The Master of Chaldea felt a sudden pain, but it was not the pain of death.
He had been roughly pulled down, and merely a step away the Chiyou Lancer, Momu, was desperately struggling to keep the monster at bay. The clash of sword and spear released flashes of intense light that injured his sight.
“Assassin, please!” called out the Lancer just before relinquishing that single step to Berserker’s incessant onslaught. Simultaneously, the young man was unceremoniously hoisted and then flung away by the Assassin in black. Nobody paid attention to his surprised yelp.
Atop her faithful mount, Artoria Lancer Alter carefully circled the storm of sword and spear. It was not an engagement in which she could intrude haphazardly.
There was no longer any doubt in her mind: the name “Chiyou” meant “top-class Servant”. That nondescript little Lancer was fighting with indescribable vigor, meeting Berserker’s vicious strikes with superb technique and reflexes nigh-unmatched. Acknowledging the impossibility of matching Berserker’s powerful blows, Lancer’s deflecting technique turned her into an island in the eye of a storm of blades.
But, she was losing. Watching such a magnificent battle with the profound awareness of its inevitable result made Artoria grit her teeth in bitterness.
Every few seconds, Momu had to take a step back. Even worse, in contrast to Berserker’s unrelenting offense, Momu could not make a single counterattack, and not due to a lack of trying. Every single attempt at striking back had been neutralized before it could materialize.
Artoria charged ahead, lance poised to pierce through the enemy’s head. She tightened the grip on her weapon as the distance shortened, the tip of the lance drawing tiny circles in the air. She matched her breathing to the pace of Llamrei’s gallop and to the flashes released by the clash of the two Chiyou Servants. She trusted not her eyes, but her gut instinct, looking for the gap her lance could pierce through.
Llamrei made the decisive step. Artoria thrust the lance with a warcry.
It was met with metal.
“Kuh!” The Storm King grunted as she, too, ended up joining the storm. Berserker lashed at them both without discrimination, albeit no longer capable pushing Momu back.
“This woman…!” Artoria murmured, wishing she could afford to trade glances with her ally, if only to confirm her suspicion. However, she could only push forward, giving it her all, as if she did not have the advantage of numbers—
Lancer Alter pulled the reins with urgency nearing desperation, and her steed pulled two steps back. Berserker rushed forward to catch up, and Momu found a gap there, twirling her weapon into unconventional anticlockwise slashes. The tip of Momu’s spear cut along Berserker’s left forearm and thigh, drawing first blood.
Not that Berserker cared.
“Guh…!” Artoria did not need to command her steed; Llamrei knew it had to keep pulling back.
Berserker was aiming for her horse.
“Your Highness!”
“Focus!” Artoria finally shouted, the combined pressure of two Servants on Berserker allowing for at least that much. “We have the better reach!”
Basics of spear versus sword, really.
“We don’t! Watch out!”
A meaningless warning. At that point, it was already too late.
Berserker made a broad horizontal swing, from left to right, exposing her left flank. It was an opening Artoria could not pass up.
A thrust of the Holy Lance.
A cry of pain.
The revelation of the monster’s true horror.
***********************************
“Senpai! What’s going on, senpai!?”
“Um, Mashu, dear, we can scan the situation just fine now…”
The Master of Chaldea paid no heed to Mashu and Da Vinci. He could only see things going awfully wrong in front of him.
“She…they came out of…” Assassin, too, was muttering in what even he could tell was some sort of reverential terror.
Blades.
They came out of the wound on her arm, bursting suddenly and cruelly, uncaring of the damage inflicted to Berserker herself. Blades long like spears burst out of her flesh and struck Llamrei’s torso. A swing of that same arm, and Momu had to jump back to dodge those same blades.
The Master and Assassin gasped as one.
Berserker had just broken the two Servants’ poise.
Which one would suffer the consequences?
Berserker lunged forward, carelessly discarding her sword.
“Artoria!”
She needed both hands to grab Llamrei’s hind legs, after all.
Lancer Alter had no choice but to throw herself off her mount before Berserker lifted the horse like an oversized pillow and smashed it on the ground. The young Master learned the sounds of a horse’s agony.
And she did it again. And again. And again, and again, and again. And then she smashed its back on her knee, and its spine cracked like a mere twig.
On her left knee.
On her wounded left knee.
The Master’s throat constricted. Artoria shouted her beloved steed’s name.
Blades burst out of the horse’s belly like steel blossoms, piercing its great anatomy from back to front. The beast had disappeared by the time Chiyou got back on both feet, its body shattered into worthless motes of light.
There was no time to lament. The monster sought its next target.
Momu charged at Berserker’s back at the same time Berserker lunged at Artoria, who determinedly gripped her Holy Lance. The length and girth of Rhongomyniad made it more suitable for mounted combat; the Storm King, for all her might, was a diminished Servant without her steed. Nonetheless, the dance of death continued.
Momu aimed for Berserker’s blind spot, but the spear tip was stopped by one of the blades coming out of her arm. At the same time, that Berserker had begun a barrage of kicks, forcing Artoria to place the broad lance in front of her body to block the assault of many blades attached to Berserker’s left thigh. With a single foot on the ground, there should have been openings to disrupt her balance, but that single leg was a pivot, and Berserker effortlessly spun to aim her bladed kicks at Momu just before she could capitalize on her advantageous positioning.
“It’s like…”
“Senpai?”
“…she is aware.”
“There is intent,” murmured Assassin. “She looks like another rampaging Berserker, but there is tactical intent there! She knows how to move!”
The young Master blinked. And in that time, he arranged his thoughts and decided on a course of action.
“Da Vinci.”
“I am completing the scan about now; we almost have a grasp of the situation—”
“Da Vinci, be quiet and listen to me. This is the situation: we’re fighting something as scary and Heracles, and we can’t win. We’re screwed. There’s no time to summon more Servan—no, we can’t afford to bring more Servants here; something even worse is about to rayshift into Chaldea, and I fear things are gonna get real bad, real soon.”
“Rayshift? What are you—”
“It’s Chiyou, Da Vinci. Our enemy is Chiyou.”
***********************************
Artoria could only fight defensively, so Momu had to take offensive duties. But that only made things easier for Berserker, who was gifted with skill transcending instinct, and the pressure she exerted made their advantage inexistent. It was only the fact that they were both Heroic Spirits, warriors of legend and incomparable skill, that allowed to them to act in some sort of concert, for they did not have the slightest chance to plan anything together.
There was only the fight. The clash of metals. The pounding heartbeat. The groaning muscles, pushed to their limit without any hint of rest. Yet Momu found some time to think, in the brief moments of darkness in every blink.
Time to think, to choose, to decide, and to accept.
Her current limit did not cut it, so she pushed herself a little bit further. Every fiber of her being complained, and the core of her Saint Graph creaked ominously, but that mattered not.
She now could put a little more pressure on Berserker. Which meant Artoria could ease down proportionately.
“Your Highness, Storm King Pendragon.”
It was not to the same degree, but Momu took advantage of her small size, weaving and bobbing her way around the attacks she could not deflect.
“That child must survive. He carries the hope of mankind, as the protector of the Human Order.”
She thrust, and Berserker intercepted—the spear ended up stuck between the disorderly entwined blades bursting out of the monster’s arm. Letting go of the weapon, Momu procured a paper strip from
somewhere and flung it at Berserker’s right foot.
It granted a moment of paralysis. Momu grabbed her spear, leaping over Berserker like pole vaulting, and burying the tip of the spear right under Berserker’s left shoulder. The small Lancer managed to land and pull her weapon away just before even more blades erupted out of Berserker’s body. A moment later, Berserker was furiously attacking again, but this time Momu stood in front of Artoria.
“I’ll hold her for as long as I can. Take the child.”
The more she was wounded, the more weapons she had at her disposal.
“Are you telling me to run away!?”
The more she was wounded, the more her flesh was undone by blades.
“I am begging you to
protect that child.”
The more she was wounded, the more inhuman she became.
The entire left side of her body had the appearance of a human pincushion, allowing for more simultaneous vectors of attack. The tipping point was approaching.
***********************************
Leonardo da Vinci and Mashu Kyrielight watched in silent trepidation. They were fortunate: the visuals came from a screen, transmitted by a camera. Therefore, they were not subjected to the baleful light emitted by the intruder’s body.
An invader had arrived at Chaldea. It was not a rayshift, but a complete physical transference; the impartial deed achieved through a wish-granting device. The two rayshift monitors watching over the young Master beneath the light of CHALDEAS paid no heed to the blaring alarms filling their surroundings with noise.
“Analysis complete,” said Mashu very quietly, as if fearing the creature inside the screen could listen. “Signature compatible with Class Beast with 91.37% probability.”
“That is lower than expected,” mused da Vinci. “Did something not work out in the transformation, or…?”
“Yes, yes, I guess the gateway would be stronger at the point of higher concentration of pseudo-spiritrons. More precisely, over there?”
A serpentine darkness flowed out of Chiyou’s body, eating through a nearby wall and devouring the contents of the room on the other side. The Renaissance genius clicked her tongue, and Mashu gasped in outrage.
“No!
Senpai’s hard-earned saint quartz…!”
A second figure suddenly entered the screen; a spearman charging with weapon poised to pierce Chiyou’s chest. The former Assassin gracefully twirled around the attack, spinning a full 1080 degrees as she moved into the Lancer’s personal space to seize him in a grapple.
“So the light drives you to fight. A typical and boring reaction. Very well, there’s your fight!”
Chiyou pushed Cu Chulainn out of the camera’s sight, but the two watching could catch the sounds of metal against metal, suggesting he had begun fighting somebody other than Chiyou, who daintily walked in the same direction.
“Well then, how do I make my way outside…?”
“A different camera!” da Vinci barked immediately.
“Ye-yes!”
Upon switching their source of audiovisuals, the first thing they heard were the heart-wrenching screams of a child.
“Mother. We have to find Mother.” Jack the Reaper wandered away, daggers in both hands. A fairytale tome laid inert on the floor. Next to it, Jeanne d’Arc Alter Santa Lily clutched her head with both hands, her eyes injected with blood, and her bloodcurdling screams rattling the ears of those who could hear them.
“This was already worth the trip,” amusedly commented Chiyou. “Ordinary humans all have the same reaction, but Servants are full of fresh, surprising reactions for my enjoyment. Now let’s see here…”
Even as she spoke, her arms moved at dazzling speed to intercept Atalante’s barrage. The swirling darkness surrounding Chiyou’s arms consumed rather than deflect the arrows.
“…motherly instinct. Pointless. Even that will eventually disappear in front of this light. But it seems that will take too long, so…”
A second later, Chiyou’s palm strike had smashed the lady Archer on the wall behind her, shattering it into a small crater.
“Be unraveled.”
The darkness invaded Atalante’s body, and a moment later she was no more.
Some feet behind Chiyou, Cu Chulainn had leapt out of the summoning chamber, closely chased by a steel-faced EMIYA, intent on burying his married broadswords on the admittedly-superior Servant’s body. Chiyou minded them not; they were already thralls of their base impulses.
“Now, now, let me take a closer look at you, little white darling.”
Intrigued by the little Santa’s unique reaction, Chiyou kneeled in front of her. The little Servant tried to swat her hands away a few times, but she was overpowered and her face held firm in front of Chiyou’s.
“N-no! No!” screamed the young Servant, desperately and vainly struggling against the hold. Her face was already a mess of tears and snot. “I don’t want—leave me—I can’t—I don’t want to become…!”
“…I see. Rather than wishes, you are driven by possibilities. Banner of Chiyou has shown you what you could become, and you are a fool for wishing to resist it. How sad.”
“Leave that girl alone, fiend!”
Chiyou paused for a moment, perhaps musing on those words, before standing up to properly face Jeanne d’Arc some meters away. It made the Chinese Beast raise an eyebrow.
“That…is some amazing Magic Resistance you are packing, girl…” She then took a closer took, and then looked down at the groaning, moaning little girl at her feet. Then back at Ruler.
“…this your daughter or something?”
“Wha—do-don’t say ridiculous things and move away from that child!”
“Hmm. I would say you have more immediate things to worry about.”
That was when Jeanne noticed that the people who had been hurrying to the alarm site with her were not standing by her side. A low groan drew her attention to her back.
“Run…”
“Gilles?”
“Run…” the French knight held his head low while clutching himself. “I can’t…this is…run…Jeanne…Jeanne…Jeanne…!”
An inch before his hands reached the saint’s face, a second saint punched him right into the wall. Or rather than a saint, a woman with the eyes of a killer.
“I knew it…” Martha all but hissed. “I knew you were lacking…I knew you would lose to your longing…!” After smashing her fists together, she rushed in to pummel the French knight’s face without mercy. “Feel my fist and repent!”
“Ma—Saint Martha!” an outraged Jeanne drew her banner-slash-spear. “Please cease this at—!”
She managed to block two, but the third black key tore through her left side, making her gasp in pain.
“Guh…! Wha…”
“I do not know myself anymore. I have wasted too much time playing along with that boy and you people. I’ll just go and get myself one of the Grails in storage, but first I have to deal with you, Jeanne d’Arc.”
“Amakusa…Shirou…!”
“After all, you will definitely get in my way otherwise,” continued the Japanese Ruler, drawing more black keys in the gaps between his fingers.
Jeanne could not do a thing about Chiyou walking past her and the other Ruler.
“Yes, you keep yourself busy with that. Kahah!”
Chiyou’s laughter was mostly drowned by the sounds of weapons clashing and Martha’s savagery. In her wake, she left a trail of battles, violence and screams.
The invasion of Chaldea had just begun.
***********************************
The turning point came not at the hands of Berserker, or either of the two Lancers.
It was a sudden, invisible barrage which struck Chiyou from the side, knocking her all the way across the devastated square and into the feeble remains of a stable. Laminar pressure waves like countless invisible razors.
“Rider!” The young Master shouted at the distant figure. Wounded as she was, the exotic dancer found it in herself to bow like a lead actor at the end of a stage play. When she pulled two fingers to her lips, Lancer Alter hurried to stand in front of her Master, but for once Rider’s blown kiss was just that, and the lithe figure hurriedly scurried away, leaving them with the disaster she had created.
Indeed, they could already hear the grotesque sounds of iron, bronze and copper bursting out of the many tiny wounds Rider’s air blades had created. The figure of Berserker Chiyou was no longer visible, such was their sheer number; she stood at the center of a mostly spherical assortment of long blades spread radially in all directions.
“Monster…” murmured the masked Assassin. “How can that monster remain alive like that!?”
But Lancer knew better. It went beyond the blades jutting outwards; Berserker’s insides were also replaced with enchanted metal. The more she was wounded, the more difficult to kill she became.
Endurance Rank EX.
Battle Continuation Rank EX.
And the more inhuman she became, the higher her Magic Resistance rose.
This was the combined effect of Berserker’s unfathomable Noble Phantasm.
It moved. Berserker could no longer use her own feet, but the sphere rolled even faster than her feet had ever moved.
“Momu!”
“
Qiánwăng Tŕishān
Vanguard to Mount Tai
”
The wrecking ball of doom crashed against the barrier created by Momu’s Noble Phantasm. Lancer Chiyou was pushed, barrier and all, until she was pinned between a sturdy temple wall and the unstoppable Berserker.
The wrecking ball of blades slashed and scratched the barrier dozens of times every second, each impact an attack with Strength Rank A+.
The barrier cracked, and the Master felt a dire chill travel down his legs and making them feeble. He held on to Artoria, who solemnly watched her fellow Lancer’s last stand.
“Your Highness, King Pendragon!” shouted the masked Lancer, all the while the space between wall and blades became smaller and smaller. “Your Noble Phantasm can defeat her! Make sure you do not miss! It was an honor!”
“…’twas a good fight, Your Majesty, Empress Momu.”
After fully pressing her back against the wall, Momu’s eyes fell on the young man. His composed expression in front of the dire scene, even as he clenched his fists in frustration, filled her heart with pride. It would be a lie to claim they had become close, but like a certain Japanese monster slayer, her motherliness was her defining feature.
“Fufu, you are such a cute child. Keep doing your very best, alright?”
Leaving those words behind, she was crushed. The sphere of blades crashed on the wall, effortlessly shattering it and leaving in its wake a trail of shining fragments of a broken Saint Graph.
A low growl vibrated out of Lancer Alter’s throat, and the Master shared her feelings of disappointment with themselves. Rhongomyniad was the answer, but that Berserker was not stupid; she would either dodge it or just crush Artoria beneath countless blades before she could release it.
“Haa…I believe it is my turn, then,” a tired-sounding Assassin stepped forward, gripping her longsword. Both Master and Servant stared in alarm at the dark figure slowly walking ahead.
“Wha…what are you thinking!?” Artoria voiced her Master’s thoughts. “There’s no way you can—”
“Refrain from stating the obvious, Your Highness. Unlike you, however, this humble soldier does have a plan. You two should start running.”
With that, she dashed forward. Step One: grab its attention.
“Sisters! To battle! We fight for what is right and just! We fight for those who could not fight! We accept no surrender! We take no prisoners! We demand nothing but the right to spill the blood of the wicked!”
Eleven wisp-like features, like smoke clones of the original Assassin, coalesced into being around Chiyou.
“
La justice de douze chevaliers
Sisters, Let us Mete Out Justice Together
”
The flash of twelve simultaneous strikes. A moment later, there was only one Assassin, and she was jumping out of the way of the rolling ball of jutting blades.
“I know I didn’t expect much, but I’m still depressed!” cried out the Assassin in black at the ineffectiveness of her Noble Phantasm. Nevertheless, she did grab Berserker’s attention.
Step Two: Run like hell.
“Catch me if you ca—wah, wah, wah! Too fast! Too fast!”
An acrobatic leap to the top of a single-floor residence saved her life from ending just like Momu’s. Lancer Alter watched the rapidly departing form of that black Assassin, the rolling Chiyou in close pursuit.
“Where is she—”
The Master’s very brief moment of laughter—the most he would allow himself in the current circumstances—stopped the question in Artoria’s throat.
“Master?”
“I got it. She knows what she’s doing, Artoria. We gotta find Caster Chiyou.”
***********************************
The one who had introduced herself as “Caster” had spent her time in solitude, seated by the bonfire with her eyes closed, resting her hands on the ground to get a feel for the structural status of that timeline. She looked beyond the wrecked state of the local Human Order; she was looking more at Gaia than at Alaya. Would the Planet act to hasten the pruning of this ravaged timeline, or would it cling to existence alongside humanity?
Of course, the land also gave her the impressions of the deeds done by those standing on it. She was already aware of Caster Chiyou’s victory over her Rider counterpart. She knew of the defeat of Cacus, and of the second Servant summoned using the same Grail and Cacus’ Saint Graph as a catalyst.
Caster opened her eyes when she felt people rapidly approaching her lonely bonfire. Her lovely Assassin returned, and she brought company.
Rolling company.
That was not expected, and Caster was not fond of the unexpected.
“Assassin, explain yourself to us at once—”
“Tag!” Assassin only patted the albino Caster’s shoulder, not bothering to stop and just running past her. “You’re it, Master!”
And suddenly, a strange outgrowth of blades loomed over her. Dozens of long, gleaming, blood-stained blades, all of them growing out of a central mass that could barely be recognized as originally human-shaped. Two baleful red eyes declared the monster’s simple driving force: to destroy everything on its path.
Caster raised a single hand to make a dismissive gesture.
“
Abbada ke dabra.”
A simple incantation in the ancient Chaldean language, and everything in a ten-meter-radius sphere directly in front of Caster was annihilated. Only a hemispherical crater remained of the empty plaza in which Caster Chiyou had lit her bonfire.
That, and a fist-sized lump of flesh quickly growing back into a vaguely humanoid shape. Then the blades began to burst out again.
“That did not destroy you. Most impressive. Accept our praise with pride.”
Getting back on her feet, Caster invoked her signature longsword. With a wordless gesture, it became wrapped in flames.
“However, we are most displeased. We abhor pointless violence, especially when directed towards our glorious selves.”
The rolling sphere of blades began to rise in a spiraling trajectory, using the shape of the crater to gather additional momentum before resuming its terrible onslaught.
“Assassin is not to be punished, for she is weak, and is thusly entitled to do battle in the manner of the weak. If anything, her ingenuity is to be commended. She has our praise. As for you, worthless beast…”
Upon stabbing the tip of her sword on the edge of the crater, its entire surface changed into quicksand. It quickly held to the blades brought to a halt, and tons of sand spilled over Chiyou, smothering her as it dragged her back to the bottom of the pit.
“It so happens that Hebrew words for flame, blade, to move in a circle, sand, and enclose all have the same value in Gematria. Be smothered, then, by the additive accumulation of concepts.”
Of course, the opponent was Chiyou. Howling for the first time since the moment of her summoning, the unstoppable Berserker slowly surged back out of the quicksand, dragging her aberrant body against the downward flow. Caster shook her head at the sight.
“We acknowledge your physical might. But we shall not! Be! Defied!
Gevurah!”
A second stab on the ground imbued the quicksand with even greater strength, finally overcoming Chiyou’s efforts and pulling it back into its depths.
“Know your place, mongrel.” Caster said before turning her back to her work. Some distance away, the Master of Chaldea stood with Lancer Alter and the black Assassin, awed by a form of magecraft he had never witnessed before.
“This is merely a slap on the wrist to the scoundrel who dared assault me, for I am supremely merciful,” declared the albino Caster. “If you wish to put down that beast for good, do so yourselves. We shall not engage in further intervention.”
She walked past the group, noticing the approaching figure of the Caster-class Chiyou.
“Assassin. Let this not happen again.”
The Servant in question wisely chose to remain silent. And they were left alone, looking at the immense vortex of quicksand.
“Artoria.”
“Master.”
“I will return to Chaldea. Our enemy is Assassin Chiyou.”
“Yes,” said Artoria plainly, not minding Assassin’s snort and Chiyou Caster’s blatant surprise. Instead, she looked at the young man, who returned her steel gaze with a firm, collected expression. It brought a small smirk to her face.
“As expected of the Master I chose. You do understand.”
“Of course.” He raised his right hand, revealing his glowing Command Seals. “Artoria,
defeat Berserker.”
“Hmph. Of course,” was Artoria’s reply as she allowed the infusion of magical energy to course throughout her body. “da Vinci.”
Response from Chaldea took unusually long.
“Yes, yes, da Vinci here~”
“How are things over there?” asked the young Master.
“
Pretty bad~”
It almost made him roll his eyes. With a wry smile, the Master shook his head and delivered instructions.
“Whatever, give me the details after you shift me back.”
A second of silence.
“
Artoria is not coming.” It was not a question from Miss da Vinci.
“Even if the final boss went all the way to Chaldea, we cannot leave this singularity to its devices. Artoria will finish up matters here.”
Master and Servant glanced at each other. It was as good an excuse as any. They both knew they did not fool da Vinci, but it made things easier for all.
“We’re truly fortunate Chiyou hasn’t stumbled upon this room,” commented the genius, and the Master knew she was referring to the coffins.
“Rayshift up and running in…now.”
As the space behind him rippled and distorted, the young man turned to address all the Servants.
“I’ll…do something about Chiyou Assassin.”
“You don’t have a choice,” retorted the masked Assassin.
“Chaldea must not fall, boy.”
After nodding at the petite Caster, he looked at Artoria one last time. Whatever it was he found in her inexpressive eyes, it satisfied him, for he nodded one last time and turned her back to the three women.
“…goodbye, Artoria.”
“Until next time, Master.”
Moments later, the three female Servants had turned their attention back to the vortex of quicksand. They watched silently and solemnly, perhaps coming to terms with the challenge upon them—a mostly pointless battle, now that the main actors had moved to a different battlefield.
“You do realize we are not going to survive this, King Arthur?”
“Speak for yourself, Assassin,” harshly retorted the Storm King of the Wild Hunt.
But this battle was no longer about fixing a singularity, nor was it about protecting the Human Order, nor was it about saving a city that clearly was already beyond salvation. It wasn’t even about taking revenge for the horse.
“In this battle, I stake my pride as a king. I will no longer be strung along this singularity.”
For herself, and only for herself. Artoria Pendragon Lancer Alter was now driven by that single, selfish purpose.
“We were wandering on the palm of Assassin Chiyou’s hand, but now she has discarded us. I fight here because I choose to fight here. Because I cannot forgive myself if I do not end this farce of a singularity with my own two hands.”
Originally Posted by Gally
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