set to be the location of what may be my first novel, Under the Moonlight, which I wanted to be a visual novel but may simply have to make do without. As I've said before, can't make a VN all by me onesome, not if I want it to look and read like something that was professionally made. For right now, it just consists of this short story and a pair of Alternate Essence shorts from my previous project, An Essence of Silver and Steel. Maybe I'll try and write at least some of it for NaNoWriMo.
A reminder for those that forgot, this Singularity is a crossover with Jame's piece of original fiction. So if you want to know who Serenity is, read that short story.
It's a bit late for this, but I'm a bit disappointed they didn't find any Hephaestus Klironomia in Mt. Etna. Even if it was no longer functional, just studying it may have helped Da Vinci make improvements to Taylor's knife.
It's a bit late for this, but I'm a bit disappointed they didn't find any Hephaestus Klironomia in Mt. Etna. Even if it was no longer functional, just studying it may have helped Da Vinci make improvements to Taylor's knife.
I made a joke about that to the editing team back when I was going through LB5 on NA.
Canon Da Vinci: "These super advanced nanomachines that are light years ahead of anything we have at Chaldea are actually so out of date that the gods leave them lying around without a care? Ugh, I can't even be mad. I'm too impressed with how they work."
Hereafter Da Vinci: "Hehe! You're still stuck on that old junk? You should see the stuff I came up with after studying Taylor's dagger!"
In the end, it was only natural that Connla was the one to notice something amiss first.
After all, he wasn't the type to sit still. He may not have understood words like "rambunctious" or "incorrigible," and words like "recalcitrant" and "intractable" went straight over his head, but if someone bothered to explain their meanings to him, he would have grinned, nodded, and laughed, saying, "Yeah, that sounds just like me!"
Not only because his legend and life had ended at a mere seven years old, before he had the chance to mature, but also because he was the child of both Ireland's most free-spirited and uncontrollable hero and the woman who had defied the destiny of her birth through sheer force of will. Neither of his parents understood the concept of restraint, so it was strange to ever believe that he would either.
Therefore, it was only natural that Connla would hardly wait until his mother was out of earshot before disobeying her.
Of course, even so, he didn't do something as rebellious as actually follow her and those Chaldeans to Rome. There were a lot of things Connla was willing to risk to stave off boredom — up to and including his own life — but well and truly arousing his mother's ire was not one of them.
Not that it wasn't tempting. During the week and a half that passed after she left, nothing much of note happened around the castle, let alone inside of it, and there were only so many times he could venture out just a little bit farther than he really should to spook some of those United Empire idiots before even that got dull and repetitive, no matter how much he handicapped himself to make things more interesting.
It was nearing two weeks since he'd been left to defend the castle with Uncle Lance when he finally noticed something strange on one of his "walks."
"You're certain it came from this direction?" Uncle Lance asked as they raced through the forest.
"Yeah, yeah!" Connla called back. He hopped about from tree trunk to tree trunk, or even branch to branch, instead of Uncle Lance's boring, ordinary run. "Hey, just because I'm seven doesn't mean I didn't finish my training, you know! Pops was over twice my age when he got with Ma, and I fought him to a draw that day!"
"I don't mean to doubt your competence," Uncle Lance said apologetically. "It's only that… Well, this direction is…"
Connla laughed. "That's what makes it interesting, isn't it? Not only is it the first time we've seen some major magical beasts since we were summoned, but they also came from where that wall we heard about is supposed to be! Why, it's almost like this might be the enemy testing the waters for a full scale attack, isn't it?"
Uncle Lance glanced at him briefly, face as solemn and serious as ever. Connla found that kind of boring, too. What was the point in being so sad all the time? Where did it get you to carry all that weight around everywhere? Connla's own father killed him when he was just seven, for doing what he'd been told he had to do, for that matter, and you didn't see him moping around day in and day out.
Well, it wasn't like Connla really got all of that guy's legend, either. In a distant sort of way, he understood the idea of being in love and how that led to kids and marriage and stuff, but it just seemed kind of silly to go through that much effort for a girl.
Connla also knew, in that distant sort of intellectual way, that his opinion would very much have changed as he got older, but he never got the chance to experience that, so it was all the same to him.
"Even if I have my doubts, the possibility itself is enough to warrant investigation," Uncle Lance said. "I might question your motives, but you're right that we can't afford to let it go unanswered, not when considering who our enemy happens to be."
Uncle Lance was on his side, this time. Heh. Now if only Mom was that easy to convince. She would've seen right through him.
"At least it's more interesting than sitting in that castle all day!" Connla grinned. "You can only count the number of bricks in the wall so many times before you start thinking about throwing yourself off the top of the tower!"
Even if Connla couldn't actually remember a time when that would have killed him. It was the principle of the thing, you know?
"Of course, if this turns out to be a false alarm and nothing comes of it," said Uncle Lance, "then I will be telling your mother about this."
Connla faltered for a moment and nearly tripped and fell on his face. "Uncle Lance, you're so uncool."
"You're in my care," was the unflinching reply. "I'm responsible for your well-being and your discipline."
Ugh. Uncle Lance really was a stick in the mud, wasn't he? How could a guy that was supposed to be so cool be so boring at the same time?
Well, whatever. It wasn't like Connla wasn't already hoping to run into something — or someone — on this little outing. The fact that he had another reason why he wanted it to happen didn't really change anything.
They kept going for a while, and several hours passed as they ran. They had to take stops here and there, of course, because without Masters, their supplies of energy were a bit more limited, so they couldn't go nonstop, but for the most part, they kept going without interruption.
And then they ran into a hulking chimera, a huge beast that mages might call a "centennial monster." Connla just knew that it had to be pretty old to be that big, so big that it looked like it could swallow him whole if it put its mind to it, which meant that it had to be pretty powerful, too.
It roared a challenge from the mouth of its lion head, and the goat's head and the snake that made up its tail fixed beady red eyes on the both of them with hunger.
"Another one," Uncle Lance mumbled.
An instant later, he had crossed the distance, and red blood splattered over the grass. The chimera, however, was no fool, and although the long, scaly serpent that made up one third of the thing flopped to the ground, writhing in its death throes, the larger creature had avoided death with a nimbleness and a cunning that belied uncommon intelligence.
Like it was trained or something. Fancy that. Those United Empire guys had a monster tamer on their side. Who would've thought?
The chimera charged in for a counterattack, but Uncle Lance dodged out of the way and drew a thin line across its flank for its trouble. Again, however, it managed to avoid getting killed in a single blow, and the injury on its side that bled freely seemed only to make it angrier — and worse, more cautious.
"I hate that kind of thing," Connla mumbled to no one.
Uncle Lance dove in again, and the chimera dodged again, snarling a furious growl. It swiped at Uncle Lance as he passed, but he threw himself into a roll to avoid the worst of it and probably only wound up with a few scratches on his backplate. The chimera landed lightly on its feet in spite of its size and bent those huge legs it had as it prepared to go on the offense.
It was taken by surprise by the wooden spear that neatly pierced the vulnerable flesh just beneath its jawbone and stabbed straight up into the lion's brain.
"Smart monsters are just a pain."
The ground shook as the great beast fell and collapsed onto its side. The goat's head bleated impotently, thrashing back and forth, until Uncle Lance walked over and slit its throat to put it out of its misery. Connla joined him so that he could retrieve his spear, yanking it free in a spurt of blood and then cleaning it off in the thing's thick mane, because Mom really would tan his hide if he lost another one that easily.
There was nothing to be done about the splash of red that coated the tip, though. It would dry and turn a rusty maroon, no matter what, because after all, this spear was just a piece of ordinary wood that had been hastily carved into a weapon.
"There may have been something to your suspicions after all," Uncle Lance admitted. "I'm sure you noticed — that chimera might not have been a match for you or me, but against a normal human soldier, it would surely have been an almost insurmountable foe."
"Maybe if they were blind, deaf, and dumb," Connla replied flippantly.
The furrowing of Uncle Lance's brow said that he wanted to respond to that, but he decided not to, and that was fine by Connla, too. Fighting of the more verbal kind was only fun in the ways that it could lead to fighting of the more physical kind.
"In either case, I can't imagine that was the only one," said Uncle Lance. "We should continue. The wall shouldn't be too far away, and we're likely to encounter more of this kind of magical beast as we approach it."
"Fine by me."
They took off again, leaving the corpse of the chimera behind. Something that was a mere one-hundred years old didn't have anywhere near enough weight behind it to make it worth harvesting any of its parts, and there wasn't time to waste on something like that right then anyway.
True enough, the chimera may have been the first, but it wasn't the last. They must have run for another hour, the monotony broken only by encounters with more magical beasts. Bicorns and chimeras, monster crabs and demon boars, ghosts and restless skeletons, the things that they wound up fighting were as varied and different as it was possible for magical beasts to be, almost as though someone had gathered them all up from all across the continent and bundled them together in one place before letting them loose.
None of them were much more than annoyances, although they seemed to be getting progressively sturdier and cleverer the further along Uncle Lance and Connla went. That first chimera was already an outlier, more cunning than it had any right to be, but as lone monsters became rarer and groups of them became the norm, their crude tactical ability became more refined and more sophisticated.
It would actually have been kind of incredible if it also wasn't so annoying.
At last, however, their group of two came to their goal, the great, towering wall that was supposed to stretch from one end of the continent to the other, barring their way forward. Only…
"Huh? Where did it go?"
There was no such wall there anymore.
"It's vanished," Uncle Lance said unnecessarily.
Connla huffed. "I can see that, Uncle Lance. I'm not blind."
"It was here," Uncle Lance went on. He gestured to the strip of bare earth, flattened and starved beneath the heavy stones that had sat upon it for who knew how many weeks. "Look. A long stretch of barren land, wide enough for a full complement of mounted cavalry to march. The forest hasn't had time to even begin reclaiming it — this only happened recently. Days, at best."
Duh. Connla rolled his eyes. Talk about saying the obvious stuff. Any idiot with half a brain could have realized all of that.
"So where did it go, then?"
"Something which can appear and disappear so quickly must be a Noble Phantasm," Uncle Lance concluded. "To bar our way into the United Empire, it must also have belonged to one of the Servants under its banner. That it's disappeared now would only mean that the Servant to whom it belonged was vanquished."
He straightened, his eyes growing almost imperceptibly wider. "And that must mean…the warriors of Chaldea have made their way into the heart of the United Empire itself."
And that could only mean that Mom was having a blast. Man, she got to do all of the fun stuff, didn't she?
"Your decision to come out here was the correct one," said Uncle Lance. "We should go. The final battle of this era's correction is no doubt being fought, and we may be of some assistance to those who came to preserve the future."
"Go and kick some butt down there against all those pretenders? Sounds like loads of fun," Connla said wistfully. "There's just one thing we gotta take care of, first."
Uncle Lance's brow drew down, and he eyed the trees scornfully. "Yes, I suppose there is."
Connla smirked.
"Hey!" he called out into the forest. "You hear that, you big loser? Why don't you stop hiding and come out and face us like a real warrior, yeah? Stop skulking about like a coward!"
A moment of silence answered him, and then the trees rustled and the ground shook as laughter echoed out across the clearing. Branches cracked and snapped, and from further on ahead, slightly off the path they would have taken towards the capital city, a massive, hulking form stepped out, smushing everything underfoot as he walked.
"I should have known I wouldn't be able to keep myself hidden from other Servants," the figure said. "Even in this sorry state, you upstarts should at least be able to feel my presence."
Connla whistled, eyebrows rising as he looked up and up and up at the humanoid thing. Had to be something like six meters tall, an enormous creature with pale, naked skin, covered only by a crude loincloth and a few pieces of basic leather armor. The right arm was noticeably bigger than the left, bulging with muscle, and atop the comparatively tiny head was a mop of blood red hair.
"Big fella, aren't you?"
"Not by choice," the giant snarled suddenly. "That stench clinging to you… That means it was your whore of a mother who put me in the position of having to squeeze my fractured Spirit Origin into this body, wasn't it?"
Connla grinned, a thing of teeth and danger. "Hey, hey! No need to be a sore loser just because Mom kicked your ass so hard you got even uglier! I bet this was an improvement!"
The giant took one earth-shaking step forward. "You brat! Just for that, I'm going to rip your head from your body so I can show it to your mom!"
"Idiot," Connla laughed. "We're Servants! If you rip my head from my body, I'll just disappear entirely!"
Really, you'd think this guy was smart enough to make threats he could actually carry out, but apparently, switching into a giant's body also made him stupider as well as uglier.
The giant growled, glaring down at him from far above, and the rumble of it seemed to shake even the trees.
"Tiberius," Uncle Lance said solemnly.
The giant's tiny head swiveled to look at Uncle Lance, and the beady eyes narrowed as they inspected him, glancing up and down his body at the armor, the hair, the face, even the sword, and then they narrowed even more.
"You. I remember you now. You're one of that Arthur brat's Circlejerk Squad, or whatever ridiculous name you were calling yourselves." The giant sneered, lip curling. "Funny. I don't remember seeing you later on, so maybe you died earlier. Or ran away like a coward."
"Indeed, I am a Knight of the Round Table," said Uncle Lance, ignoring the jab without the slightest sign of anger. Uncle Lance really was a boring guy to try and pick a fight with. "My name is Lancelot. To my shame, I was not present for my king's final campaign against you, Tiberius, and so I could not aid my comrades in striking you down."
He hefted his sword, the blade gleaming in the sunlight. "It is a mistake I intend to rectify right here and now."
The giant, Tiberius — know what? That was too much of a mouthful. Connla decided he was just gonna call the guy Tibby from now on, since he was literally half the man he was when he fought Connla's mom.
Tibby laughed, a deep, booming laugh that shook the trees and seemed to fill the entire clearing.
"You? Strike me down?" Tibby asked. "You're not a knight, you're a comedian. Even in this twisted mockery of my usual self, there's no way I'd lose to another snot-nosed brat like you!"
"Shall we test that?" Uncle Lance asked, serious as the grave.
"Why not?" Tibby leered, and his oversized fingers tightened on the comically undersized sword in his right hand. It looked more like he was holding a toothpick than a sword. "I could use a warmup to let out some of my pent up aggression before I hunt down the bitch that did this to me."
"You guys forget about me?" Connla asked them both. "Maybe you want to get a room? Work this out the old-fashioned way? I can stick my fingers in my ears and pretend I'm not listening."
"Get out of here, brat," Tibby said dismissively. "Count yourself lucky that you're not interesting enough to go through the effort of killing."
"Go and assist your mother and the Chaldeans," Uncle Lance ordered. "I will stay here and dispatch this menace at once, then join you."
"You're gonna try," said Tibby. "And fail. Miserably."
Geez, they were even going through the pre-fight banter. It was almost embarrassing to watch.
"Heh." Connla grinned. "See, there's three things I'm not allowed to do, no matter what. First, I'm not allowed to give my name. Second, I'm not allowed to turn back once I start something. Third…"
He kicked off the ground, flying through the air like a diving falcon, and Tibby was so surprised that he didn't react in time to avoid the right cross Connla landed on his cheek. Connla landed nimbly on his feet with a little bounce, but the ground shook as Tibby stumbled backwards, reeling.
"I'm not allowed," said Connla, "to back down from a challenge. And you already challenged me, didn't you?"
"You son of a bitch," Tibby growled. He wiped away a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Just for that, I'm going to kill you first."
Connla's grin showed his teeth. "That sounds like another challenge."
"Connla…" Uncle Lance murmured.
"Hey, hey, don't get even moodier on me, okay?" Connla waved him off. "You go and help Mom and those Chaldea people, yeah? This guy is pretty pathetic. I'll catch up after I've finished what Mom started."
Uncle Lance considered that for a moment, then turned to leave.
"Running away?" Tibby jeered. "Again? Are you that frightened of me that you won't stand your ground and fight?"
"Hey, that's rude, you know!" said Connla. "Are you deaf up there with that tiny head of yours, Tibby? I'm the one who's gonna fight you!"
"You're going to let a child fight your battles?" Tibby asked, ignoring Connla entirely. "Huh, Sir Lancelot?"
"Do not mistake me," said Uncle Lance. "It is prudence, not cowardice, that bids me to take leave of your odious presence. Were it only you and I and nothing else on the line, I would gladly stay and cut you down. However… There is far more at stake than my pride or my king's honor, and so I shall leave the task of dispatching you to one who is more than qualified so that I might go where my own power is more necessary."
"Oooh," said Connla, grinning. "That has to sting! He just said you weren't even worth his time! Hey, Tibby, do you need something to soothe that one? Mom taught me some stuff about herbs for pain relief!"
"Brat!"
Tibby lashed out, but it was so haphazard, so poorly executed, and so blatantly telegraphed that Connla would frankly have let himself be killed if he actually got hit by it. He landed on the balls of his feet, bouncing from the anticipation, his mouth stretched wide and showing every one of his teeth.
"Go on, get going, Uncle Lance!" Connla called. "This won't take all that long, so I'll catch up in a few minutes."
Uncle Lance inclined his head, and before he left, he said, "Your mother will kill me if you die here, Connla."
And then he was gone, racing off through the foliage and in the direction of what should be the United Empire's capital. It was still going to take him a while to make it all the way there, and he would probably get caught up at least a few times fighting some of the magical beasts that were undoubtedly waiting on the way, but it was still loads better than both of them wasting time to take out the big guy who just didn't know when to let himself get killed by a better warrior.
"Heh." Connla twirled his spear and settled into a ready stance. "Not as bad as she'll kill me if I lose to a chump like this!"
"Tch." Tibby sneered. "Guess I'll just have to put you down before I go and slaughter that weakling, you brat. Any last words?"
"Just two," said Connla. He channeled magical energy into the fragile spear, just enough to give it the air of something that it wasn't, and hefted it into a pose he'd seen his mother use before. "Gáe Bolg."
"Shit!"
The spear flew, aimed straight for Tibby's tiny head, and Tibby reached out to grab it out of the air. With his free hand, he wrapped his smaller fist around the shaft, leaving the point to jut out past his fingers and towards his face. And then nothing else happened at all.
Tibby's brow furrowed. "The hell?"
Connla put on a spurt of speed and landed an instant later on the back of Tibby's hand, crouched.
"Don't you know? I never learned that one."
His fist lashed out, lightning fast, but Tibby reacted just fast enough to avoid the worst of it, and the punch that was meant to burst one of Tibby's eyes landed instead on the tip of his nose. The echoing crunch of it breaking was like the snap of a wooden branch breaking, and Tibby reeled back with a shout, dropping Connla's spear in his pain.
Connla sprang off of one of Tibby's massive pectorals, flipped midair, and retrieved his spear, then landed on the ground in the sort of perfect landing he'd always seen his mom pull off. One leg thrown out, one knee bent to his chest, and one hand pressed flat against the forest floor, with his spear held out behind him.
Probably looked so cool. Too bad no one was around to see it.
"You brat!"
Blood streamed down Tibby's face from his shattered, crooked nose, but the pain only seemed to make him angrier, and he lashed out with his toothpick sword — that was actually a perfectly ordinary-sized longsword that only looked small because of who was holding it — in that massively oversized hand.
Connla leapt over the blow into a hero's salmon leap that carried him into the branches of a tree on the edge of the clearing. He felt the wind whipped about by Tibby's swing as it passed him, and for once, he was frowning a little as he landed in a crouch on the bark.
Whatever Tibby had lost when he was forced to squeeze whatever was left of his Spirit Origin into that giant's body, his raw strength obviously wasn't part of it. Maybe he'd lost some of his Magic Resistance? That was how a number of great heroes had been brought down in the Celtic legends. When they broke a geis, their power was cut down by the curse, and some of them even lost the super incredible abilities that made them so special in the first place.
Made sense. He was just going to have to be careful not to get hit by that huge fist or anything swung by it, because it would really hurt.
Connla hefted his spear again, and once more, he threw it with all of his might. Tibby snarled and swatted it aside with his toothpick, and Connla flung himself into the air with another spurt of speed, grabbed his tumbling spear, and hurled it back towards Tibby again. Tibby leaned out of the way, dodging with a kind of grace that was frankly ridiculous for how huge and lopsided he was, and the spear sank tip-first into the ground.
And then Tibby, going with the flow of his momentum, slammed his other fist straight into Connla's gut with the force of a runaway train, although with how much bigger Tibby was, it was more like he just hit Connla's whole torso.
Connla rocketed through the air, and tree branches whacked him over and over, snapping against his back one after the other after the other as he went flying through the forest, until at last he landed on a trunk that was sturdy enough not to break immediately. Stars bloomed in his head as his skull bounced off of it, and he drew in an involuntary gasp as his body tumbled to the hard ground.
Ow, ow, ow. That guy really did hit pretty hard, didn't he? Tibby might be the ugliest thing this side of Hell, but at least he was actually strong.
Slowly, Connla pulled himself to his feet. His back felt like one, gigantic bruise. His whole front ached and throbbed. Hot blood trickled down one corner of his mouth, and its coppery flavor sloshed over his tongue. He spat it out on the ground, wiped it off of his chin, and grinned. So maybe taking extra damage actually was a bad thing, even when you were fighting a misshapen giant who only had half a Spirit Origin. Who knew?
"But that's what makes it fun, isn't it?"
A regular human would have been paste on the ground or a smear on Tibby's knuckles. A weaker Heroic Spirit would probably have taken critical damage to his spirit core — would be struggling to hold his Saint Graph together.
Connla wasn't either of those, because his mom raised a tougher kid than that. Not many toddlers could say they fought Ireland's greatest hero to a draw, after all.
"Alright. Ready for round two, Tibby?"
Connla put on another spurt of speed, and the ground blurred beneath him as his feet stretched across the distance and he stepped back into the clearing. Another spurt carried him over to his spear, miraculously still intact, and he yanked it free in a spray of dirt and grass just in time for Tibby to realize that he wasn't dead yet.
"Tch." Tibby sneered. "You're just like your bitch of a mom, aren't you, brat? You just don't know when to lay down and die!"
Connla grinned mockingly. "Where do you think I learned it from?"
Tibby swung, and Connla leapt over it again, and then again as Tibby swung back around, lumbering about with his enormous body. That looked like it was something else Tibby must have lost when he took that giant's body, because he was definitely fast enough to catch a regular human easily enough, but as long as a Servant didn't let himself be cornered, Tibby was almost too slow to hit anything.
"Stay still!" Tibby growled.
Connla laughed, and this time, he timed his jump so that he landed, crouched, on the back of Tibby's massive fist. "Why would I do that?"
"So I can kill you!"
Tibby's other hand came around to smash him as though he was squashing a bug, but with another spurt, Connla landed on the opposite shoulder, grinning, and hefted back his spear. This close, there was no way he could miss.
"See ya later, Tibby."
"Disrespectful brat."
They stabbed at the same time, except apparently Tibby had been holding back, because that toothpick sword of his was lightning quick as it aimed for Connla's stomach, and Connla, already mid-thrust, almost didn't react fast enough to avoid being gutted.
Blood spurted and flew. Tibby's sword glanced across Connla's side as Connla twisted and bent awkwardly to avoid the worst of it, narrowly avoiding a fatal wound, and then, just as he thought it was over and he could get away, Tibby swept his sword down in a cut that absolutely would finish the job.
Damn, thought Connla. I screwed up.
Blood spurted and flew again, and Connla crashed into the ground with a thud, thrown by the slash. He rolled to a stop, red splashing across the grass in his wake, and laid there.
Sorry, Mom. I know you taught me better than that.
"Guess it doesn't matter who your mother was," said Tibby disdainfully. "You were still just a brat, weren't you?"
He turned to leave and took one lumbering, thunderous step in the direction Uncle Lance had left.
"Hey, Tibby."
Tibby stopped and turned back around. He scoffed. "You're like a cockroach, kid."
Slowly, Connla pushed himself off of the ground. "Say my name."
Tibby snorted. "You want me to give you that respect, you brat? I'll acknowledge your mom as a real warrior, even if she's a woman, but you're just a bug I needed to squash."
"Can't even give me a last request?" Connla asked. He blinked down at the spear, the last defense he had only barely managed to put up between himself and Tibby's sword. Just like the last one, the shaft had been sliced in half. Mom was going to be pissed. "Come on. I just wanna know you know it, you know?"
He could practically hear the nasty grin in Tibby's voice. "Fine."
The giant lumbered closer until Tibby's massive shadow fell over Connla. On the ground, Connla watched the shadow's arm twist and distort as Tibby lifted his sword up to deliver the final blow.
"I'll be sure to send your mom to see you real soon, Connla."
Unseen, Connla's lips stretched into a smile. Thanks, Tibby. That's the last one I needed to get rid of.
Tibby's sword came down to take Connla's head — but Connla put on a spurt of speed and was already gone, sliding to a stop halfway across the clearing in the divot left behind by Hardian's Wall. Tibby's head swung around.
"What?"
"Hey, Tibby, you know, Mom has a rule," said Connla. "She says, telling your enemy all about your trump cards is a stupid idea! The only time you explain what's happening is after you've already dealt the final blow!"
Connla tossed aside the two halves of the spear his mother had carved for him, and as he reached back to the small of his back, a sheathed appeared with a handle jutting out of it. He took hold of the handle, and with the ring of singing steel, he pulled free his sword and flipped it around in his grip.
"But I think it's funnier when you tell the other guy just how badly he screwed up," Connla said gleefully. It was way more fun to watch the way their faces twisted up when they realized it was all their own fault. "See, my legend means I have three things I can't do, remember? But that means that as long as I'm bound by those three things, I can't fight all out! Geasa Tríanach might hide me, but there's a price I gotta pay to make it work."
His grin gained teeth. "But when I can't hide anymore, that means I don't have to play by those rules anymore, either."
Tibby's eyes went wide with fury, and his lips curled in a snarl.
"You're saying I just made you stronger?!"
"Can't you tell?" Connla mocked. "I was a Saber pretending to be an Assassin this entire time!"
"You…!" Tibby growled. "I'm done playing games!"
Magical energy swelled, and Tibby thrust his toothpick into the dirt. The blade filled with blood red light that traveled down the center and into the earth. Glowing lines of power radiated out from it and formed into concentric magic circles, like ripples in a pond.
"Florent Sanglant!"
The Earth trembled, and the whole clearing shook and rumbled, and from beneath the soil, bodies sprouted like flowers, pushing up through the grass and the dirt. They clawed their way to the surface like newborn chicks breaking out of their shells, and one after another, magical beasts rose up from the ground, fully formed and grown.
One after the other they came, one, two, three, five, ten, until a full two dozen creatures of various kinds stood around Tibby like an honor guard. A chimera, another giant — this one proportioned like an actual human instead of Tibby's misshapen, malformed body — a bicorn, a manticore, a couple of monster crabs, a demon boar, and several others that Connla couldn't name or just didn't care to.
"It's not up to my usual standards," Tibby said with a sneer. "You can thank your whore mother for that. But these children of mine should be more than enough for a snot-nosed brat like you."
Connla grinned. "Heh."
Sorry, Mom, it looks like it's gonna take me a little bit longer to catch up with you. You and those Chaldea people will just have to get by with Uncle Lance for now.
Magical energy surged into the sword in his hand, and the blade lit up with a bright glow, as though the whole thing was filled with light.
A spurt carried him into the midst of the hoard, and before any of them knew what was happening, Athdénta Soluis ripped through the manticore's throat in a spray of blood and gore. The hoard reeled and turned to rip him apart, two dozen different beasts roaring and clacking and growling, but he was already gone again with another spurt that brought him behind their ranks.
"More than enough?" Connla laughed as his blood sang, because this was the most fun he'd had since he was summoned. "This is barely a warmup, Tibby!"
The blood on his blade sizzled as the light inside burned it away. Connla leveled it at the whole group in challenge.
"Try not to die too fast!"
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
This chapter is something of a formatting nightmare. Originally, I was just going to leave the implication as an Easter egg and let you guys realize it on your own, but the italics felt a little jarring, according to the editor, so I had to create two different versions of the chapter: one I could post on SV, where I could use furigana to achieve that look, and one for AO3 and FFnet, where I couldn't.
As for the chapter itself, I've dropped a few surprises in your laps with this one. Ah, incidentally, yeah, that surprise at the end, basically completely pulled out of my rear, but I think I have a good justification for it. Wait for the Hereafter Material page on it and you'll see what I mean.
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.
Geasa Tríanach [Noble Phantasm]
Bond of the Golden Thumb Ring
The Noble Phantasm of Connla. A representation of his only adventure in Irish myth, embodying the mystery of his name and identity.
In "Aided Óenfhir Aífe," he is bound by three geasa, and because of these, his name is concealed from the Ulstermen, forcing them into confrontation. It is only as he lay dying that the deception is revealed and the truth is laid bare, and Connla is identified as the only son of Aífe and Cúchulainn.
Representing that myth, this Noble Phantasm conceals the details of Connla's identity. All identifying factors are shrouded in mystery, from his true name to his skills and even, on the rare occasion he is summoned as anything other than an Assassin, his Servant Class. Naturally, the more an enemy knows about him, the more the protections of this Noble Phantasm are stripped away, showing Connla for who he is.
However, the penalty for this deception is a weakness to strong attacks. Although his own strength is unfettered at all points, he takes extra damage from enemies for every deception that remains in place. If he is completely concealed, any successful attacks will deal triple damage.
Athdénta Soluis [Noble Phantasm]
Reforged Blade of Shining Death
The sword Cúchulainn used in battle against Aífe, and which was thereby broken by her in a single strike. Repaired for Connla's use after the battle, it was intended as a form of ironic revenge that ironically never served its purpose.
Legends speak of the rainbow sword, Caladbolg, and how it sliced off three hilltops when Fergus mac Róich swung it in anger.
This is not that sword. It has no relation to Caladbolg. The function is entirely different.
Instead of extending a ray of light from the sword, the light of the blade is kept contained, and the power of the edge and point are amplified. By doing so, the raw magical energy put into the sword is condensed down, and the strength of the following blow is magnified. It becomes a "one-hit kill" attack that will not fail to slay the enemy if it lands, an "ultimate attack" that will absolutely end the battle in a single stroke. Even those with a high rank of Battle Continuation must be careful not to take a direct hit.
Because of the degree of conflation present in the multiple forms of his father's sword, this sword is also further strengthened beyond its original form. Specifically, it gains the attribute of "defense piercing," as well as a minor increase in damage output, although its lethality still falls far short of something on the level of Cúchulainn's Gáe Bolg.
I thought Connla needed a little spice, so I asked myself, "How would Nasu buff Connla so that he wasn't relying solely on the gimmick of his thumb ring's Assassin schtick?" That sword was the end result.
