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Avalon Castle
Phantasmagoria Island
“Nothing,” Rin said sourly.
That alone told them how frustrated she was with the situation, because otherwise, she’d never have let it show. Not with Ilya in the room, at least — maybe if it was just her and Shirou, or Sakura, but never Ilya. She had an image to maintain, after all . . . But as with all such masks, there were seams in it, flaws that emerged under the right circumstances, and this had all the hallmarks of being one of them.
“I can figure out what happened, to a degree,” she explained. “There was a secondary spell interwoven with the first, designed to remain dormant and only trigger under specific circumstances — which were apparently met. The reaction was a dimensional shunt, and I do mean dimensional: there were traces that match the Kaleidoscope’s function, if not its form.” She scowled. “Unfortunately, the caster was far too neat. The residue was degrading when I found it — by now, it’ll be completely gone, and that’s in a high-magic environment. In a world like ours, it would’ve lasted minutes, at best.”
“And you can’t trace it.” Shirou’s tone made it a statement, not a question, even if his eyes said he hoped otherwise.
Rin shook her head. “Whoever or whatever is behind the whole situation with him, they’re on par with Caster, or Zelretch — and I may be a superior magus, but I know when I’m fighting above my weight class.”
“We’ve beaten those odds before,” Shirou pointed out, “and fairly recently, too.”
“With more resources and information than we have now, and a hell of a lot of luck,” Rin countered. “I don’t think the Wizard Marshal is going to pop up to lend us a hand — and unlike Kurai, I don’t happen to have the phone number of a pantheon’s worth of deities in my back pocket. Do you?”
He shook his head, but the statement struck him. “Ilya, do you suppose . . .?”
“They might be deities who actually listen to prayers, Onii-chan,” Ilya warned, “but they have limits, too — both in what they can do, and in what they’re allowed to do. Kurai was at least technically under their purview, as a half-drow and an ‘elf friend,’ so they had a basis for hearing him and helping him, and even then, he had to negotiate for their help. We’re all human — mostly, anyway — and not local. There’s no power base for them to work from, here.”
“Not unless you count the legions of Dungeons and Dragons otaku that have built up since the game was created as ‘worshippers,’” Rin muttered, and then paused. “And suddenly, I’m wondering if that would work . . .”
She trailed off, muttering strings of syllables under her breath that Shirou recognised as thaumaturgy terms and arcane calculations, once he Reinforced his hearing to catch them, but that was about it. He knew just enough about what she was talking about to recognise that it was far above his level of understanding.
The good news, he supposed, was that they might be able to do something, after all; the bad news was that it sounded like it would take Rin a while before she could figure out whether or not they actually could.
“The only good news,” Ilya pointed out, “is that he hasn’t stumbled through our front door again. Wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, however well or badly off he is, he’s not so desperate that he really needs our help.”
Shirou grunted in acknowledgement of the point, but continued pacing, anyway. He hated being in this situation — scratch that; he really hated it — but for now, he really didn’t see what he could do about it. If Ilya and Rin were both clueless and helpless, then he was certainly stuck. He’d just have to wait, and hope that one of the two girls, or both of them, could come up with something . . .
And hope that wherever Kurai had ended up and whatever condition he was in, he could handle it until they could find him again.
The Kingdom of Arendelle
Elsa had read through the castle’s book on trolls thoroughly before starting out on her journey. As such, she’d known that the Valley of the Living Rock was isolated, but the sheer emptiness around her was so off-putting that the crown princess had to suppress a shiver.
Or maybe it was the memories the place brought back that made her feel uneasy — after all, the last time she’d been here had been when she’d hurt Anna . . .
She forced her thinking away from that, and instead focussed on her next biggest worry. According to the book, sunlight turned trolls to stone, so they were only ever seen at night. She was sincerely hoping that the current weather conditions would allow them to speak to her; but if not, she would be truly on her own in trying to save Anna, to say nothing of stopping this unnatural weather, and she had no idea how.
Fortunately, luck seemed to be with her, as the piles of rock within the valley quickly unrolled themselves into troll forms — a lot of troll forms. To her astonishment, Elsa realised that here had to be dozens of them, including tiny children that were surprisingly cute.
The one who quickly gained her attention, however, was the one she had come to see. It had been ten years, but there was no way she could ever forget him — and unlike the last time, she now knew how to address him properly.
“Wise Elder,” she greeted, bowing to the degree royalty did when politely meeting a peer — though in her case, being female, it was more of a curtsey.
He nodded gravely. “’Grand Pabbie’ will do, child — there is little need to stand on ceremony in such serious circumstances.” He smiled. “Though I must say, you’ve grown into quite a splendid young lady since I saw you last, Princess Elsa.”
“Wait, what?” Kristoff blurted in disbelief, his gaze jerking back and forth between the two.
Elsa ignored him, though she did lower her hood and scarf — it was relatively warm here, and the disguise had lost its purpose, since Grand Pabbie knew who she was and was unlikely to try to stop her.
“My sister’s been taken,” she explained urgently, “and I think whoever did it is behind this strange weather . . . Can you help me stop them, Grand Pabbie?”
The troll elder’s solemn expression turned even more so. “We are not warriors, Your Highness; our skills are ill-suited to confrontations. Nor, I regret, am I omniscient; I cannot simply tell you where your sister is, or how this attack— and it is an attack — may be stopped.
“However, I have some small measure of foresight,” he admitted, “and I can tell you something of what you face.”
He gestured, and as she remembered, images conjured as though from the northern lights sprang up around them.
“The winter is caused by a terrible witch-queen, and those lesser witches and faerie creatures who serve her,” Grand Pabbie warned. “She wishes to expand the borders of her current kingdom to encompass all kingdoms, and she possesses powers not unlike — and far beyond — your own.”
Elsa’s complexion, always alabaster, nevertheless managed to pale further. Not just bandits, or even the resources of another kingdom, but witches and faeries, as well . . . What was she going to do? She wasn’t prepared for this, nor was Arendelle. They’d never even considered an attack like this before!
“If she is not stopped, eternal winter will fall across Arendelle,” Grand Pabbie continued sombrely, “and after it, the Southern Isles, Corona, and all the kingdoms of humankind.” His voice hardened. “But she can be stopped.”
“How can I stop her?” Elsa demanded, her voice almost ragged with desperation. “How can I save Anna? Tell me what to do!”
“The witch-queen’s forces extend from a magical gate that links her kingdom with Arendelle,” Grand Pabbie explained. “It must be found and destroyed, for our world to be safe — and your sister is likely in the kingdom beyond the gate, as well.”
He turned to the young man in their midst. “Kristoff is an expert tracker. He can follow their trail from the site of the royal caravan’s attack, and guide you back to the gate. From there, however, I’m afraid you must rely on your own ingenuity. I know nothing of how the link was constructed, or how it might be undone; only that, so long as it remains, the winter over Arendelle will continue to deepen — and expand.”
Elsa was relieved to have a direction to proceed in regarding the task of rescuing Anna, and she very nearly set off immediately . . . But something about the troll’s advice bothered her, and she paused to try and puzzle out why. Finally, her mind realised the oddity, and she turned to confront him about it.
“That’s all you have to say about it, Grand Pabbie? You’re not going to advise me to muster the army in an attempt to overthrow this other kingdom, or even make an effort to capture or. . . ” She hesitated over the word, before finishing, “Neutralise the witch-queen? Not even an attempt to confront her over what she’s doing?”
“It would not be wise,” the elder said grimly. “As I said, Princess, her power is far beyond yours . . . And at this moment, you still have the choice.”
“The choice?” she repeated, confused.
“There are strands of destiny tightening around this,” Grand Pabbie said cryptically. “I cannot see what pattern they will weave, but at the moment, their hold on Arendelle is loose, easily unravelled. But should you choose to pursue this, Your Highness — should you choose to confront the witch-queen directly — then you will not escape their snare. You will be compelled to follow Fate’s thread until you either find the witch-queen, or perish in the attempt.”
“Oh,” Elsa said quietly. Did she want to do that? Did she want to punish the person who’d done this so badly as to risk her life — and her kingdom’s future? Did it really matter, so long as she could ensure that Anna and Arendelle were safe?
. . . That was a question whose answer she would have to think long and hard about, the crown princess concluded — but she could do it while they travelled.
“Thank you for your advice, Grand Pabbie,” she said, curtseying once more. “I’ll be very careful in making any decisions.”
“You are welcome, child,” he told her gently. “I’m only sorry we could not be of more help. Go swiftly, now, and take care. Rescue your sister, and be safe, all of you.”
“We will, Grand Pabbie,” Kristoff assured him. “I’ll bring her back, and her sister, too — c’mon, Sven!”
With a grunt of acknowledgement, the reindeer brought the sled closer for the two humans to mount, and took off at a steady pace.
Elsa settled in for the ride, even as she began to seriously ponder the question of what she wanted, and how far she was really willing to go in order to get it.
“I feel ridiculous,” she grumbled as she wobbled in the snow. “How do penguins make this look so easy?”
“Practice,” her companion replied. “And I used snowshoes once, a quarter-century ago, so I’m really no better off than you are. But trust me: we’re making a lot more progress through this snow with them than we would have if we’d tried to slog through it without them.”
She said nothing, not really having any experience with walking on unmaintained ground with snow this deep — but she did note that his appearance was apparently deceptive. She’d thought him the same age as Shirou-niichan, but he had to be at least a decade and a half older than her brother, going by that statement.
Unaware of her thoughts, he shrugged (though the movement was difficult to see under the layers of clothing he now wore) and continued, “And if worse comes to worst, climb onto the pack sled.” His head jerked back to the sled he was dragging on a rope behind him.
It wasn’t big—from the size, it had originally been intended as a child’s toboggan — but it didn’t carry much. There was a bag of food and water-skins, both packed in salt, spare clothes, the rest of their money and some camping gear, all tied down. There were also actual backpacks to haul the stuff in, but given the weather, he’d told her this would probably be easier than trying to balance on snowshoes with the extra weight throwing them off. And thus far, she had to admit, it was hard to disagree.
Still, she stopped dead at the suggestion, and then immediately ran towards it while yelling, “Why didn’t you say so?” Jumping onto the piled goods, the girl made herself as comfortable as possible.
“Mush, Minion!” she commanded.
“I told you, I’m not your minion,” he snapped, even though he proved the lie as he continued to pull the sled forward.
“And I told you,” she retorted, “if I’m ‘Kuro,’ then you’re ‘Minion’ — because my name is Ilyasviel von Einzbern.”
“That may be, but the Ilyasviel I know is a little albino girl —”
“Imposter,” she growled, feeling the anger bubble up inside her like she’d suddenly downed a case of soda pop. “She’s nothing but a fake, dreamed up by my mother.”
Even she was kind of impressed by the venom she managed to pack into that last word, and judging by how pale he abruptly went, she’d done more than just impress him. But it barely lasted more than a couple of breaths, before his colour returned and he sighed.
“OK, Emiya-chan — you win.”
She blinked. “. . . What?”
He shrugged again. “If you want to be Ilyasviel, you can be Ilyasviel — but with your colouring, you’re definitely more of an Emiya than you are an Einzbern.”
She scowled, sensing that he was making fun of her somehow, even though she couldn’t figure out where the barb actually was. She opened her mouth to protest . . .
And then stopped, blinking as the concept actually entered her mind.
“Ilyasviel . . . Emiya . . .” she repeated aloud, almost tasting the name. Not the name she was born with, but not the name of her mother, or the fake. And it was the name of her father, and the name of her brother — proof that they were her family, and she was theirs.
“Ilyasviel Emiya,” she repeated, a bit more naturally. “. . . I like it.”
“Good,” he said, with the air of someone who’s just settled an argument that was far more difficult than it needed to be. “Now, can we agree to call me something other than ‘Min —‘”
He stopped dead, very nearly literally, at the sight of what lay before them once they reached the top of the current hill.
The number of dead bodies strewn around clearly indicated that the two carriages on the road had been attacked, rather than had a simple accident. To begin with, there were simply too many of them to be accounted for by only two carriage-loads of people; and the amount of icy shards surrounding each body implied the use of magical attacks.
One carriage had been flipped over completely, where the other had simply lost its horses, and a frozen statue stood nearby, a lone, silent sentinel. As they approached the site, it grew noticeably colder, and a trail that led deeper into the woods was defined by a thickening band of snow. It was obvious that whatever was causing the wintry weather was sourced in the other end of that trail.
“Terrific,” Ilyasviel muttered. “There are powerful idiots around.”
“. . . Because they’re strong enough to do this, but either not smart enough to cover their tracks, or to lay a less obvious trap?” he asked, after a moment’s thought.
“Or powerful enough not to care who knows where they went,” she agreed. “None of those is a pleasant thought.”
Inwardly, she was pleased — there was an obvious brain in her new minion, even if he didn’t have the training to immediately come to the same conclusion as she did. She also marked it as another point in favour of his being a potential competitor for the Grail War, though obviously an outsider candidate. Perhaps he was a first-generation magus?
He went around the area carefully, examining things, pausing at the statue for a moment, before shaking his head and moving on.
“What?” Ilyasviel asked.
“The statue has a sword — it’s in the part of the arm that got smashed off,” he told her. “But while a weapon would be nice, I don’t know how to use one — and while you might, it’s not sized for you. And neither is his armour, even if I felt like digging it out of his frozen corpse.”
Ilyasviel made a face, not liking the image, but shook her head. “Worry about yourself — I don’t wear armour, really, and I’ve got weapons covered.” She paused, suddenly remembering the odd state of her circuits. “Actually, maybe not — do you mind if I check something?”
He shrugged. “Better now than in a combat situation — go ahead.”
Ilyasviel closed her eyes and concentrated, then whispered, “Trace, on.”
With an unaccustomed effort, her circuits opened; and it wasn’t that it required more effort than it should’ve, exactly — it was more like it was a different kind of effort. Like flexing a muscle you hadn’t expected to when performing a familiar chore. Nevertheless, she pressed on, concentrating on the shapes of Bakuya and Kansho, the blades that felt most familiar to her . . . And when she opened her eyes, there was only one thing she could say about the result.
“What the hell?”
He watched as Kuro (Ilyasviel, he reminded himself — from all he knew of her, she did deserve the name, and as long as he kept to the formal version, he shouldn’t confuse her with Ilya) uttered Shirou’s familiar mantra. He watched crackling motes of energy appear around her open hands, collecting themselves into a pair of curved, familiar shapes —
And then remain as pale energy forms in her grip, rather than condensing into solid material.
“What the hell?” Ilyasviel demanded, and he couldn’t blame her. They looked like psi-blades — which was the kind of thing you saw in RIFTS, or other RPGs in the Palladium line, rather than anything he was familiar with in Dungeons and Dragons.
He’d been thinking that, given the influence of the Seldarine on his last mission and the general medieval vibe of this place, he was still somewhere in the D&D cosmology. Was it possible that he’d gone to a different paradigm entirely? If so, that was bad; assuming that Ilya and the Works were actively looking for him (and granted, it was a generous assumption), it was unlikely they’d even think to go beyond the settings he’d been in when they lost track of him . . .
Not to mention the fact that the Palladium Megaverse game setting, and RIFTs in particular, was fairly brutal and unforgiving.
Aloud, though, he merely said, “Are those psi-blades? That’s a neat trick.”
“’Psi-blades?’” the girl parroted back, her eyes losing focus for a moment, before she blinked, her expression changing to one of surprise. “Yes — that’s exactly what they are. How did you know that?”
“I do a lot of reading, and I have eclectic tastes,” he told her, “so I have a dabbler’s knowledge in a lot of areas.” It was entirely true, too. “And from what little I do know about the subject, that ability is generally a trained one, so that would make you a what, exactly?”
“I’m a soulknife,” the girl responded immediately, before blinking in surprise again. “. . . And how do I know that?”
“It sounds like you’ve undergone a paradigm shift,” he told her. At her look, he elaborated. “Look, as I understand things, as an Einzbern you should be familiar with the concept of the Kaleidoscope, correct? Also things like Reality Marbles, or Marble Phantasm?”
She nodded, and he continued, “OK, now imagine going to a parallel world where nothing like you exists. You’re an anomaly to the universe, maybe even incapable of existing under its physical or metaphysical laws; what would happen to you as a result of that?”
“. . . Well,” she said hesitantly, “according to what I’ve been taught, the world would work to wipe you out. You’d face the Counter Force, or a Counter Guardian, or something similar: a manifestation of the world’s will to destroy you.” She looked at him and concluded, “But I suspect you have something else in mind.”
“To understand the concept, you need to go up a tier,” he said. “You’re not just alien to a world; you’re alien to an entire universe. Now, when magecraft, or Reality Marbles, or anything like them rewrites reality on a planetary scale, the planet pushes back, and eventually restores reality to what it thinks reality should be. On a universal scale, however, that effect means that the anomaly is redefined in terms of the universe’s thinking.”
“And the closest thing to a magus in this universe is a soulknife?” Ilyasviel queried.
“Well, thaumaturgy as you perform it is probably closer to psionics, at least,” he told her.
Again, it was probably true, since it involved self-hypnotism and mental energy — at least, the version of psionics used by soulknives was. He’d recognised the term immediately when she had identified herself; it was catchy enough to remember, and it confirmed that this world did run on a D&D-style paradigm, after all. This was a relief on multiple levels, but it also meant that they were far from out of the woods yet
“But why a soulknife in particular,” he told her, independent of his line of thinking, “I don’t know. It wouldn’t be my choice for a correlation to magi, since making psi-blades is basically their only power . . .”
He’d only skimmed the book and that was a decade back; none of the campaigns he’d been involved in had used psionics, so it had been mainly out of curiosity. Still, he remembered that much — and since he did, his statement to the girl had been a lie. He thought he actually had a pretty good idea as to why she was a soulknife, given Ilyasviel’s resemblance to the Archer-class Servant that had been the Counter Guardian EMIYA . . .
But he wasn’t about to tell her that — he was breaking enough of the Works’ operating rules as it was.
As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary to tell her since, after a moment of silence, her eyes bugged out and she unleashed a torrent of German words whose meaning he didn’t really have to work that hard to figure out, despite not knowing them.
German is a really great language for invective, he thought with amusement. Say it loudly enough, and pretty much anything sounds like a swear word.
Still, it answered one question he’d always had about her character: she apparently had at least some of the memory of the Heroic Spirit affiliated with the Archer Class Card. He wondered if that influence might have something to do with her attitude towards Ilya — after all, EMIYA Archer had been looking to kill his originator, too . . .
After a good three minutes of ranting, raving, and generally blistering the air at the top of her lungs, Ilyasviel finally ran out of breath. She panted and wheezed for another few minutes, and he passed her one of the water-skins.
“Remember to breathe through your nose,” he reminded her. “I know you want to do otherwise, but it filters the air better than mouth-breathing. And after taking in water like that, freezing air going down your esophagus is liable to give you pneumonia.”
Her eyes were narrow slits of gold as she glared at him, reminding him of nothing so much as an angry cat, but she did as he recommended. Still, he had to admit to being reluctantly impressed; the girl might not seem to have Ilya’s chillingly innocent bloodthirstiness (that he’d seen, at least), but she could be intimidating.
As such, he answered her immediately when she finally growled, “Is there any more bad news?”
He paused, organising things in his head, before answering, “Three things — one long-term, one short-term, and one immediate.
“Long-term, we’re going to be facing the same paradigm shift problem if we manage to jump dimensions again without some kind of protection. Most magic of that sort automatically includes protection as part of its function, but I didn’t get here that way and neither did you — so I’ve got no way home, and I’m assuming you don’t, either?”
Ilyasviel shook her head, “It’s not really a problem for me, though — well, except maybe for Onii-chan . . .” she added under her breath.
He nodded. “OK. Now, the short-term problem is that I’ve undergone a paradigm shift, too — and I have no idea what’s been done to me. I was a shape-shifter for a while, but I’m not supposed to be, anymore.
“And yet, despite that, I know that there’s a switch in the back of my mind, waiting to be thrown.”
Ilyasviel tensed at that statement, and he couldn’t blame her; nothing in the Type-Moon universe with shape-changing capabilities was generally considered “good.” At best, they were mostly neutral towards humans, like the cat-familiar, Ren — and at worst . . .
Well, there was a reason he much preferred to admire the Type-Moon universe from a distance. It was nearly as grim and depressing as “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” in its way.
After a moment’s silence, Ilyasviel said, “And you don’t consider that the immediate bad news?”
He shook his head. “No, the immediate bad news is that whoever attacked these carriages left behind a trap.”
Now Ilyasviel really went tense. Her psi-blades, which she’d let dissipate during her rant, flared into being again as her eyes scanned everywhere intensely. Out of the corner of her mouth (another neat trick, he thought) she whispered, “Trap? What trap?”
He pointed to one of the carriages — the one that hadn’t been flipped over, but had lost its team. Its doors were barred by a spear that was serving as an impromptu deadbolt.
“That thing’s locked from the outside,” he pointed out, “which means it wasn’t done for self-protection. Given how thorough they were in slaughtering everything, I can think of only two reasons to do that. First, they were trying to terrorise whoever’s inside just to drive home the message of how badass they are —”
“Or they left behind a nasty surprise for anybody who hopes they’ll be rescuing captives,” Ilyasviel finished, understanding.
“And given that nobody starting banging on the doors and yelling their head off while you were ranting at the top of your lungs,” he finished, “I’d say we can safely assume the latter.”
“Well, we can just walk away,” she pointed out snidely, though he thought her cheeks were a little darker at the mention of her earlier temper tantrum — it was hard to tell, with her complexion.
Not that he could really blame her; going from Ilya’s potential as a magus to Shirou’s was quite a comedown, the ability to use Noble Phantasms as a trade-off aside — and as a psi-blade operating under a completely different magic system, she didn’t even have that.
He frowned. “We could, but I hate thinking who might run into it if we just leave it sitting here.”
She stared at him, a full-on “Are you kidding me?” look that told him she thought he was possibly the dumbest person on the planet.
He spread his hands in a half-hearted shrug.
Ilyasviel closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and muttered something under her breath. He thought he caught the words “exactly like Shirou-niichan,” but couldn’t be sure.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Throw your switch.”
He blinked, and she elaborated, “If I have to face whatever’s been set up in there, I want to know what’s going to be watching my back.”
“I have no idea what’ll happen,” he warned, “but it’s almost guaranteed to be dangerous. You could be hurt, maybe even killed —”
Ilyasviel gave him an impish smirk and said sweetly, “Oh, at this distance, I can put both blades in your heart before you even realise I’ve moved.”
. . . OK, now she reminded him of Ilya more than Archer.
“All right,” he sighed, “if you’re sure.”
He closed his eyes, and sought the power he could feel, lurking at the edges of his human mind.
“Here goes everything . . .”
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Originally Posted by fsnfan
