Bridge:
Rondo of the Outsiders
"And in our next story, the string of sudden deaths yesterday of senators and industry leaders due to accidents and illness is causing chaos in share prices on the New York Stock Exchange..."
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Should what happened in Snowfield be called an "ordeal" or not?
The more accurately someone had been observing events, the more they inclined toward "not."
That was because that series of incidents, unprecedented in the history of the city, and perhaps even of the whole United States—the Holy Grail War—had been deliberately engineered.
The city of Snowfield itself was a test site created on American soil for the ritual—
abandoning the site and starting over had been part of the plan from the beginning.
But that was only the masterminds' point of view.
As far as ordinary people with no knowledge of mystical matters were concerned, all of that was irrelevant.
As far as the ordinary townspeople with no knowledge of the reasons behind it all were concerned, it was a calamity that had descended on them without warning.
The Holy Grail War.
An exclusive ritual known only to a few, even among mages.
With Heroic Spirits whose beings were engraved into the world's "throne" as their familiars, mages would battle each other with every fiber of their beings for over an omnipotent wish-granting device—a genuine foothold on the path to the Root.
It was said that it had begun with other intentions, but the third Holy Grail War, held more than half a century earlier, had seen countless factions scheming beneath its surface. Then, in the fourth Holy Grail War, held over a decade prior, the loss of one of the Lords of the Clock Tower had drawn the attention of a very small group of mages who had made it past efforts to suppress the information.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it was considered "a dubious ritual performed in the Far East." What was being held in America, however, was beginning to show itself as far too strange and twisted even for a Holy Grail War.
To begin with, there was the fact that the number of Heroic Spirits summoned was too large.
The Holy Grail War was ordinarily fought by seven Servants, and while this one had appeared to conform to those numbers at first...from about the time that a Heroic Spirit seemingly of the Saber Class had appeared before the cameras of a local TV station and declared his intention to make reparations for a demolished theatre, a major "divergence" from the original Grail Wars hard begun.
A ritual of magecraft ought, properly speaking, to be conducted in secrecy.
To anyone who dealt in magecraft, or Mystery in general, that principle was absolute. And yet this fake Holy Grail War had barely begun before it was broken.
Almost as if to say that that had been the masterminds' intention all along.
There was the single combat between Archer and Lancer in the desert.
The clash of their Noble Phantasms had turned part of the desert to glass and left a massive crater in its wake. Officially, it was declared a gas pipeline explosion.
Then there was Assassin's assault on the police station, seemingly aimed at Saber, who was being held there.
A hematophage who seemed to be Assassin's Master had forced his way into the station amid the chaos and Hansa Cervantes, who the Holy Church had dispatched to oversee the Grail War, had gotten dragged into the brawl. Officially, it was declared a terrorist attack on the police station.
It was followed by an attack on Archer and his Master, who had taken up a position in Crystal Palace hotel, which shattered every window in the vicinity and was explained away as the work of an unforeseen tornado.
Then two powerful Servants, as well as
something else, had caused widespread destruction centered on a meat processing plant in a corner of the factory district—a mage's workshop with the backing of the Scladio Family.
The devastation was still being kept from the eyes of the public by an illusion cast over a wide area, most likely by a Caster Class Servant.
In just a few days, severe distortions were already forming in the unfolding ritual.
A mystic ritual
in the form of a battle to the death between mages and their familiars—and no ordinary familiars, but Heroic Spirits, embodiments of Mystery itself.
No matter how carefully the groundwork for that ritual had been laid, in the face of a string of irregularities on a scale that threatened to annihilate the city, concealment was nearing its limit.
But far from coming to a conclusion, the situation had begun to show signs of irreversible expansion.
With complete disregard for all preceding atmospheric conditions, a massive hurricane had formed on the west coast.
In an area centered on Washington D.C., key figures in business, politics and information were dropping dead one after another.
Those who knew what was happening behind the scenes realized that these disasters were not natural.
They realized that a great tide had risen in the city of Snowfield and that the world was being inexorably dragged into its shadowy depths.
If one were to deem this an ordeal bestowed by some higher power...then it would be like being flung into an endless labyrinth in which it was impossible to see what lay even an inch ahead, let alone the finish line.
Because they had yet to realize that they were in a labyrinth at all.
Originally Posted by Master of Chaos
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