Imagine if she summoned sherlock holmes in lisa's body. Like i know he can be summoned as normal, but my god would it be fitting.
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Crossover
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I'm thinking she either summoned EMIYA Alter, who is already here and therefore bounced, or an Assassin with enough Presence Concealment to make it look like the ritual failed. Possibly herself - many of her most terrifying exploits were done without being personally there. Summoning Queen Admin as Foreigner, or something similarly not physically apparent, would still give her command seals.
TimeDiver
Herald of Dis Lev
- Location
- In-between the parallel worlds...
And just because (and
Because even though there ARE some ages-old threats that cannot be defeated or overcome without Mystery on your side, the Moonlit Side needs a very rude wake-up call.
Everything seemingly falls upon the Policies Department of the Clock Tower (headed up by the conservative faction that supports the Barthomeloi, if memory serves), who aren't as adaptable as they could / need to be, barring occasional outliers.
And of course the chucklefucks in the Wandering Sea who see ZERO value in modern civilization, and only ignored the Crypters and the Foreign God's (not really) restoration of the Age of Gods because it wasn't on THEIR terms, nor by their methods.
Really, only Atlas is semi-respectable; overworked as they are and being semi-responsible for a number of self-fulfilling prophecies of creating weapons capable of ending the World aside (which they at least bothered to seal away in their HQ).
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James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Right. So, I know I just started posting this story, but I might need to take a break either this weekend or next.
For context: a few weeks ago, I got news about my grandmother - paternal, this time, since both my maternal grandparents died a little over a year and a half ago. She had melanoma on her foot removed a few months ago, but apparently not soon enough, because it metastasized. 6 months to a year, that was the estimate we were given.
About 10 minutes ago, I got a phone call from my uncle. Grandma's slipped into a coma, and she's unresponsive. The new estimate is hours to days.
I think, no matter what, I'll get you guys chapter 4 this Saturday, but chapter 5 might be delayed by a week. Or maybe I'll just drop both chapters on you this weekend and get back on schedule in two weeks. I haven't made up my mind, yet.
All of this, so soon after my budget got slashed in half... 2021 is turning out to be a shitshow.
For context: a few weeks ago, I got news about my grandmother - paternal, this time, since both my maternal grandparents died a little over a year and a half ago. She had melanoma on her foot removed a few months ago, but apparently not soon enough, because it metastasized. 6 months to a year, that was the estimate we were given.
About 10 minutes ago, I got a phone call from my uncle. Grandma's slipped into a coma, and she's unresponsive. The new estimate is hours to days.
I think, no matter what, I'll get you guys chapter 4 this Saturday, but chapter 5 might be delayed by a week. Or maybe I'll just drop both chapters on you this weekend and get back on schedule in two weeks. I haven't made up my mind, yet.
All of this, so soon after my budget got slashed in half... 2021 is turning out to be a shitshow.
Sakuya's Butler
A refined Butler to a knife wielding Mistress.
- Location
- ↓, ↘, → + Punch
Better death by Kaleidostick, than the fate Lev was going to give her. Because that is some truly horrific shit.
Zanji117
Blood Wolf
- Location
- Bakersfield, CA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Dude take all the time you need Family always comes first
The17thImmortal
Seeker of Sanity
^^ This.
You go do what you gotta do, James, for however long it takes. We're not going anywhere, and will still be here when you get back.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I can certainly sympathize; my maternal grandparents both died in Dec. 2019. Take all the time you need.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
This all the way Fawkes! I'm unsure if there's a post scheduling ability here on SV, but I'd be surprised if at least FF.net didn't have one. Do what ever works for you, and my condolences for your loss. Losing family sucks.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Budget got cut in half? What happened, if you don't mind me asking?
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
I'm not totally comfortable sharing the minutiae, so the long and short of it is a pay cut and a few unexpected expenses. Ironically enough, it all happened, like, a week after the Astraea banner, so you'd be forgiven for assuming the Astraea banner had anything to do with it. But, I mean, come on. I went two packs over my original budget for that banner, not two thousand dollars over.
For now, I'm okay. I had to cut FGO's Summer banners out of my budget, but I'm not drowning or anything. If things change for the better, I might manage to make up the difference. If not, though, then I could be about $2000 behind where I really should be by September. Not "in trouble" yet, but heading that way a little too fast.
As for Grandma, I haven't heard anything since last night. But I'm not sure "no news is good news," this time.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Just got the news from my parents. She passed a few hours ago, in the late morning. My sister was really upset, because she took time off next weekend so she could come and visit Grandma, and she's been waiting several months to have the chance. Now, she's going to be coming up for an altogether different kind of visit.
Windborne
Devourer of Stories
- Location
- Oregon
My condolences, losing family sucks like I've said before. Take your time if you need a break, though an update every couple weeks would be appreciated if it's going to be a long hiatus.
Chapter IV: Contractual Obligations
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter IV: Contractual Obligations
"Battle concluded, Master, Director," Mash reported as she let the bottom of her shield rest against the ground. The last of the skeletons vanished into dust.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka said brightly.
"Wow, you're so awesome, Mash!" Rika added. "You made that look so easy!"
Mash smiled bashfully, and it struck me that it must have been the most honest smile I'd ever seen on her face. How cruel it was that it was only happening here and now.
"Here, too," the Director said thoughtfully, brow furrowed.
"They were at the other site, too," I said. "They must be related."
"More skeletons appear the denser the concentration of magical energy, you mean?" the Director mused, cupping her chin. "It's starting to look that way. It's strange, though. Normally, when you talk about reanimated corpses, you'd expect to find a necromancer of some kind involved. But we haven't even encountered another living person, yet, let alone the magus who might be behind this."
If I translated that into powers as I knew them, that would mean there shouldn't be any minions without a Master to spawn and control them — no goblins without Nilbog, no ghosts without Crusader, no evil clones without Echidna. That was what made sense to me.
Of course, that didn't mean magic necessarily followed the same logic, as I'd been learning for the past two years.
"Could the magical energy itself be reanimating them?"
The Director opened her mouth, paused, and then let out a disgusted sigh. "I want to say no, but nothing here is making any sense to begin with! Ugh! So it's entirely possible that some sort of magical phenomenon has affected the ley lines, and any nexus points are causing spontaneous reanimation of human remains."
"Maybe it's a Servant, instead?" I suggested.
The Director grunted.
"It would have to be a Caster, in that case, and if they have the range to control their familiars from so far away, there wouldn't be anything stopping them from crushing us the same way," she said. "Otherwise, Romani would've notified us of a Servant's presence." She paused again and winced. "If…the sensors for it are still working properly."
"Doctor Roman was able to scan my Saint Graph earlier," Mash chimed in.
The Director shook her head. "Then even if the range was reduced, any Servant nearby enough to sic familiars on us would ping the sensors. Besides…"
She looked out over the ruins of the church, a mess of rubble so destroyed that there wasn't much of a single wall, let alone an entire building. The remnants were still smoldering as what was left of the pulpit and the pews burned down to nothing.
It was no better off than the rest of the city. In fact, it seemed as though someone had specifically gone out of their way to demolish this building in particular, smashing it to smithereens. Or maybe it had just been a casualty of some earlier battle, blown to pieces when a pair of Servants decided to duke it out inside.
Maybe two different Servants had had the same idea and killed themselves fighting over who got to claim the real estate.
That one was probably wishful thinking.
"…it's pretty obvious that there isn't anyone hiding here, isn't it?"
"If they were, they aren't anymore," I agreed.
Beep-beep!
The band on Ritsuka's wrist chimed, and an instant later, a specter of Romani appeared in the air. The Director snarled. "What is it now, Romani —"
"Director!" Romani cut across her. "I'm detecting the presence of a Servant nearby your location!"
Immediately, everyone was on alert, and Mash hurried forward, interposing herself between the group and the road we'd come from, and planted her shield like a barricade.
"Everyone, please get behind me!"
No one questioned her, we all just huddled behind the massive shape of her shield, silent and waiting. I had the thought that she might be facing the wrong direction, but if she had the instincts of the Heroic Spirit fused to her, body and soul, then she probably knew better about that than I did.
I glanced past the embers of the ruined church anyway and found nothing.
It made me feel helpless, standing there behind a teenage girl who had been in a grand total of maybe half a dozen actual fights in her entire life, unable to do anything else. I'd underestimated exactly how impotent being a Master instead of a direct combatant would make me feel, and I didn't like it at all.
A nail-biting moment later, Romani made a confused noise. "Huh? It's gone?"
The tension deflated like a balloon, and the noise that came from the Director's throat sounded like one. "Romani! Did you misread the sensor output, you dunce?"
"F-forgive me, Director, but there was a Servant there, no question about it!" Romani said quickly. "It appeared suddenly, stayed for a few seconds, and then it left! Almost like —"
"It came to observe us," I realized.
To…what? Scope out the competition? Or just to take a look at the strangers who had showed up where they shouldn't be? No, we couldn't afford to give this mystery Servant the benefit of the doubt. We had to assume it was an enemy, here to scout us out and get our measure.
The Director turned to me, wide-eyed. "Romani," she said, quieter and with a thread of anxiety in her tone, "are you sure you didn't just misread the sensors?"
"I'm positive, Director," said Romani.
"Oh no," the Director moaned. She started chewing on her thumbnail again. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. This is bad. There weren't supposed to be any Servants here that we had to fight. There's no way we can take on a fully fledged Servant as we are with nothing more than a Demi-Servant like Mash."
"What's wrong with Mash?" Ritsuka asked.
The Director whirled on him. "What's wrong with — are you seriously asking that? In the first place, do you see any weapons on her?" She gestured at Mash with one hand. "In the second, a battle between Servants is a battle between Noble Phantasms, and Mash doesn't even know the name of hers! If that Servant has an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, we're all dead!"
"Director." I placed my hand on her raised arm and gently forced it down. "Calm down."
"Calm down?" She turned on me, next. "How can I calm down? The instant that Servant comes back, there's nothing we can do!"
"And panicking won't change anything about any of that."
"I'm not panicking!" the Director snapped.
"You kind of are," said Rika with a shaky smile.
"I am not!"
"It's okay," Rika added, "I'm actually pretty freaked out, too."
"The first thing you've said that makes sense!" the Director said.
"Director, wait, that's not fair," Ritsuka began.
"Fair?" she demanded. "None of this is fair! None of this is right! Not a single thing has gone right all day! Lev is…is…! Chaldea is in ruins! Almost the entirety of the staff is gone, and I'm stuck here with a half-baked Servant contracted to two novices who don't know a Command Spell from a Mystic Code — !"
"Everyone, please stop!" Mash shouted, and immediately, everyone else cut off. "Director. You're right, this situation isn't ideal. However, please, have faith in me. I'm still performing at optimal levels."
"There've been no significant fluctuations in her readings so far," Romani added.
"I understand that I don't meet all of the expectations that were placed on me for this project," Mash went on firmly, "but even so, I think… No, I know that I can handle any Servant that we might encounter. As long as I have my Masters' support, we can make it through this."
A moment of long silence stretched. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ritsuka and Rika had positioned themselves on either side of Mash, as though to lend her words weight, standing opposite the Director, with me caught in the middle.
The position of mediator… There was something darkly ironic about that.
"We need to keep investigating," I said at length. "If that Servant didn't attack, that means they're probably not confident they can take us out. If that's the case, then if I was in their shoes, I'd either regroup to find a more advantageous position or go for reinforcements."
Mash's brow furrowed. "If multiple Servants teamed up and attacked us…"
The Director heaved a deep, heavy breath. Her hands were still trembling.
"Even if you can fight off one, fighting two at the same time is too much," she said. We all pretended not to notice the quaver in her voice. "You're right. At this point, our best bet is to keep moving. Even if we wanted to find a good, easily defensible spot, this most certainly isn't it."
"Then the next point of interest?" I suggested.
"The Second Owner's house, in the residential district," the Director answered. "We'll need to cross the bridge for that. So be on your guard!" She pointed at Mash. "If we're going to be ambushed, the bridge is basically the ideal place to do it! Keep your eyes peeled for any enemies!"
She swung her finger around the group and landed on Ritsuka. "That goes for you, too! The more eyes we have keeping a lookout, the less chance we'll get hit with a surprise attack!"
Rika gave her a cheeky salute. "Roger that, Boss Lady!"
Ritsuka sighed. "Rika, stop antagonizing her, please…"
His sister didn't reply, but the glint in her eyes was familiar.
Like trying to wrangle Alec, I thought with a muted pang. Just as obstinate and just as determined to needle whenever she could.
"In any case, if there's nothing of interest left to investigate here," I said, "then we should get moving. Mash, you'll need to take point."
"Understood!" Mash nodded.
"Director —"
"The Masters should be immediately behind her," the Director said suddenly. "It's the best position for them to support her from." She pinned me with a stare. "Hebert, that means I'll be entrusting my protection to you."
I didn't reply immediately, just stared back, but her gaze didn't waver.
I wasn't blind to what a show of trust this was. But then, the Director had had my back for a while now, so maybe it wasn't that strange that she was so willing to trust me with hers.
"Director, are you sure that's a good idea?" Romani asked worriedly. "Taylor isn't a Servant, after all."
I didn't even glance in his direction. Neither did she.
"Understood, Director."
She nodded, and then turned to Mash. "Back the way we came. The main road may not be in the best of shape, but it'll be the most direct path to the bridge. If we're careful and conserve our energy in case that Servant comes back, it should take us about an hour and a half to reach it. Two, if we run into any more skeletons."
"If, she says," Rika mumbled.
A huff came from the Director's nostrils, but she didn't rise to the bait.
"Remember. Keep your eyes wide open. Mash may be a Demi-Servant instead of a regular Servant, but her performance will still drop if her Master is incapacitated. Or worse, killed."
"And of course, you getting killed is the worst case scenario," said Rika.
"That should go without saying! I'm the Director! I'm the most important person on this team!"
Somehow, we eventually managed to start the journey back into the city. Materially, nothing had really changed, but there was an air among the group as we walked that hadn't been there before. Everyone cast furtive glances about the buildings around us, no matter what shape they were in, looking for the ambush that we were all worried was coming. Every nook and cranny and every shadowed doorway seemed sinister in a way it wasn't earlier, and the nervousness had put a damper even on Rika's humor.
The ambush we were all waiting for didn't come. There were more groups of skeletons that waylaid us along the road, but they weren't any more threatening or intimidating than they had been before, and they were just as easily dispatched. Mash handled them with an ease and aplomb that reminded me a little of Defiant, back in his Armsmaster days. Graceful and efficient, and brutally effective.
If she was slowing down, I didn't see it. She seemed just as capable and just as calm as she was hours ago, when we first got dropped into this quaint little hellhole.
Perks of being a Servant, I guess, even a Demi-Servant.
By the time the big, red bridge came into view, we were all waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Even still, there was no sign of the Servant who had come by to scout us out while we were at the ruins of the old Catholic church.
"…Was it a fluke, after all?" the Director mumbled thoughtfully. "Maybe…no, just a sensor ghost? A blip caused by an accidental double read of Mash's Spirit Origin?"
My lips pulled tight. "We can't bet on that."
She looked around nervously up and down the banks of the river. No Servant materialized from the aether to try and kill us, but it did little to make her feel better.
Being entirely honest, I'd been expecting us to get attacked by now, too. We'd passed dozens of points where the Undersiders would've been able to stage a flawless ambush, made so numerous by the general state of the buildings around here, and anyone with a modicum of tactical prowess should have seen the opportunities for what they were just as easily.
So whatever the Servant who had been observing us was, it probably wasn't an Assassin — there was no way one of those wouldn't have taken the shot already. Not unless they were counting on the bridge itself as a trap.
An uncomfortably possible scenario.
A Caster…
Maybe. My money was on the Caster being wherever the source of the anomaly causing this Singularity was situated. It seemed to me that a Caster was the one most likely to be responsible for it in the first place, considering what I understood their skill sets tended to look like.
"We'd still know they were there before they came after us, right?" Ritsuka asked nervously. "So shouldn't it be fine?"
"Assassin class Servants have a skill called Presence Concealment, Senpai," Mash told him solemnly. "They can hide themselves until the moment they go on the attack, even from Chaldea's advanced sensors. If the Servant was an Assassin, we won't know until the attack has already begun."
"That's a cheery thought," Rika groaned. "So they could be watching us right now and we wouldn't even know it? I feel kinda icky."
"Think about that for a second," the Director said. "If it was an Assassin, would we even have known they were watching us back at the church in the first place? Use some common sense!"
I shook my head. "And if they wanted to lure us into an ambush?"
The Director grimaced. "Then why not just attack us at the church? Our guard was already down, so it's not like we were expecting them and prepared to defend ourselves."
A good point. Honestly, I agreed with her, but it didn't hurt to keep your mind open to even the stuff you thought unlikely.
I looked across the bridge. The light of the flames danced across the red, metal beams and the equally red suspension cables, making them look like they were on fire, too. "The road to hell" wouldn't have been an inappropriate comparison to make.
"We have to cross the bridge no matter what, right?"
"It's the only way to make it across the river," the Director said grimly. "Anything else is miles further inland, which means hours or even days more walking."
"Then we don't have much of a choice, do we?" said Ritsuka.
It seemed like we really didn't. Fuck. I didn't like this.
The Director took a deep, bracing breath. "Right."
"Keep your guard up," I added. "Mash, be ready with that shield."
"Understood, Miss Taylor."
Hesitantly, we started walking. Mash stayed in front, shield held in front of her as though to ward off danger, and she peered over one of the massive spokes that jutted out from the rounded center shape. We all stayed behind her, huddled as closely together as we could without tripping over one another. My ears were constantly straining for the slightest off sound, but aside from our footsteps, our breathing, and the low crackle of the flames, the city remained eerily silent.
"We're off to see the wizard," Rika sang to herself under her breath, so quiet that I barely heard her, "the wonderful Wizard of Oz…"
I glanced at her, thought about chastising her, but I seized the impulse before the words could even make it to my tongue, because I was trying to be better than the person I'd been before Gold Morning. It wasn't malicious or inappropriately jovial, anyway; the line of tension in her shoulders made it obvious she was using whatever she could to distract herself.
She was just a kid, I reminded myself. Older than I was when I became Skitter, sure, but far less experienced and far less prepared than even I had been on my first night out. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, in far over her head.
Still, there was no sign of the enemy. No one leapt out at us, no one fell out of the sky on top of us, and there wasn't even the blip of Romani reporting a Saint Graph reading nearby.
We were about halfway across when that changed.
Beep-beep
"Romani —"
"Director!" Romani shouted without waiting for her to answer. "There's a Servant near your location, North-Northwest!"
Mash stiffened and immediately swung around, facing a point off to the right as though she could see the Servant herself.
"Director!" she said urgently. "I'm picking it up now myself!"
Shit.
"Across the bridge!" I ordered. "Now, now!"
Mash hesitated and turned to Ritsuka. "Master —"
"Go!" said Ritsuka.
I broke into a sprint, and a bare moment later, the others fell into step with me. Mash kept pace, only instead of staying out ahead of us like she undoubtedly could have, she stayed to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glancing in the same direction every few seconds, like she was expecting to be attacked from there any second.
Maybe she was. I wasn't a Servant, so I couldn't detect them on my own, and I wasn't so accomplished a spellcaster that I could track the magical energy to find their location that way.
"Reading's…holding steady," Romani reported as we went. A burst of static punctuated his words. "They're not disappearing, this time. I'm sorry, the system can't get a better handle on the Spirit Origin or Saint Graph, so I can't even begin to tell you what kind of Servant it is or which Heroic Spirit it might be —"
"Just…keep an eye on it…Romani!" the Director huffed as we ran.
"Communications…still spotty," Romani said, interrupted by static halfway. "I…gen…location, but…more than… It's on…orthwest bank…the river."
"Romani?"
"Director," he said, and then the feed cut out.
"Damn it," the Director said. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
"Director," said Mash, "I think he was trying to say that the Servant is somewhere on the northwest bank of the river."
"I know what he was saying!" the Director snapped. "Damn…it! Why…is everything…falling apart…on me…"
The Director slowed to a halt as we cleared the end of the bridge. She hunched over, panting, hands on her knees. I stumbled to a stop a few paces beyond her, and Ritsuka and Rika did, too, hunching over next to the Director as they gulped down air. Only Mash seemed less bothered by the exertion of running across the bridge than I was.
"Director," I started, "we can't stay here."
The Director glared up at me. "Damn…it. So…unfair. You're not…even…breathing hard."
"Senpai…such a…badass," Rika whined.
"Director," I said more insistently.
She grimaced.
"The…Second Owner's house…should be…in the southern half…of the residential…district."
"Go," I said. None of them moved. "Go! If Mash can sense whoever that Servant is, you can bet they can sense her, too! We need to get moving before —"
"Master!" Mash shouted as she leapt, kicking off the ground.
Faster than I could blink, she'd interposed herself between Ritsuka, Rika, the Director, and the northern section of the riverbank, and at the same moment, a thunderous clang rang through the air as a dark figure materialized practically on top of her, feet planted on the surface of the shield and the butt of a polearm planted between her ankles. Her cloak and her long hair hadn't even had time to settle before the new woman flung herself away to land with the grace of a jumping spider, bent over in half, one hand planted on the ground, and her polearm held out behind her.
"Oh?"
The voice that came out of her was silky smooth and slippery, and as she straightened, she gave us a perfect view of her ample cleavage and her tall, slender body. Her cloak was ragged and ripped, but the pale skin she left on display was unblemished, with the exception of what seemed like red tribal markings. Her long hair fell almost to the ground, an inhumanly vivid shade of strawberry blonde.
But the most striking thing about her was not her body or her grace, it was her presence. A palpable aura radiated off of her, chilling the hot air, and it gave her the sense of some great predator, stalking its unsuspecting victims. A snake, coiled and ready to strike, to swallow us whole.
"You're better than I thought you would be," she purred. "To have blocked me so effortlessly… My, my… And behind you…"
Her gaze traveled across Ritsuka, Rika, and the Director, and when it landed on me, I felt my insides freeze and all my muscles seize, like they'd all locked up at once. I couldn't have moved to save my life, not even to breathe. It was like I'd been turned to stone.
She licked her lips, and her gaze turned back to Mash. The instant she looked away, I could move again.
"Two unknown Masters and some more fresh meat."
"Director, that's…"
"A Servant. Judging by that weapon, a Lancer," the Director said, voice quivering. She shaped one hand into a gun and braced it with the other, although it didn't quite stop her arm from shaking. "Kuh…! O-of all the lousy luck! The first thing we run into that isn't a skeleton, and it's not even a living person!"
The woman chuckled. "My, a woman could take offense to that."
"She appears to be operating without a Master," Mash noted.
"Nothing about this situation is normal!" the Director bit out. "In a situation like this, where everything has gone wrong, I'm not surprised to find a Servant without a Master!"
"I thought you said Servants couldn't survive without a Master to support them!" Rika said.
"Ordinarily!" the Director shot back. "Does anything about this seem ordinary to you?"
"She's one of the Servants from the Holy Grail War, right?" Ritsuka asked hurriedly. "Then, if we just explain that we're not a part of it —"
"It doesn't work that way," I cut across him. I addressed the woman. "Right?"
The woman smirked, cold and cruel.
"When fresh prey stumble into my hunting ground, I can hunt them down at my leisure, can't I? The only thing my prey can do is try to run or try to fight."
She hefted her polearm, turning the hooked blade towards us, and her off hand glided sensuously up the haft.
"So? Are you going to try to run? Or are you going to try and fight me?"
The Director bit her lip hard enough to bruise. Rika took a step backwards, face contorted with fear. Even Ritsuka's hands were shaking.
Except for Mash, who squared her shoulders and took a brave step forward, holding up her shield. The woman's smirk grew into a bloodthirsty grin.
"Fight, then! Good! Try not to die too quickly!"
Mash and the woman both moved at once, each kicking off the ground and throwing themselves at the other. They met somewhere in the middle, closer to our position than to hers, and Mash's shield shrieked as the blade of the polearm scraped down its surface, to no apparent effect. Mash planted her feet and pushed forward.
But the woman was not deterred. She pulled backwards, and then surged back into action, swinging faster and faster with expert skill. Each blow glanced off of Mash's shield, but if the thunderous clang of each blow wasn't enough to tell me how hard each hit was, the way Mash's shoulders and arms braced for the impact would have been more than enough to clue me in.
The woman laughed all the while.
"You're new, aren't you? You're still getting used to what it's like being a Servant! I can tell! The way you move, the way you don't move, the openings you miss even when they should be obvious — it's all you can do to try and keep up!"
Mash grunted and didn't rise to the bait, she just kept blocking each attack. She weathered all of them, refusing to buckle, refusing to be beat down, holding that massive shield aloft as though it were the battlements of a castle and the woman's blows a battering ram. Neither she nor her shield gave a single inch.
But it was obvious even to the others that she was outmatched.
"Mash…" Ritsuka whispered.
"There has to be something we can do!" Rika said frantically.
"Don't be ridiculous!" the Director shouted back. "In a battle between Servants, the Master has only one place: in the back!"
Good thing I'm not a proper Master, then, isn't it?
I pivoted on my heel and took off running at full sprint, aiming for the main road that led further into the residential district.
"Senpai!" Ritsuka shouted after me.
"T-Taylor," the Director called, "where are you going?"
"Did you think I'd let you leave that easily?"
Chains whipped out, crisscrossing over the space between the buildings. They wrapped around whatever they could, whether that was a lamppost, a wooden beam jutting up from the corpse of a house, or even just steel rebar, and they formed a tightly woven net that blocked off my path.
I spun back around, and the woman was dashing towards me — leisurely, compared to her lightning fast attacks against Mash, but still too fast for a human to outpace. Her eyes seemed to glow as they pinned me in place, and my limbs froze again.
"My prey isn't allowed to escape!"
It wasn't fear that had paralyzed me earlier. No, of course not. I'd faced down Lung, Leviathan, Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna, Behemoth, Nilbog, Scion. I'd spoken with the Faerie Queen as equals, killed Alexandria with bugs, survived being cut in half. A single woman with a scythe, no matter how superhuman she was, didn't hold a candle to all of the things I'd been through.
The clue was eye contact.
Just by meeting my eyes, she'd been able to freeze me in place. I'd learned a lot over the past two years, and one of the subjects was Mystic Eyes, specialized attributes activated through eye contact and line of sight. A Servant, a Heroic Spirit, who possessed a set of Mystic Eyes that could freeze you in place?
I would've been embarrassed if it had taken me more than that to figure it out.
"Medusa!"
Magical energy circulated through my body, and the spell was broken, shattered with ease, now that I knew what it was and could fight it. Magic like this relied on surprise, on the victim not knowing what they were up against. It was much weaker if your guard was up.
My arm rose. Black light gathered on my fingertips. With a direct line to my target, I couldn't miss.
"Gandr!"
And a ball of black energy flew at her face.
The thing about people, even capes with powers? They still had reflexes. Things they did automatically, things they'd trained themselves to do, over and over again for years. Ingrained responses, either instinctual or muscle memory. Pyrokinetics could get used to their own flames, sure, but it took a lot of experience fighting to keep yourself from flinching away whenever someone else threw fire at you. Even high level Brutes still dodged and winced until they got used to being invulnerable.
Servants were no different.
Medusa was a Lancer, one of the Knight classes, which meant she had some form of Magic Resistance as a rule. My dinky, little Gandr was as harmless to her as a gnat. But even if she knew that intellectually, her body reacted without thinking, and instead of taking the shot and letting it splash off of her futilely, she deflected it with her…scythe, or whatever that thing counted as, because her eyes tracked an incoming projectile and the response she'd trained into herself activated automatically.
She slid to a halt as my Gandr glanced off of her and dissipated. She snarled at me.
"You…!"
"Now, Mash!" I shouted.
Medusa whipped around — and as she went to swing her scythe into a counterattack, I reached out with my prosthetic's phantom limb and took a solid grip of it.
It wasn't enough to truly stop her. If she exerted any real effort, she could have wrenched it away and ignored me completely.
But the resistance distracted her, because she wasn't expecting it, and her head and torso turned back towards me, her eyes wide.
"Wha —"
"Raah!"
And Mash leapt at her, swung that massive shield around right into her face. Medusa went flying, soaring across the ground, to tumble to a halt some twenty feet away, crumpled into a heap.
"Yes!" shouted Rika.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka added.
They started over our way.
"Ritsuka, Rika!" I barked out at them. "Don't get any closer!"
"What?" Rika squawked. "But Senpai, it's over!"
"Mash," I said, making sure to keep my eyes on Medusa.
She nodded. "Understood!"
The lump on the ground chuckled, low and ominous, and slowly, Medusa pulled herself to her feet.
"You kids should listen to your more experienced friend," she purred. "You two really are fresh-faced, if you thought that was enough to defeat me."
She turned back around, grinning a demented grin, and her tongue snaked out to lick up the trail of blood that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She slurped it noisily, like she was enjoying a fine meal.
"Not that her experience will mean anything," Medusa said gleefully. "After all, you worked oh so hard to get that one shot in on me, and all you have to show for it is a little bit of blood."
"Battle concluded, Master, Director," Mash reported as she let the bottom of her shield rest against the ground. The last of the skeletons vanished into dust.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka said brightly.
"Wow, you're so awesome, Mash!" Rika added. "You made that look so easy!"
Mash smiled bashfully, and it struck me that it must have been the most honest smile I'd ever seen on her face. How cruel it was that it was only happening here and now.
"Here, too," the Director said thoughtfully, brow furrowed.
"They were at the other site, too," I said. "They must be related."
"More skeletons appear the denser the concentration of magical energy, you mean?" the Director mused, cupping her chin. "It's starting to look that way. It's strange, though. Normally, when you talk about reanimated corpses, you'd expect to find a necromancer of some kind involved. But we haven't even encountered another living person, yet, let alone the magus who might be behind this."
If I translated that into powers as I knew them, that would mean there shouldn't be any minions without a Master to spawn and control them — no goblins without Nilbog, no ghosts without Crusader, no evil clones without Echidna. That was what made sense to me.
Of course, that didn't mean magic necessarily followed the same logic, as I'd been learning for the past two years.
"Could the magical energy itself be reanimating them?"
The Director opened her mouth, paused, and then let out a disgusted sigh. "I want to say no, but nothing here is making any sense to begin with! Ugh! So it's entirely possible that some sort of magical phenomenon has affected the ley lines, and any nexus points are causing spontaneous reanimation of human remains."
"Maybe it's a Servant, instead?" I suggested.
The Director grunted.
"It would have to be a Caster, in that case, and if they have the range to control their familiars from so far away, there wouldn't be anything stopping them from crushing us the same way," she said. "Otherwise, Romani would've notified us of a Servant's presence." She paused again and winced. "If…the sensors for it are still working properly."
"Doctor Roman was able to scan my Saint Graph earlier," Mash chimed in.
The Director shook her head. "Then even if the range was reduced, any Servant nearby enough to sic familiars on us would ping the sensors. Besides…"
She looked out over the ruins of the church, a mess of rubble so destroyed that there wasn't much of a single wall, let alone an entire building. The remnants were still smoldering as what was left of the pulpit and the pews burned down to nothing.
It was no better off than the rest of the city. In fact, it seemed as though someone had specifically gone out of their way to demolish this building in particular, smashing it to smithereens. Or maybe it had just been a casualty of some earlier battle, blown to pieces when a pair of Servants decided to duke it out inside.
Maybe two different Servants had had the same idea and killed themselves fighting over who got to claim the real estate.
That one was probably wishful thinking.
"…it's pretty obvious that there isn't anyone hiding here, isn't it?"
"If they were, they aren't anymore," I agreed.
Beep-beep!
The band on Ritsuka's wrist chimed, and an instant later, a specter of Romani appeared in the air. The Director snarled. "What is it now, Romani —"
"Director!" Romani cut across her. "I'm detecting the presence of a Servant nearby your location!"
Immediately, everyone was on alert, and Mash hurried forward, interposing herself between the group and the road we'd come from, and planted her shield like a barricade.
"Everyone, please get behind me!"
No one questioned her, we all just huddled behind the massive shape of her shield, silent and waiting. I had the thought that she might be facing the wrong direction, but if she had the instincts of the Heroic Spirit fused to her, body and soul, then she probably knew better about that than I did.
I glanced past the embers of the ruined church anyway and found nothing.
It made me feel helpless, standing there behind a teenage girl who had been in a grand total of maybe half a dozen actual fights in her entire life, unable to do anything else. I'd underestimated exactly how impotent being a Master instead of a direct combatant would make me feel, and I didn't like it at all.
A nail-biting moment later, Romani made a confused noise. "Huh? It's gone?"
The tension deflated like a balloon, and the noise that came from the Director's throat sounded like one. "Romani! Did you misread the sensor output, you dunce?"
"F-forgive me, Director, but there was a Servant there, no question about it!" Romani said quickly. "It appeared suddenly, stayed for a few seconds, and then it left! Almost like —"
"It came to observe us," I realized.
To…what? Scope out the competition? Or just to take a look at the strangers who had showed up where they shouldn't be? No, we couldn't afford to give this mystery Servant the benefit of the doubt. We had to assume it was an enemy, here to scout us out and get our measure.
The Director turned to me, wide-eyed. "Romani," she said, quieter and with a thread of anxiety in her tone, "are you sure you didn't just misread the sensors?"
"I'm positive, Director," said Romani.
"Oh no," the Director moaned. She started chewing on her thumbnail again. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. This is bad. There weren't supposed to be any Servants here that we had to fight. There's no way we can take on a fully fledged Servant as we are with nothing more than a Demi-Servant like Mash."
"What's wrong with Mash?" Ritsuka asked.
The Director whirled on him. "What's wrong with — are you seriously asking that? In the first place, do you see any weapons on her?" She gestured at Mash with one hand. "In the second, a battle between Servants is a battle between Noble Phantasms, and Mash doesn't even know the name of hers! If that Servant has an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, we're all dead!"
"Director." I placed my hand on her raised arm and gently forced it down. "Calm down."
"Calm down?" She turned on me, next. "How can I calm down? The instant that Servant comes back, there's nothing we can do!"
"And panicking won't change anything about any of that."
"I'm not panicking!" the Director snapped.
"You kind of are," said Rika with a shaky smile.
"I am not!"
"It's okay," Rika added, "I'm actually pretty freaked out, too."
"The first thing you've said that makes sense!" the Director said.
"Director, wait, that's not fair," Ritsuka began.
"Fair?" she demanded. "None of this is fair! None of this is right! Not a single thing has gone right all day! Lev is…is…! Chaldea is in ruins! Almost the entirety of the staff is gone, and I'm stuck here with a half-baked Servant contracted to two novices who don't know a Command Spell from a Mystic Code — !"
"Everyone, please stop!" Mash shouted, and immediately, everyone else cut off. "Director. You're right, this situation isn't ideal. However, please, have faith in me. I'm still performing at optimal levels."
"There've been no significant fluctuations in her readings so far," Romani added.
"I understand that I don't meet all of the expectations that were placed on me for this project," Mash went on firmly, "but even so, I think… No, I know that I can handle any Servant that we might encounter. As long as I have my Masters' support, we can make it through this."
A moment of long silence stretched. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ritsuka and Rika had positioned themselves on either side of Mash, as though to lend her words weight, standing opposite the Director, with me caught in the middle.
The position of mediator… There was something darkly ironic about that.
"We need to keep investigating," I said at length. "If that Servant didn't attack, that means they're probably not confident they can take us out. If that's the case, then if I was in their shoes, I'd either regroup to find a more advantageous position or go for reinforcements."
Mash's brow furrowed. "If multiple Servants teamed up and attacked us…"
The Director heaved a deep, heavy breath. Her hands were still trembling.
"Even if you can fight off one, fighting two at the same time is too much," she said. We all pretended not to notice the quaver in her voice. "You're right. At this point, our best bet is to keep moving. Even if we wanted to find a good, easily defensible spot, this most certainly isn't it."
"Then the next point of interest?" I suggested.
"The Second Owner's house, in the residential district," the Director answered. "We'll need to cross the bridge for that. So be on your guard!" She pointed at Mash. "If we're going to be ambushed, the bridge is basically the ideal place to do it! Keep your eyes peeled for any enemies!"
She swung her finger around the group and landed on Ritsuka. "That goes for you, too! The more eyes we have keeping a lookout, the less chance we'll get hit with a surprise attack!"
Rika gave her a cheeky salute. "Roger that, Boss Lady!"
Ritsuka sighed. "Rika, stop antagonizing her, please…"
His sister didn't reply, but the glint in her eyes was familiar.
Like trying to wrangle Alec, I thought with a muted pang. Just as obstinate and just as determined to needle whenever she could.
"In any case, if there's nothing of interest left to investigate here," I said, "then we should get moving. Mash, you'll need to take point."
"Understood!" Mash nodded.
"Director —"
"The Masters should be immediately behind her," the Director said suddenly. "It's the best position for them to support her from." She pinned me with a stare. "Hebert, that means I'll be entrusting my protection to you."
I didn't reply immediately, just stared back, but her gaze didn't waver.
I wasn't blind to what a show of trust this was. But then, the Director had had my back for a while now, so maybe it wasn't that strange that she was so willing to trust me with hers.
"Director, are you sure that's a good idea?" Romani asked worriedly. "Taylor isn't a Servant, after all."
I didn't even glance in his direction. Neither did she.
"Understood, Director."
She nodded, and then turned to Mash. "Back the way we came. The main road may not be in the best of shape, but it'll be the most direct path to the bridge. If we're careful and conserve our energy in case that Servant comes back, it should take us about an hour and a half to reach it. Two, if we run into any more skeletons."
"If, she says," Rika mumbled.
A huff came from the Director's nostrils, but she didn't rise to the bait.
"Remember. Keep your eyes wide open. Mash may be a Demi-Servant instead of a regular Servant, but her performance will still drop if her Master is incapacitated. Or worse, killed."
"And of course, you getting killed is the worst case scenario," said Rika.
"That should go without saying! I'm the Director! I'm the most important person on this team!"
Somehow, we eventually managed to start the journey back into the city. Materially, nothing had really changed, but there was an air among the group as we walked that hadn't been there before. Everyone cast furtive glances about the buildings around us, no matter what shape they were in, looking for the ambush that we were all worried was coming. Every nook and cranny and every shadowed doorway seemed sinister in a way it wasn't earlier, and the nervousness had put a damper even on Rika's humor.
The ambush we were all waiting for didn't come. There were more groups of skeletons that waylaid us along the road, but they weren't any more threatening or intimidating than they had been before, and they were just as easily dispatched. Mash handled them with an ease and aplomb that reminded me a little of Defiant, back in his Armsmaster days. Graceful and efficient, and brutally effective.
If she was slowing down, I didn't see it. She seemed just as capable and just as calm as she was hours ago, when we first got dropped into this quaint little hellhole.
Perks of being a Servant, I guess, even a Demi-Servant.
By the time the big, red bridge came into view, we were all waiting for the metaphorical shoe to drop. Even still, there was no sign of the Servant who had come by to scout us out while we were at the ruins of the old Catholic church.
"…Was it a fluke, after all?" the Director mumbled thoughtfully. "Maybe…no, just a sensor ghost? A blip caused by an accidental double read of Mash's Spirit Origin?"
My lips pulled tight. "We can't bet on that."
She looked around nervously up and down the banks of the river. No Servant materialized from the aether to try and kill us, but it did little to make her feel better.
Being entirely honest, I'd been expecting us to get attacked by now, too. We'd passed dozens of points where the Undersiders would've been able to stage a flawless ambush, made so numerous by the general state of the buildings around here, and anyone with a modicum of tactical prowess should have seen the opportunities for what they were just as easily.
So whatever the Servant who had been observing us was, it probably wasn't an Assassin — there was no way one of those wouldn't have taken the shot already. Not unless they were counting on the bridge itself as a trap.
An uncomfortably possible scenario.
A Caster…
Maybe. My money was on the Caster being wherever the source of the anomaly causing this Singularity was situated. It seemed to me that a Caster was the one most likely to be responsible for it in the first place, considering what I understood their skill sets tended to look like.
"We'd still know they were there before they came after us, right?" Ritsuka asked nervously. "So shouldn't it be fine?"
"Assassin class Servants have a skill called Presence Concealment, Senpai," Mash told him solemnly. "They can hide themselves until the moment they go on the attack, even from Chaldea's advanced sensors. If the Servant was an Assassin, we won't know until the attack has already begun."
"That's a cheery thought," Rika groaned. "So they could be watching us right now and we wouldn't even know it? I feel kinda icky."
"Think about that for a second," the Director said. "If it was an Assassin, would we even have known they were watching us back at the church in the first place? Use some common sense!"
I shook my head. "And if they wanted to lure us into an ambush?"
The Director grimaced. "Then why not just attack us at the church? Our guard was already down, so it's not like we were expecting them and prepared to defend ourselves."
A good point. Honestly, I agreed with her, but it didn't hurt to keep your mind open to even the stuff you thought unlikely.
I looked across the bridge. The light of the flames danced across the red, metal beams and the equally red suspension cables, making them look like they were on fire, too. "The road to hell" wouldn't have been an inappropriate comparison to make.
"We have to cross the bridge no matter what, right?"
"It's the only way to make it across the river," the Director said grimly. "Anything else is miles further inland, which means hours or even days more walking."
"Then we don't have much of a choice, do we?" said Ritsuka.
It seemed like we really didn't. Fuck. I didn't like this.
The Director took a deep, bracing breath. "Right."
"Keep your guard up," I added. "Mash, be ready with that shield."
"Understood, Miss Taylor."
Hesitantly, we started walking. Mash stayed in front, shield held in front of her as though to ward off danger, and she peered over one of the massive spokes that jutted out from the rounded center shape. We all stayed behind her, huddled as closely together as we could without tripping over one another. My ears were constantly straining for the slightest off sound, but aside from our footsteps, our breathing, and the low crackle of the flames, the city remained eerily silent.
"We're off to see the wizard," Rika sang to herself under her breath, so quiet that I barely heard her, "the wonderful Wizard of Oz…"
I glanced at her, thought about chastising her, but I seized the impulse before the words could even make it to my tongue, because I was trying to be better than the person I'd been before Gold Morning. It wasn't malicious or inappropriately jovial, anyway; the line of tension in her shoulders made it obvious she was using whatever she could to distract herself.
She was just a kid, I reminded myself. Older than I was when I became Skitter, sure, but far less experienced and far less prepared than even I had been on my first night out. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, in far over her head.
Still, there was no sign of the enemy. No one leapt out at us, no one fell out of the sky on top of us, and there wasn't even the blip of Romani reporting a Saint Graph reading nearby.
We were about halfway across when that changed.
Beep-beep
"Romani —"
"Director!" Romani shouted without waiting for her to answer. "There's a Servant near your location, North-Northwest!"
Mash stiffened and immediately swung around, facing a point off to the right as though she could see the Servant herself.
"Director!" she said urgently. "I'm picking it up now myself!"
Shit.
"Across the bridge!" I ordered. "Now, now!"
Mash hesitated and turned to Ritsuka. "Master —"
"Go!" said Ritsuka.
I broke into a sprint, and a bare moment later, the others fell into step with me. Mash kept pace, only instead of staying out ahead of us like she undoubtedly could have, she stayed to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her glancing in the same direction every few seconds, like she was expecting to be attacked from there any second.
Maybe she was. I wasn't a Servant, so I couldn't detect them on my own, and I wasn't so accomplished a spellcaster that I could track the magical energy to find their location that way.
"Reading's…holding steady," Romani reported as we went. A burst of static punctuated his words. "They're not disappearing, this time. I'm sorry, the system can't get a better handle on the Spirit Origin or Saint Graph, so I can't even begin to tell you what kind of Servant it is or which Heroic Spirit it might be —"
"Just…keep an eye on it…Romani!" the Director huffed as we ran.
"Communications…still spotty," Romani said, interrupted by static halfway. "I…gen…location, but…more than… It's on…orthwest bank…the river."
"Romani?"
"Director," he said, and then the feed cut out.
"Damn it," the Director said. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
"Director," said Mash, "I think he was trying to say that the Servant is somewhere on the northwest bank of the river."
"I know what he was saying!" the Director snapped. "Damn…it! Why…is everything…falling apart…on me…"
The Director slowed to a halt as we cleared the end of the bridge. She hunched over, panting, hands on her knees. I stumbled to a stop a few paces beyond her, and Ritsuka and Rika did, too, hunching over next to the Director as they gulped down air. Only Mash seemed less bothered by the exertion of running across the bridge than I was.
"Director," I started, "we can't stay here."
The Director glared up at me. "Damn…it. So…unfair. You're not…even…breathing hard."
"Senpai…such a…badass," Rika whined.
"Director," I said more insistently.
She grimaced.
"The…Second Owner's house…should be…in the southern half…of the residential…district."
"Go," I said. None of them moved. "Go! If Mash can sense whoever that Servant is, you can bet they can sense her, too! We need to get moving before —"
"Master!" Mash shouted as she leapt, kicking off the ground.
Faster than I could blink, she'd interposed herself between Ritsuka, Rika, the Director, and the northern section of the riverbank, and at the same moment, a thunderous clang rang through the air as a dark figure materialized practically on top of her, feet planted on the surface of the shield and the butt of a polearm planted between her ankles. Her cloak and her long hair hadn't even had time to settle before the new woman flung herself away to land with the grace of a jumping spider, bent over in half, one hand planted on the ground, and her polearm held out behind her.
"Oh?"
The voice that came out of her was silky smooth and slippery, and as she straightened, she gave us a perfect view of her ample cleavage and her tall, slender body. Her cloak was ragged and ripped, but the pale skin she left on display was unblemished, with the exception of what seemed like red tribal markings. Her long hair fell almost to the ground, an inhumanly vivid shade of strawberry blonde.
But the most striking thing about her was not her body or her grace, it was her presence. A palpable aura radiated off of her, chilling the hot air, and it gave her the sense of some great predator, stalking its unsuspecting victims. A snake, coiled and ready to strike, to swallow us whole.
"You're better than I thought you would be," she purred. "To have blocked me so effortlessly… My, my… And behind you…"
Her gaze traveled across Ritsuka, Rika, and the Director, and when it landed on me, I felt my insides freeze and all my muscles seize, like they'd all locked up at once. I couldn't have moved to save my life, not even to breathe. It was like I'd been turned to stone.
She licked her lips, and her gaze turned back to Mash. The instant she looked away, I could move again.
"Two unknown Masters and some more fresh meat."
"Director, that's…"
"A Servant. Judging by that weapon, a Lancer," the Director said, voice quivering. She shaped one hand into a gun and braced it with the other, although it didn't quite stop her arm from shaking. "Kuh…! O-of all the lousy luck! The first thing we run into that isn't a skeleton, and it's not even a living person!"
The woman chuckled. "My, a woman could take offense to that."
"She appears to be operating without a Master," Mash noted.
"Nothing about this situation is normal!" the Director bit out. "In a situation like this, where everything has gone wrong, I'm not surprised to find a Servant without a Master!"
"I thought you said Servants couldn't survive without a Master to support them!" Rika said.
"Ordinarily!" the Director shot back. "Does anything about this seem ordinary to you?"
"She's one of the Servants from the Holy Grail War, right?" Ritsuka asked hurriedly. "Then, if we just explain that we're not a part of it —"
"It doesn't work that way," I cut across him. I addressed the woman. "Right?"
The woman smirked, cold and cruel.
"When fresh prey stumble into my hunting ground, I can hunt them down at my leisure, can't I? The only thing my prey can do is try to run or try to fight."
She hefted her polearm, turning the hooked blade towards us, and her off hand glided sensuously up the haft.
"So? Are you going to try to run? Or are you going to try and fight me?"
The Director bit her lip hard enough to bruise. Rika took a step backwards, face contorted with fear. Even Ritsuka's hands were shaking.
Except for Mash, who squared her shoulders and took a brave step forward, holding up her shield. The woman's smirk grew into a bloodthirsty grin.
"Fight, then! Good! Try not to die too quickly!"
Mash and the woman both moved at once, each kicking off the ground and throwing themselves at the other. They met somewhere in the middle, closer to our position than to hers, and Mash's shield shrieked as the blade of the polearm scraped down its surface, to no apparent effect. Mash planted her feet and pushed forward.
But the woman was not deterred. She pulled backwards, and then surged back into action, swinging faster and faster with expert skill. Each blow glanced off of Mash's shield, but if the thunderous clang of each blow wasn't enough to tell me how hard each hit was, the way Mash's shoulders and arms braced for the impact would have been more than enough to clue me in.
The woman laughed all the while.
"You're new, aren't you? You're still getting used to what it's like being a Servant! I can tell! The way you move, the way you don't move, the openings you miss even when they should be obvious — it's all you can do to try and keep up!"
Mash grunted and didn't rise to the bait, she just kept blocking each attack. She weathered all of them, refusing to buckle, refusing to be beat down, holding that massive shield aloft as though it were the battlements of a castle and the woman's blows a battering ram. Neither she nor her shield gave a single inch.
But it was obvious even to the others that she was outmatched.
"Mash…" Ritsuka whispered.
"There has to be something we can do!" Rika said frantically.
"Don't be ridiculous!" the Director shouted back. "In a battle between Servants, the Master has only one place: in the back!"
Good thing I'm not a proper Master, then, isn't it?
I pivoted on my heel and took off running at full sprint, aiming for the main road that led further into the residential district.
"Senpai!" Ritsuka shouted after me.
"T-Taylor," the Director called, "where are you going?"
"Did you think I'd let you leave that easily?"
Chains whipped out, crisscrossing over the space between the buildings. They wrapped around whatever they could, whether that was a lamppost, a wooden beam jutting up from the corpse of a house, or even just steel rebar, and they formed a tightly woven net that blocked off my path.
I spun back around, and the woman was dashing towards me — leisurely, compared to her lightning fast attacks against Mash, but still too fast for a human to outpace. Her eyes seemed to glow as they pinned me in place, and my limbs froze again.
"My prey isn't allowed to escape!"
It wasn't fear that had paralyzed me earlier. No, of course not. I'd faced down Lung, Leviathan, Jack Slash and the Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna, Behemoth, Nilbog, Scion. I'd spoken with the Faerie Queen as equals, killed Alexandria with bugs, survived being cut in half. A single woman with a scythe, no matter how superhuman she was, didn't hold a candle to all of the things I'd been through.
The clue was eye contact.
Just by meeting my eyes, she'd been able to freeze me in place. I'd learned a lot over the past two years, and one of the subjects was Mystic Eyes, specialized attributes activated through eye contact and line of sight. A Servant, a Heroic Spirit, who possessed a set of Mystic Eyes that could freeze you in place?
I would've been embarrassed if it had taken me more than that to figure it out.
"Medusa!"
Magical energy circulated through my body, and the spell was broken, shattered with ease, now that I knew what it was and could fight it. Magic like this relied on surprise, on the victim not knowing what they were up against. It was much weaker if your guard was up.
My arm rose. Black light gathered on my fingertips. With a direct line to my target, I couldn't miss.
"Gandr!"
And a ball of black energy flew at her face.
The thing about people, even capes with powers? They still had reflexes. Things they did automatically, things they'd trained themselves to do, over and over again for years. Ingrained responses, either instinctual or muscle memory. Pyrokinetics could get used to their own flames, sure, but it took a lot of experience fighting to keep yourself from flinching away whenever someone else threw fire at you. Even high level Brutes still dodged and winced until they got used to being invulnerable.
Servants were no different.
Medusa was a Lancer, one of the Knight classes, which meant she had some form of Magic Resistance as a rule. My dinky, little Gandr was as harmless to her as a gnat. But even if she knew that intellectually, her body reacted without thinking, and instead of taking the shot and letting it splash off of her futilely, she deflected it with her…scythe, or whatever that thing counted as, because her eyes tracked an incoming projectile and the response she'd trained into herself activated automatically.
She slid to a halt as my Gandr glanced off of her and dissipated. She snarled at me.
"You…!"
"Now, Mash!" I shouted.
Medusa whipped around — and as she went to swing her scythe into a counterattack, I reached out with my prosthetic's phantom limb and took a solid grip of it.
It wasn't enough to truly stop her. If she exerted any real effort, she could have wrenched it away and ignored me completely.
But the resistance distracted her, because she wasn't expecting it, and her head and torso turned back towards me, her eyes wide.
"Wha —"
"Raah!"
And Mash leapt at her, swung that massive shield around right into her face. Medusa went flying, soaring across the ground, to tumble to a halt some twenty feet away, crumpled into a heap.
"Yes!" shouted Rika.
"Good job, Mash!" Ritsuka added.
They started over our way.
"Ritsuka, Rika!" I barked out at them. "Don't get any closer!"
"What?" Rika squawked. "But Senpai, it's over!"
"Mash," I said, making sure to keep my eyes on Medusa.
She nodded. "Understood!"
The lump on the ground chuckled, low and ominous, and slowly, Medusa pulled herself to her feet.
"You kids should listen to your more experienced friend," she purred. "You two really are fresh-faced, if you thought that was enough to defeat me."
She turned back around, grinning a demented grin, and her tongue snaked out to lick up the trail of blood that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She slurped it noisily, like she was enjoying a fine meal.
"Not that her experience will mean anything," Medusa said gleefully. "After all, you worked oh so hard to get that one shot in on me, and all you have to show for it is a little bit of blood."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Taylor is a badass. That is all.
I decided to mix things up a little and fill out the Singularity by switching in Medusa and blackened Emiya instead of just generic shadow Servants.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
I decided to mix things up a little and fill out the Singularity by switching in Medusa and blackened Emiya instead of just generic shadow Servants.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
TwilightHakumei
The Soft Glowing Light From The Sky
You went with the Anime version of the First Order? how disapointing I wanted it to be the Game version. Anyway its still a nice chapter.
Chapter V: Beggars and Choosers
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Chapter V: Beggars and Choosers
Medusa was uninjured. Everything that had been put into getting one good hit on her, and we hadn't even made it count by dealing a hard blow.
I gritted my teeth, mind racing.
She was right, much as I hated admitting it. I was down to five Gandr shots before I had to rest, Mash was outmatched, and that little distraction trick I'd used probably wouldn't work twice.
We couldn't win. Not as we were. We didn't have a good enough position, we didn't have enough tactics that would work against someone like her, and we just plain didn't have the firepower to finish the job.
The only real option was to retreat. But none of us was fast enough to outrun her, and she could just chase us down at her leisure, so the only way for the rest of us to escape was…
"Mash…"
The words wouldn't come out of my mouth.
Was I really going to be that person again? To use and discard her, like she was a tool that could be replaced so easily?
What happened to my decision to focus more on the people than the goals?
"Miss Taylor," said Mash, voice steady and strong, "please, take Master and the Director and escape. I can't defeat her, but I'll buy you as much time as I can."
"Mash!" Ritsuka shouted, horrified.
"We're not gonna leave you here!" said Rika.
Mash…
You really were the best person on Team A, weren't you? Willing and able to stare death in the face in your first real battle for a couple of strangers and two people who might as well have been, all without flinching.
"We'll hold her off," my mouth wound up saying. "Director… Take the twins and get going. Find a safe place to hole up until Romani can get you out of here."
I could feel the Director's eyes on me, like they were boring a hole in the back of my skull — heh. Wasn't that an ironic comparison?
"Taylor…"
"Damn it!" Ritsuka said. "Do you think we're just going to leave the both of you to die?"
"I expect you to remember that this is larger than you or me," I rebuked him sharply. "The most important thing is getting as many of us back as we can, and the only one of us here who has any combat experience to help out Mash is me."
I stared down Medusa, trying to project a confidence I didn't really feel. "I already managed to pull one over on her once. I'm sure I'll think of something."
A deep, masculine voice echoed as it broke in, chuckling.
"You have to admit, Lancer, she got you good."
Mash tensed, and then she rushed over to place herself in front of me. "Miss Taylor!"
Over the spoke of her shield, a man faded into view, hefting a staff and wearing sky blue robes lined with white fur. He was facing towards Medusa and away from us.
"Another Servant?" the Director screeched.
"Even if she only got that glancing blow in," the newcomer said, "that gumption of hers got me up off my ass."
Medusa's eyes narrowed. "You!"
The newcomer pulled back his hood, and long, dark hair fell freely over his neck and shoulders. The glint of something silvery hung from his ears, the one I could see, anyway.
"Whaddya say we finally settle that score of ours?"
"Caster…!" Medusa seethed.
"Caster?" I asked sharply.
If he was here… No, did that mean he wasn't the one behind the Singularity? Or did he have some kind of other ulterior motive? If he was the one who threw things off track, why would he show himself now, of all times, here, of all places, instead of just letting Medusa finish us all off?
The so-called Caster glanced at me over his shoulder, and eyes the color of freshly spilled blood glinted merrily as his lips stretched into a grin. He lifted one hand in an irreverent wave. "At your service, Princess."
I looked at him incredulously.
"Princess?"
"I saw your group scoping out the old church a while back," Caster explained easily, which…I didn't really know how I was supposed to take, yet. "Wasn't quite sure what to make of you. Two Masters, a pair of magi, and one, lonely Servant? Curious thing to find, in a city where everyone else is dead, and the little missy there doesn't match any of the old competitors in this Holy Grail War."
He gestured at Mash, who blinked at him, nonplussed.
"Because we're not!" the Director shouted over at him. She stomped her foot. "Geez! Why is that so hard to understand? We're from Chaldea! Chal! De! A! We're here to investigate what went wrong with the Holy Grail War, not participate in it!"
Caster hummed thoughtfully.
"Chaldea, eh? Never heard of it," he said, blasé.
The Director let out an inarticulate scream, like she just couldn't take any more nonsense.
"Caster," said Medusa lowly, teeth gritted, "why are you siding with this group of strays?"
"How could I not, after I saw Princess's clever, little trick? It's not every day you see a scrawny magus get one over on a Servant, especially one of the Knight classes," Caster shot back with humor. I hoped he didn't stick with that nickname, because I really didn't like how it infantilized me. "And the way these two here were so bravely willing to sacrifice their lives…I'd be ashamed as a heroic spirit, if I just sat back and let that go without lending a hand. Plus…"
The air froze. The presence I'd felt before from Medusa radiated now off of Caster, only his seemed directed at her instead of just spread out like frost across the whole area. The smile had vanished from his face.
"Do I need a reason to help them kill a monster like you, Lancer?"
Medusa snarled and took a step forward, teeth gnashing, and then, as though she'd had an epiphany, she stepped back and her expression fell into one of surprise. It was only a second later that her malicious grin was back and she started chuckling. Her grip on her scythe tightened.
"No, this is fine," she said, her voice a purr. "Excellent, in fact. It makes no difference if you help them out, Caster, all you've done now is save me the trouble of finding you and finishing the job myself."
"Oh?" Caster asked, something in his tone. "You say that like the outcome has already been decided, Lancer. Are you really that confident you can take on two Servants by yourself, especially if one of them is me?"
Medusa laughed a deep, throaty laugh. "As I recall, Caster, the one who retreated from our last battle was you. If you think a little bit of backup from that baby Servant behind you is enough to make up for your own weakness, then I'll be happy to break that illusion for you."
"How kind of you," Caster drawled.
"Now." Medusa crouched down, body low to the ground, spiderlike. Her hair fell about her back and over her sides like a cloak, and it almost seemed to have a life of its own. "How should I do this? I think it would be most fitting if I left you alive for the very end, Caster, just so that you could watch me kill these stragglers without being able to stop it."
Caster grinned, twirling his staff to brandish it out at his opponent. "If you're going to underestimate me that badly, don't complain when I beat you, Lancer!"
He glanced back at me. "Hey, Princess. You're a Master, too, right? There's no Command Spells on your hands, but I get that sense about you."
"I was supposed to be, yes," I said neutrally. "Why? Did you have something in mind?"
My mind raced through the possibilities. Was he about to ask what I thought he was about to ask? True, we'd been trying to summon another Servant to help out earlier, but could we trust this one, when it seemed he was a competitor in this Holy Grail War that had gone sideways? Was this just a matter of him eliminating the competition, or could we trust him to stick with us through to the end?
Maybe the better question was whether or not we had a choice, considering the situation. Beggars and choosers, and all that.
"Let's form a contract, you and me," Caster said, his grin taking a sharklike edge. "After all, your group looks like it's in need of another Servant, and me, well, hey, I'm currently without a Master. Way I see it, we can both help each other out, here."
Just like I'd thought.
And I wasn't in a position to refuse him. Not with the situation as dire as it was. I just had to figure out how much that factored into whatever his plans were and whether those plans would be something we needed to worry about later on down the line.
"Miss Taylor," Mash whispered worriedly.
"I know," I mumbled back. Louder, I said, "I accept, Caster."
He thrust his hand out over the spoke of Mash's shield, and before I could think better of it, I took it with my own.
"Then from this moment forth, my sword shall be with you."
Like the lyrics to an old song, the response rolled off of my lips. "And my fate shall be with you."
A flash of light, a brief burst of pain that surged up my nerves, and my left hand spasmed as three Command Spells drew themselves in red over the back. I didn't bother examining the design, beyond confirming that it was there.
At the very least, I should be able to order him to kill himself if he tried to betray us. A cold comfort, but a failsafe like that made me feel better, somehow.
Caster took his hand back as his brow drew down and he tilted his chin towards his chest. "Looks like our contract is set, Master."
Medusa burst out into laughter, cackling madly.
"You've reached a new low, Caster! Are you really so desperate that you'd accept even a scurrying rat as your Master, now?"
"Heh. If you think I'm weaker now that I have a more stable connection to this world, you've really got another thing coming, Lancer."
"Well, it doesn't matter, either way." Medusa brandished her scythe. Her eyes seemed to glow from beneath her hood. "I hope you enjoy the brief moment of having a Master again, Caster. It won't last you very long."
"Long enough for me to finish you off, first!"
Medusa kicked off the ground, streaking towards Caster like a rocket, but Caster didn't dodge, like I might have expected, he caught the haft of her scythe with his staff and twisted. His free hand came up and took hold of it just under the mount for the blade, and with expert skill, he maneuvered the thick crook on the end of his staff directly in front of Medusa's face.
The etchings on it glowed bright orange, and then a ball of fire exploded out of it — and into Medusa's eyes.
"Agh!"
She stumbled backwards, hand over her eyes, even though the rest of her looked undamaged, and Caster took advantage of the opening to etch a series of runes in the air with such rapid speed that it took even me by surprise. The runes glowed brightly, and then ignited, and an enormous explosion erupted out of them, flinging Medusa backwards.
The entire thing happened so quickly that my hair hadn't even had time to settle after it had been blown back by the impact of their initial clash.
Medusa landed on her feet like a cat, but she was worse for wear by the explosion. Burns pockmarked her exposed skin, and parts of her bodysuit had been torn away, but for all that she looked injured, it still seemed to be nothing more than superficial damage. At the very least, it hadn't done much more than make her angry.
"Caster!" she howled.
She kicked off the ground again, throwing up chunks of asphalt into the air, and raced towards Caster again, but Mash took off at the same time, interposing herself between them with her shield up to take the blow. Medusa impacted with a thunderous clang, and Mash grunted as the force of it threatened to buckle her.
"Get out of my way, you brat!" Medusa spat.
Caster thrust his staff out over Mash's shoulder and past one of the spokes of her shield, but Medusa had learned her lesson and used the circular base as a springboard to leap out of the way of the next fireball and up into the air. She flung out her arms, and her hair took on a life of its own, growing out into lengths of chain that homed in on Mash as though to bind her in place so that she couldn't interfere.
She didn't even have the chance to get out of the way before Caster had moved in front of her, and he swept his staff out in an arc, the etchings aglow, and traced a quick circle of runes. Medusa's chains slammed into it and bounced off like rain, veering into wildly different trajectories that were nowhere near her opponents.
I retreated away from the action as Medusa landed, because any one of the attacks being thrown around by either party would probably kill me if they spilled over enough or Mash or Caster miscalculated. The fight continued on as though nothing had changed, and if I put aside my pride, me disengaging didn't meaningfully change anything anyway.
"Let me see!" the Director hissed as I rejoined their group.
Dutifully, I held out my left hand for her inspection, and she grabbed at it like a starving beggar, examining the strokes of my Command Spells. I let her at it as I watched Caster and Mash fight Medusa, dancing around the battlefield and throwing up chunks of asphalt as they moved. Mash wasn't really contributing much — Medusa was far and away more skilled and comfortable with her abilities, compared to Mash, who was very, very new to them. Caster was much the same, though, and although he was mostly playing on the defensive, deflecting attacks and slowly encircling the area so that Medusa's back was to us, he was just as comfortable as Medusa was and equally as confident.
None of his attacks seemed to be landing, though. Medusa was just too fast and knew them just too well, because what she could avoid, she avoided, and what she could handle without issue, she deflected or just pushed through.
"These aren't Chaldea's Command Spells," the Director announced.
My head whipped around, and the twins, who had been entranced by the fight, turned their attention towards her as well.
"They aren't?"
"Eh?" Rika said incredulously. "But they look just like ours!"
She thrust her hand out, showing off her own set, and Ritsuka glanced down at his, but while his and his sister's were similar, even they weren't quite the same, and they both looked vastly different from mine. Theirs looked kind of like a shield with a stylized face, only the face was different between them, whereas mine… I wasn't quite sure what mine looked like, exactly, and it didn't seem important to think about it too strongly, just then.
"W-well," Rika hedged, "maybe not exactly like ours…"
"What does it mean?" I asked the Director.
She grimaced.
"Well, you did make a contract with a Servant of this sideways Holy Grail War… If I had to guess, I'd say these are Command Spells handed out by the Grail, which means that it's still around and performing at least some of its functions."
"Didn't we already know that?" Ristuka asked. "I mean, the Servants are summoned by the Holy Grail, right? So would they even still be around if it wasn't here, too?"
"O-of course I considered that angle!" the Director stammered, flustered. "B-but this whole situation is strange, you know, so even that wasn't a guarantee — n-no, that's not the important part! Hebert." She looked me in the eye. "As a Master of this Holy Grail War, you should have something called Master's Clairvoyance. Chaldea's in bad shape right now, so our version probably doesn't work, but you should be able to see the stats and abilities of any of the Servants we run into, here."
"That's right," I mumbled. "You mentioned that back during Team A's training."
The ability to see through a Servant's skills and Noble Phantasms simply by observing them in action… There'd been talk that it might not work on any Servant not contracted to Chaldea's FATE system, but there was no way to know until we tested it in the field. With all of the damage Chaldea had taken as a result of the attack on the facility, it was likely that it wasn't even functioning properly now, anyway.
But by contracting with Caster, I'd just given our team an advantage against any of the Servants still around from this Grail War.
I turned back towards the fight in time to see Caster swipe his hand through the air again, sending a stream of fireballs at Medusa. She danced around them with serpentine grace, and what she couldn't dodge, she deflected into the ground, where they exploded like hand grenades. Mash came up from the side, leaping into the air, and with a shout, she tried to slam the bottom edge of her shield into Medusa.
Medusa didn't let her and jumped out of the way, then raced back towards Mash and used the shield as a springboard again to fling herself at Caster.
"If you focus, you should be able to see their stats," the Director said. "In fact, you should be able to contact Caster directly with your mind, as well —"
"Director."
Her jaw snapped shut with an audible click.
I glanced at Caster and honed my focus, and as I did, his skills and abilities unfolded in my mind's eye.
Rune Magic — duh, I thought. He'd been using it the whole fight.
Protection from Arrows and Disengage. That explained how he'd been able to come away from, at a guess, multiple fights with Medusa apparently unscathed. Disengage was a useful skill for retreating, but the fact that he had it meant I should be on the lookout for him cutting and running, no matter what he'd said about jumping in because he couldn't let us die after witnessing our willingness to sacrifice ourselves.
He was a Caster. When half the rest of the classes had some measure of resistance to your attacks, you had to get sneaky and creative about getting around those. If it were me, I'd never engage the enemy outside of my specially prepared territory, where they would run into traps and tricks at every corner.
A quick glance at Mash gave me nothing. That was about what I'd been expecting.
When I looked at Medusa, I could see her Mystic Eyes skill, along with Monstrous Strength and Independent Action, a skill normally reserved for the Archer class. Her Class skill, however, in particular her Magic Resistance…
Convenient. Well, not as convenient as her not having one to begin with, but still good for us, in that it wasn't as high as it could be. Maybe that low a rank was some kind of side effect of not having a Master, or even whatever had caused the Singularity itself?
Not important, for now.
I focused hard, trying to thrust my mind outwards and towards Caster. I felt a little silly doing it.
Caster?
In the fight, Caster's step hitched for a bare fraction of a second, so short that I barely caught it, and as he deflected Medusa again, I thought I saw his eyes flicker over in my direction.
Ho? The word came through to me as though across a distance, foreign and intrusive, but not intruding. Looks like I landed a pretty competent Master, indeed. Need something, Master?
He kept fighting, but there was something a little more cautious in his movements, now. I had to be fast — the longer I took, the more I distracted him, and the longer he was distracted, the greater the odds of something going wrong.
Monstrous Strength, Independent Action, and Mystic Eyes, I projected at him. The important part is her Magic Resistance. It's only rank C. If you've got a strong enough spell to throw at her, you should be able to take her out in one hit.
Caster grinned. Good to know. Means this trick should handle her just fine.
Their dance continued. Caster continued to circle, breaking stride only to attack or defend. Medusa ping-ponged between him and Mash, but between Mash's massive shield and Caster's surprising skill with his staff, she wasn't landing a clean hit. Not with the business end of her scythe.
Neither were Mash and Caster, though.
I chewed on my bottom lip, looking for an opening, but I could feel Caster drawing on my magical energy as he fought. Not much, because he obviously had way more than I could ever hope to, but enough that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to risk using a Gandr to try and distract Medusa again.
If it was truly desperate, I might have. Even with Caster apparently working on his own plan, the itch to get involved was strong. Leaving things to others had never been my strong suit; I preferred being in the thick of things, and maybe that was a leftover from my passenger's influence and maybe my passenger had chosen me specifically because it was part of who I was, but either way, that was the way it was.
If I passed out, though, what would that mean for Caster? Now that he had a Master, was his performance tied more to me than Medusa's apparent freedom gave her? It wasn't worth risking it, not when Caster seemed so confident.
Caster completed his circle. Mash rushed in, trying to bash Medusa with her shield, and when Medusa stepped back to dodge it, she swung that shield almost like it was an ax, swiping at Medusa with the longest spoke at the bottom. Medusa stepped back again to avoid it, then went on the offensive with a flurry of attacks from her scythe. Mash blocked each blow, grunting under the force of them.
"Girlie!" Caster shouted. "Get back!"
Mash braced herself, and in the moment between one swing and the next, she leapt backwards. Medusa made to follow, but she had to dodge out of the way again when Caster flung another huge fireball at her, jumping to clear the distance. She landed in what I realized a moment later was the center of the circle Caster had been walking, or close enough to it.
A rune lit up beneath her foot, and she looked down at it, shock written across her face. "What —"
"See ya later, Lancer."
— and a circle of glowing runes ignited around her, surging upwards in pillars of flame that twisted and snaked around each other, spinning, swirling, combining into a fiery twister that spat tongues of red and orange. The bulk stayed contained, never leaving the circle of runes from which it had all sprouted, and the air roared as the fire sucked in oxygen to keep going, to keep burning, to get hotter and hotter and hotter.
Even compacted as it was, I could feel the heat from all the way over where I stood.
For an instant, I was back on my first night out, Lung towering over me, the heat of his flaming body piercing the cold, spring night and pressing down on me. My pepper spray had blinded him, but only momentarily, and any single move would give me away. All it would take was one blow, one stream of fire from his fists, and I was dead.
I wished I could believe it was going to be that easy, here. This… This was on a different scale from the fireballs Caster had been flinging willy nilly before. Not a Noble Phantasm, I didn't think, but still a step above regular attacks. A finishing move, that might be a good way of putting it. An attack designed not to maim, injure, or distract, but to make sure the enemy died.
But if there was one thing I'd learned as a cape, it was that "finishing moves" weren't necessarily just that. Not if your enemy had a way of surviving it. Not if they were just so tough they could shake it off.
The twister kept burning, and I waited, making sure not to blink, so I could be ready if Medusa came out of that thing alive.
Air alone wasn't enough to keep it going forever, though, and eventually, the gouts of flame that spawned this hellish tornado ran dry. The twister snuffed itself out with a low whump, and a column of smoke rose up into the sky, mushrooming as the hotter air pushed the cooler air out of the way.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Of Medusa, nothing remained except particles of light that glittered and faded away just as quickly.
Medusa was uninjured. Everything that had been put into getting one good hit on her, and we hadn't even made it count by dealing a hard blow.
I gritted my teeth, mind racing.
She was right, much as I hated admitting it. I was down to five Gandr shots before I had to rest, Mash was outmatched, and that little distraction trick I'd used probably wouldn't work twice.
We couldn't win. Not as we were. We didn't have a good enough position, we didn't have enough tactics that would work against someone like her, and we just plain didn't have the firepower to finish the job.
The only real option was to retreat. But none of us was fast enough to outrun her, and she could just chase us down at her leisure, so the only way for the rest of us to escape was…
"Mash…"
The words wouldn't come out of my mouth.
Was I really going to be that person again? To use and discard her, like she was a tool that could be replaced so easily?
What happened to my decision to focus more on the people than the goals?
"Miss Taylor," said Mash, voice steady and strong, "please, take Master and the Director and escape. I can't defeat her, but I'll buy you as much time as I can."
"Mash!" Ritsuka shouted, horrified.
"We're not gonna leave you here!" said Rika.
Mash…
You really were the best person on Team A, weren't you? Willing and able to stare death in the face in your first real battle for a couple of strangers and two people who might as well have been, all without flinching.
"We'll hold her off," my mouth wound up saying. "Director… Take the twins and get going. Find a safe place to hole up until Romani can get you out of here."
I could feel the Director's eyes on me, like they were boring a hole in the back of my skull — heh. Wasn't that an ironic comparison?
"Taylor…"
"Damn it!" Ritsuka said. "Do you think we're just going to leave the both of you to die?"
"I expect you to remember that this is larger than you or me," I rebuked him sharply. "The most important thing is getting as many of us back as we can, and the only one of us here who has any combat experience to help out Mash is me."
I stared down Medusa, trying to project a confidence I didn't really feel. "I already managed to pull one over on her once. I'm sure I'll think of something."
A deep, masculine voice echoed as it broke in, chuckling.
"You have to admit, Lancer, she got you good."
Mash tensed, and then she rushed over to place herself in front of me. "Miss Taylor!"
Over the spoke of her shield, a man faded into view, hefting a staff and wearing sky blue robes lined with white fur. He was facing towards Medusa and away from us.
"Another Servant?" the Director screeched.
"Even if she only got that glancing blow in," the newcomer said, "that gumption of hers got me up off my ass."
Medusa's eyes narrowed. "You!"
The newcomer pulled back his hood, and long, dark hair fell freely over his neck and shoulders. The glint of something silvery hung from his ears, the one I could see, anyway.
"Whaddya say we finally settle that score of ours?"
"Caster…!" Medusa seethed.
"Caster?" I asked sharply.
If he was here… No, did that mean he wasn't the one behind the Singularity? Or did he have some kind of other ulterior motive? If he was the one who threw things off track, why would he show himself now, of all times, here, of all places, instead of just letting Medusa finish us all off?
The so-called Caster glanced at me over his shoulder, and eyes the color of freshly spilled blood glinted merrily as his lips stretched into a grin. He lifted one hand in an irreverent wave. "At your service, Princess."
I looked at him incredulously.
"Princess?"
"I saw your group scoping out the old church a while back," Caster explained easily, which…I didn't really know how I was supposed to take, yet. "Wasn't quite sure what to make of you. Two Masters, a pair of magi, and one, lonely Servant? Curious thing to find, in a city where everyone else is dead, and the little missy there doesn't match any of the old competitors in this Holy Grail War."
He gestured at Mash, who blinked at him, nonplussed.
"Because we're not!" the Director shouted over at him. She stomped her foot. "Geez! Why is that so hard to understand? We're from Chaldea! Chal! De! A! We're here to investigate what went wrong with the Holy Grail War, not participate in it!"
Caster hummed thoughtfully.
"Chaldea, eh? Never heard of it," he said, blasé.
The Director let out an inarticulate scream, like she just couldn't take any more nonsense.
"Caster," said Medusa lowly, teeth gritted, "why are you siding with this group of strays?"
"How could I not, after I saw Princess's clever, little trick? It's not every day you see a scrawny magus get one over on a Servant, especially one of the Knight classes," Caster shot back with humor. I hoped he didn't stick with that nickname, because I really didn't like how it infantilized me. "And the way these two here were so bravely willing to sacrifice their lives…I'd be ashamed as a heroic spirit, if I just sat back and let that go without lending a hand. Plus…"
The air froze. The presence I'd felt before from Medusa radiated now off of Caster, only his seemed directed at her instead of just spread out like frost across the whole area. The smile had vanished from his face.
"Do I need a reason to help them kill a monster like you, Lancer?"
Medusa snarled and took a step forward, teeth gnashing, and then, as though she'd had an epiphany, she stepped back and her expression fell into one of surprise. It was only a second later that her malicious grin was back and she started chuckling. Her grip on her scythe tightened.
"No, this is fine," she said, her voice a purr. "Excellent, in fact. It makes no difference if you help them out, Caster, all you've done now is save me the trouble of finding you and finishing the job myself."
"Oh?" Caster asked, something in his tone. "You say that like the outcome has already been decided, Lancer. Are you really that confident you can take on two Servants by yourself, especially if one of them is me?"
Medusa laughed a deep, throaty laugh. "As I recall, Caster, the one who retreated from our last battle was you. If you think a little bit of backup from that baby Servant behind you is enough to make up for your own weakness, then I'll be happy to break that illusion for you."
"How kind of you," Caster drawled.
"Now." Medusa crouched down, body low to the ground, spiderlike. Her hair fell about her back and over her sides like a cloak, and it almost seemed to have a life of its own. "How should I do this? I think it would be most fitting if I left you alive for the very end, Caster, just so that you could watch me kill these stragglers without being able to stop it."
Caster grinned, twirling his staff to brandish it out at his opponent. "If you're going to underestimate me that badly, don't complain when I beat you, Lancer!"
He glanced back at me. "Hey, Princess. You're a Master, too, right? There's no Command Spells on your hands, but I get that sense about you."
"I was supposed to be, yes," I said neutrally. "Why? Did you have something in mind?"
My mind raced through the possibilities. Was he about to ask what I thought he was about to ask? True, we'd been trying to summon another Servant to help out earlier, but could we trust this one, when it seemed he was a competitor in this Holy Grail War that had gone sideways? Was this just a matter of him eliminating the competition, or could we trust him to stick with us through to the end?
Maybe the better question was whether or not we had a choice, considering the situation. Beggars and choosers, and all that.
"Let's form a contract, you and me," Caster said, his grin taking a sharklike edge. "After all, your group looks like it's in need of another Servant, and me, well, hey, I'm currently without a Master. Way I see it, we can both help each other out, here."
Just like I'd thought.
And I wasn't in a position to refuse him. Not with the situation as dire as it was. I just had to figure out how much that factored into whatever his plans were and whether those plans would be something we needed to worry about later on down the line.
"Miss Taylor," Mash whispered worriedly.
"I know," I mumbled back. Louder, I said, "I accept, Caster."
He thrust his hand out over the spoke of Mash's shield, and before I could think better of it, I took it with my own.
"Then from this moment forth, my sword shall be with you."
Like the lyrics to an old song, the response rolled off of my lips. "And my fate shall be with you."
A flash of light, a brief burst of pain that surged up my nerves, and my left hand spasmed as three Command Spells drew themselves in red over the back. I didn't bother examining the design, beyond confirming that it was there.
At the very least, I should be able to order him to kill himself if he tried to betray us. A cold comfort, but a failsafe like that made me feel better, somehow.
Caster took his hand back as his brow drew down and he tilted his chin towards his chest. "Looks like our contract is set, Master."
Medusa burst out into laughter, cackling madly.
"You've reached a new low, Caster! Are you really so desperate that you'd accept even a scurrying rat as your Master, now?"
"Heh. If you think I'm weaker now that I have a more stable connection to this world, you've really got another thing coming, Lancer."
"Well, it doesn't matter, either way." Medusa brandished her scythe. Her eyes seemed to glow from beneath her hood. "I hope you enjoy the brief moment of having a Master again, Caster. It won't last you very long."
"Long enough for me to finish you off, first!"
Medusa kicked off the ground, streaking towards Caster like a rocket, but Caster didn't dodge, like I might have expected, he caught the haft of her scythe with his staff and twisted. His free hand came up and took hold of it just under the mount for the blade, and with expert skill, he maneuvered the thick crook on the end of his staff directly in front of Medusa's face.
The etchings on it glowed bright orange, and then a ball of fire exploded out of it — and into Medusa's eyes.
"Agh!"
She stumbled backwards, hand over her eyes, even though the rest of her looked undamaged, and Caster took advantage of the opening to etch a series of runes in the air with such rapid speed that it took even me by surprise. The runes glowed brightly, and then ignited, and an enormous explosion erupted out of them, flinging Medusa backwards.
The entire thing happened so quickly that my hair hadn't even had time to settle after it had been blown back by the impact of their initial clash.
Medusa landed on her feet like a cat, but she was worse for wear by the explosion. Burns pockmarked her exposed skin, and parts of her bodysuit had been torn away, but for all that she looked injured, it still seemed to be nothing more than superficial damage. At the very least, it hadn't done much more than make her angry.
"Caster!" she howled.
She kicked off the ground again, throwing up chunks of asphalt into the air, and raced towards Caster again, but Mash took off at the same time, interposing herself between them with her shield up to take the blow. Medusa impacted with a thunderous clang, and Mash grunted as the force of it threatened to buckle her.
"Get out of my way, you brat!" Medusa spat.
Caster thrust his staff out over Mash's shoulder and past one of the spokes of her shield, but Medusa had learned her lesson and used the circular base as a springboard to leap out of the way of the next fireball and up into the air. She flung out her arms, and her hair took on a life of its own, growing out into lengths of chain that homed in on Mash as though to bind her in place so that she couldn't interfere.
She didn't even have the chance to get out of the way before Caster had moved in front of her, and he swept his staff out in an arc, the etchings aglow, and traced a quick circle of runes. Medusa's chains slammed into it and bounced off like rain, veering into wildly different trajectories that were nowhere near her opponents.
I retreated away from the action as Medusa landed, because any one of the attacks being thrown around by either party would probably kill me if they spilled over enough or Mash or Caster miscalculated. The fight continued on as though nothing had changed, and if I put aside my pride, me disengaging didn't meaningfully change anything anyway.
"Let me see!" the Director hissed as I rejoined their group.
Dutifully, I held out my left hand for her inspection, and she grabbed at it like a starving beggar, examining the strokes of my Command Spells. I let her at it as I watched Caster and Mash fight Medusa, dancing around the battlefield and throwing up chunks of asphalt as they moved. Mash wasn't really contributing much — Medusa was far and away more skilled and comfortable with her abilities, compared to Mash, who was very, very new to them. Caster was much the same, though, and although he was mostly playing on the defensive, deflecting attacks and slowly encircling the area so that Medusa's back was to us, he was just as comfortable as Medusa was and equally as confident.
None of his attacks seemed to be landing, though. Medusa was just too fast and knew them just too well, because what she could avoid, she avoided, and what she could handle without issue, she deflected or just pushed through.
"These aren't Chaldea's Command Spells," the Director announced.
My head whipped around, and the twins, who had been entranced by the fight, turned their attention towards her as well.
"They aren't?"
"Eh?" Rika said incredulously. "But they look just like ours!"
She thrust her hand out, showing off her own set, and Ritsuka glanced down at his, but while his and his sister's were similar, even they weren't quite the same, and they both looked vastly different from mine. Theirs looked kind of like a shield with a stylized face, only the face was different between them, whereas mine… I wasn't quite sure what mine looked like, exactly, and it didn't seem important to think about it too strongly, just then.
"W-well," Rika hedged, "maybe not exactly like ours…"
"What does it mean?" I asked the Director.
She grimaced.
"Well, you did make a contract with a Servant of this sideways Holy Grail War… If I had to guess, I'd say these are Command Spells handed out by the Grail, which means that it's still around and performing at least some of its functions."
"Didn't we already know that?" Ristuka asked. "I mean, the Servants are summoned by the Holy Grail, right? So would they even still be around if it wasn't here, too?"
"O-of course I considered that angle!" the Director stammered, flustered. "B-but this whole situation is strange, you know, so even that wasn't a guarantee — n-no, that's not the important part! Hebert." She looked me in the eye. "As a Master of this Holy Grail War, you should have something called Master's Clairvoyance. Chaldea's in bad shape right now, so our version probably doesn't work, but you should be able to see the stats and abilities of any of the Servants we run into, here."
"That's right," I mumbled. "You mentioned that back during Team A's training."
The ability to see through a Servant's skills and Noble Phantasms simply by observing them in action… There'd been talk that it might not work on any Servant not contracted to Chaldea's FATE system, but there was no way to know until we tested it in the field. With all of the damage Chaldea had taken as a result of the attack on the facility, it was likely that it wasn't even functioning properly now, anyway.
But by contracting with Caster, I'd just given our team an advantage against any of the Servants still around from this Grail War.
I turned back towards the fight in time to see Caster swipe his hand through the air again, sending a stream of fireballs at Medusa. She danced around them with serpentine grace, and what she couldn't dodge, she deflected into the ground, where they exploded like hand grenades. Mash came up from the side, leaping into the air, and with a shout, she tried to slam the bottom edge of her shield into Medusa.
Medusa didn't let her and jumped out of the way, then raced back towards Mash and used the shield as a springboard again to fling herself at Caster.
"If you focus, you should be able to see their stats," the Director said. "In fact, you should be able to contact Caster directly with your mind, as well —"
"Director."
Her jaw snapped shut with an audible click.
I glanced at Caster and honed my focus, and as I did, his skills and abilities unfolded in my mind's eye.
Rune Magic — duh, I thought. He'd been using it the whole fight.
Protection from Arrows and Disengage. That explained how he'd been able to come away from, at a guess, multiple fights with Medusa apparently unscathed. Disengage was a useful skill for retreating, but the fact that he had it meant I should be on the lookout for him cutting and running, no matter what he'd said about jumping in because he couldn't let us die after witnessing our willingness to sacrifice ourselves.
He was a Caster. When half the rest of the classes had some measure of resistance to your attacks, you had to get sneaky and creative about getting around those. If it were me, I'd never engage the enemy outside of my specially prepared territory, where they would run into traps and tricks at every corner.
A quick glance at Mash gave me nothing. That was about what I'd been expecting.
When I looked at Medusa, I could see her Mystic Eyes skill, along with Monstrous Strength and Independent Action, a skill normally reserved for the Archer class. Her Class skill, however, in particular her Magic Resistance…
Convenient. Well, not as convenient as her not having one to begin with, but still good for us, in that it wasn't as high as it could be. Maybe that low a rank was some kind of side effect of not having a Master, or even whatever had caused the Singularity itself?
Not important, for now.
I focused hard, trying to thrust my mind outwards and towards Caster. I felt a little silly doing it.
Caster?
In the fight, Caster's step hitched for a bare fraction of a second, so short that I barely caught it, and as he deflected Medusa again, I thought I saw his eyes flicker over in my direction.
Ho? The word came through to me as though across a distance, foreign and intrusive, but not intruding. Looks like I landed a pretty competent Master, indeed. Need something, Master?
He kept fighting, but there was something a little more cautious in his movements, now. I had to be fast — the longer I took, the more I distracted him, and the longer he was distracted, the greater the odds of something going wrong.
Monstrous Strength, Independent Action, and Mystic Eyes, I projected at him. The important part is her Magic Resistance. It's only rank C. If you've got a strong enough spell to throw at her, you should be able to take her out in one hit.
Caster grinned. Good to know. Means this trick should handle her just fine.
Their dance continued. Caster continued to circle, breaking stride only to attack or defend. Medusa ping-ponged between him and Mash, but between Mash's massive shield and Caster's surprising skill with his staff, she wasn't landing a clean hit. Not with the business end of her scythe.
Neither were Mash and Caster, though.
I chewed on my bottom lip, looking for an opening, but I could feel Caster drawing on my magical energy as he fought. Not much, because he obviously had way more than I could ever hope to, but enough that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to risk using a Gandr to try and distract Medusa again.
If it was truly desperate, I might have. Even with Caster apparently working on his own plan, the itch to get involved was strong. Leaving things to others had never been my strong suit; I preferred being in the thick of things, and maybe that was a leftover from my passenger's influence and maybe my passenger had chosen me specifically because it was part of who I was, but either way, that was the way it was.
If I passed out, though, what would that mean for Caster? Now that he had a Master, was his performance tied more to me than Medusa's apparent freedom gave her? It wasn't worth risking it, not when Caster seemed so confident.
Caster completed his circle. Mash rushed in, trying to bash Medusa with her shield, and when Medusa stepped back to dodge it, she swung that shield almost like it was an ax, swiping at Medusa with the longest spoke at the bottom. Medusa stepped back again to avoid it, then went on the offensive with a flurry of attacks from her scythe. Mash blocked each blow, grunting under the force of them.
"Girlie!" Caster shouted. "Get back!"
Mash braced herself, and in the moment between one swing and the next, she leapt backwards. Medusa made to follow, but she had to dodge out of the way again when Caster flung another huge fireball at her, jumping to clear the distance. She landed in what I realized a moment later was the center of the circle Caster had been walking, or close enough to it.
A rune lit up beneath her foot, and she looked down at it, shock written across her face. "What —"
"See ya later, Lancer."
— and a circle of glowing runes ignited around her, surging upwards in pillars of flame that twisted and snaked around each other, spinning, swirling, combining into a fiery twister that spat tongues of red and orange. The bulk stayed contained, never leaving the circle of runes from which it had all sprouted, and the air roared as the fire sucked in oxygen to keep going, to keep burning, to get hotter and hotter and hotter.
Even compacted as it was, I could feel the heat from all the way over where I stood.
For an instant, I was back on my first night out, Lung towering over me, the heat of his flaming body piercing the cold, spring night and pressing down on me. My pepper spray had blinded him, but only momentarily, and any single move would give me away. All it would take was one blow, one stream of fire from his fists, and I was dead.
I wished I could believe it was going to be that easy, here. This… This was on a different scale from the fireballs Caster had been flinging willy nilly before. Not a Noble Phantasm, I didn't think, but still a step above regular attacks. A finishing move, that might be a good way of putting it. An attack designed not to maim, injure, or distract, but to make sure the enemy died.
But if there was one thing I'd learned as a cape, it was that "finishing moves" weren't necessarily just that. Not if your enemy had a way of surviving it. Not if they were just so tough they could shake it off.
The twister kept burning, and I waited, making sure not to blink, so I could be ready if Medusa came out of that thing alive.
Air alone wasn't enough to keep it going forever, though, and eventually, the gouts of flame that spawned this hellish tornado ran dry. The twister snuffed itself out with a low whump, and a column of smoke rose up into the sky, mushrooming as the hotter air pushed the cooler air out of the way.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Of Medusa, nothing remained except particles of light that glittered and faded away just as quickly.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The good news: two chapters this weekend.
The bad news: my financial situation is still tenuous, so that hasn't changed from a few weeks ago.
The worst news: the reason you're getting two chapters this weekend is because Grandma passed away, for those who haven't been keeping up with the thread. All of the funerary services are being put off until next weekend so my sister can be here for them. Either way, however, I was going to take next weekend off, so I'm giving you next weekend's chapter this weekend, too.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
The bad news: my financial situation is still tenuous, so that hasn't changed from a few weeks ago.
The worst news: the reason you're getting two chapters this weekend is because Grandma passed away, for those who haven't been keeping up with the thread. All of the funerary services are being put off until next weekend so my sister can be here for them. Either way, however, I was going to take next weekend off, so I'm giving you next weekend's chapter this weekend, too.
Special thanks to all my Patrons who have stayed with me this far, through all the rocky moments and dry stretches. You guys are the best, and your continued support is invaluable.
If you like what you're reading and want to support me as a writer so I can pay the bills, I have a Patreon. If Patreon is too long term, I have a Ko-fi page, too. If you want to commission something from me, check out either my Deviantart post or my artist registry page for my rates. Links in my sig. Every little bit helps keep me afloat, even if you can only afford a couple dollars.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Not at all.
Watching politics has shown me the three steps of mediation:
1) Escalate
2) Escalate
3) Escalate!!!!!
Taylor is well suited to it.
Skill Sets by Class:
Saber: Break Shit
Lancer: Break Shit and Talk Shit
Archer: Breaks Shit Far Away
Rider: Run Around and Break Shit
Berserker: Break More Shit
Assassin: Sneak Around and Break Shit
Caster: Everything Else
Yup, her assumption checks out.
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James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Speaking of Cu, I read up on Setanta from FGO Arcade, and I was massively disappointed.
Seriously? DW, Nasu, whichever of you came up with it, you went with the completely unimaginative "Land of Shadows Arms Mastery?" Come on, you can be more inventive than that.
