4
Now I want to see all of these but I know that Daneel had a lot of fun writing Lily, so I'm doing this so he can have all the self-indulgence he can fit in the next update.
4
Now I want to see all of these but I know that Daneel had a lot of fun writing Lily, so I'm doing this so he can have all the self-indulgence he can fit in the next update.
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
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Beast's Lair Discord Server For Fate Quests
Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
4
And damn, so much for my indecisive and intentional lack of saving ever since Javier rejected his humanity.
Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
4 my fellows
4
Tell us of the tragedy of Lancer Lily the Wise
Last edited by Half-Blood Master; January 7th, 2020 at 05:41 PM.
True Rider
4
4
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
Now Revamped!
3.
I am not that much interested in Lily and far more in how people are reacting to the Singularity being created to be honest.
3
I'd love to see some more world building and aren't super interested in seeing Lily's final fight.
2
M-mm..
Difficult. I do really wonder how Lily’s fight resolved since we ended up not directly seeing anything that’s gone on with her or the Herald leading up to the latest scenes. And all the other choices are rather tense situations...
That being said, I’m quite curious about 3. All the others are logical vantage points for the focus to return to. But 3 stands out because we haven’t seen much outside the Singularity and its inclusion as a possible digression presents a bit of a mystery.
Why now?
Last edited by Sunny; January 10th, 2020 at 05:15 AM.
3
3. Let's take a rare look at the world outside the Lost Singularity.
Honestly I want to see how the rest of the world is doing. Like how are others reacting to the Singularity?
(BGM)
The path of magecraft is not for everyone. How many find themselves stuck in a morass and simply give up? How many meet an unsurpassable wall that makes them decide it’s not worth it? How many unlucky ones reach too far, too fast, and find their wings fall apart like the tale of Icarus? Who knows how many break?
Lestari Elliwyn broke at the age of thirteen.
At the young age of eleven, she met a strange woman dressed like a maid, who filled her impressionable mind with dreams of magic beyond her wildest imagination and the ambitions of her family line.
At the age of thirteen, her attempt to follow the path that strange maid showed her almost destroyed a significant part of Devon county. She still does not know how the incident was kept to wraps, and she would rather not know. Therein lies the fearsome darkness of the Mages’ Association.
Ever since that night, she is a broken mage. The damage to her circuits healed quickly, but the effects of the terrible magics she unleashed that night so thoroughly messed up her metaphysiology that she was rendered like an infant who has never cast a spell in her life. She had to start completely from zero, by relearning how to engage her circuits and get them to circulate magical energy. To rebuild herself as a magus, step by step.
It is for this reason, then (?), that she lays spread-eagled on the grass of a nearby park, sweating bullets and panting as if she just came out of a marathon. She did not, but it was close.
“You…you’re killing me here.”
Lily, who happens to be wearing matching sweatshirt and pants, looks down at the complaining teenager with utmost disdain.
“Sit-ups. Two repetitions of twenty.”
“Why!?” The outcry devolves into a groan that leaves Lily utterly unimpressed.
“…do you really need me to explain it?”
“Well, yes! I thought you were going to help me with my training, not subject me to military drill!”
A grunt echoes out of Lily’s throat. Her next action is to lie prone on the grass next to the other girl, squeezing her hands behind her head in a clear sign she intends to do sit-ups as well.
“Come on, slowly.”
Lestari groans but acquiesces, and the two begin their painstakingly slow repetitions. Lily seems to have little trouble speaking while pushing her body.
“How long have you been studying the art? Eight, ten years? And now that you have to start again, basically from zero, how many years do you intend to take to get back to your former level? If you train like you have been all these years, that means you will need another ten years, if not more. Is that what you want?”
It is not as if Lestari had not considered this, of course. She is no idiot. However, she could not figure out what “training harder” would imply—she already dedicates her life to her family’s magecraft, and there are only so many hours in a day.
“The magic circuit is a holistic metaphysical organ,” further explains Lily without cue. “Every alteration of your physical body has an effect on your circuits. In other words, practicing magecraft is not the only way to improve their performance. In fact, it is not as efficient as you may think, considering how time consuming it is.”
“So you telling me…” murmurs Lestari between pants. “That you did this kind of exercise?”
“What?” Lily looks and sounds like the magus girl just said something colossally stupid. “Of course not. I am a princess and a High Priestess; I did almost no physical labor in my life.”
“Oh, you’re so goddamn…”
“Besides, we did not use magic circuits. Even if the gods were no longer physically present, in my time we still manipulated the World directly through the gift of divine favor.”
“…right.”
There is a glint in the Servant’s eye. Lestari has no doubt Lily knows exactly what she is thinking.
“But this is not about me, Hegemon of Electrons. You may have reason to doubt the validity of my advice because I do not use magic circuits, but do remember I have been in this world for almost thirty years now. I know plenty about you magi and your ways.”
“No, that’s not…”
Lestari hates that she has to surrender to this woman, but both the facts and her feelings do not lie. There is no way in hell Lestari could doubt this Servant’s knowledge, skill, or intent to help her. Even if she is a dick about it at times. Well, both of them are.
“Anyway, I still think I should work on my magecraft nevertheless. You know, getting my body used to the casting process again.”
“Of course.”
Lily’s agreement emboldens the magus girl.
“So, well, the pairing of Witnesses is straightforward enough, and I already had a good enough grasp of it before…well, everything. So I thought I might as well focus on that from the beginning—”
“No matter how many times I hear you speak about it, focusing on the Witnesses and dismissing the rest of the board feels wasteful to me.” Lily makes a dismissive gesture before Lestari can protest or point out the benefits to her casting speed and efficiency. “Oh, this is merely me wishing to project my preferences onto you. I am a ritualist, so I am more adept at complex designs with lots of moving parts. Do not mind me.”
Lestari nodded quickly between the last sit-ups. She, who only uses the complete geomantic procedure for her hacking technique based on recursive iteration, understands that the capabilities of her system go well beyond that. Perhaps she is too results-oriented in her intent to simplify the technique to achieve a complete spell as quickly and efficiently as possible. Perhaps she measures her ability as a magus in the number of “concrete spells” in her repertoire, and the easiest way to build that catalog is through straightforward combinations of two geomantic figures.
Lestari has already seen what Lily can do with Geomancy. She has seen her assemble complete charts, with all fifteen figures, in a split instant, creating the foundations for major rituals that would take orthodox magi days if not entire months of labor in the blink of an eye. It is nothing short of humbling, but she cannot expect any less from a luminary from the Age of Gods. If anything, it reminds Lestari of the fact that, throughout history, there have been spellweavers even greater than Lily. The thought is terrifying.
“Can you teach me?” Lestari all but whispers, for it feels like a defeat somehow, to say those words. “To build grand geomantic rituals in your style.”
“No, I will not,” quickly answers the Servant, who then turns her body so that she properly faces Lestari.
“You are your own person and your own magus, and this geomancy is your magecraft, not mine. The shape this system will take is to be built by you and only you. After all, if you do nothing but follow my path, you will never surpass me.”
Lily’s smile is sincere, but it does not reach her eyes glowing with the flame of conviction. Lestari thus knows the Servant is saying something she considers of critical importance. Maybe even something that defines the Servant, Lancer Lily, as a person.
“I can tell you how I think you can improve your magecraft. I can tell you how I believe you can become a better person. But I will never, ever, try to make you something other than yourself.”
Lily take a moment to look down, at her own hands clasped on her lap. To Lestari, it makes the other girl seem uncharacteristically small. For that sole instant, Lily does not seem a powerful magus, and it makes Lestari want to ask if there is something wrong. However, she is not swift enough. Lily’s head turns back up, to look at Lestari with the serenity that only comes from complete confidence in oneself.
“I will never try to change you,” she declares. “But I hope that, when I am no longer in this world, you can think back on me and feel I helped you become the best possible you.”
Something glimmers in the Servant’s irises, and the young magus bears the certainty that she just missed noticing something important. Again, the moment is just too short.
“With that said, good job completing the sit-ups. Now get up, run fifty meters as fast as you can and jog back here. Do that fifteen times.”
“You are a slave driver!”
Lily nods. “Yes, I was accustomed to having slaves tend to all my needs. What is your point?”
Lestari Elliwyn can only groan.
“By the way, Nina will live with you from tomorrow onwards. Register her in the Clock Tower as your assistant.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
*** ***
Seven days before Fimbulwinter, 14:03 (BST)
A certain dormitory, London, United Kingdom
Lestari Elliwyn is pulled out of the embrace of Morpheus by her ringtone. She needs only an instant to realize she dozed off while studying—a consequence of taking to her tomes straight after lunch—and what follows is masterful multitasking as she wipes the drool off her chin, looks around for witnesses to eliminate (there are none, of course), and checks the caller ID before pulling the device to her ear.
“Nina?”
“I’m staying with you for a while.”
“What happened to ‘hello’?”
“Mother’s gone.”
“Yes, that’s a thing she does.”
“That’s not—I mean, I think this time’s for good. She left to confront her Alter Ego in Valparaíso.”
It bothers Lestari that her heart skips a beat. Almost five years later, the one in the maid uniform still awes her and terrifies her. To think Lily has finally taken the battle to their enemy…and she did not tell her. A part of Lestari is very angry, but the part of her she hates the most feels mostly relieved. The dream—no, the memory—remains vivid in her head, and now it almost feels like a dark omen. What will happen if Lily fails? Who did she take with her? Marco for sure, but who else?
“Wait, Valparaíso? Like, in Peru?”
“Please defenestrate yourself, you ignorant nincompoop.”
The world keeps on running outside the Lost Singularity. There are some who are eagerly waiting for the results of the bizarre ritual taking place in Valparaíso. There are some who are keeping a close eye on the legacy created by The Maid’s actions, for she is not the only one to whom the term “Human God” makes any sort of sense.
Lestari Elliwyn does not know this yet, but she really should be more worried about herself.
(BGM STOP)
*** ***Beyond Their Sight 07
In front of the Chivato’s Cave
Day 03
Evening Phase – 10.5
Severe Cold (-32 °C/-26 °F)
(BGM)
Lancer Lily arrives mere seconds after a terrible crash that engulfs the vicinity in snow dust. She clicks her tongue, abandoning the hope to catch her target by surprise as it exited the cave. Setting up a trap at the cave’s opening would have been more up her alley. Her legend does not include any tales of martial exploits, and she is indeed unsuited for straightforward combat. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Her natural awareness of other Servants warns her of the presence before her before she catches the first glimpse of the massive silhouette and before she hears the first low, warning growl. Indeed, she can feel its hostility even before the glow of its bestial eyes pierces through the veil of floating snow. Lily can only guess what pushed the beast to this point: waking up in an unfamiliar cave in chains, most likely. This creature accepts the physical leash from one and only one master. Lily understands that rage and anguish to a degree. She has forgotten the names of all the foolish men who though she was to be stepped on.
The beast snarls and that is all it takes for the floating snow to be scattered away, revealing the beast in all its furious awesomeness.
“Hound of Hel, I would rather you settled down on your own…”Spoiler:
The hound snarls and bites her air, its eyes glowing with unsuppressed rage and bloodlust. It fills Lily with sadness.
“…but I guess that would be asking for too much. Right now you see everything that moves as an enemy.”
Therein lies the problem: she has no one-hit solution to this issue. Her anti-spirit magic requires preparation and time she does not have. More precisely, time the beast Servant will not give her. Of course, Lily is not the type to lament that which she does not have.
This is an unwinnable battle. She is intelligent enough to figure out exactly what she needs to do, and she also realizes there is absolutely no way she can pull it off without destroying herself.
The hound makes the first move, and thus Lily begins to lose.
Its lunge is like lightning—speed born not of fleetness of foot, but of sheer muscle power. A multi-ton beast that mows everything in its path. The hound of Hel is a storm of fury and sharp teeth.
Spoiler:
Her attempt at a dodge is pitifully slow in comparison. The storm of teeth strikes her flank and flings her away like a worthless rag.Spoiler:
“Being a Lancer is the worst,” is her only complain as she struggles back to her feet, the right side of her boy already bleeding profusely. If she were not a Servant, she would verily worry about infection. Her eyes and the gritting of her teeth express the pain wracking her, but she bears it silently and without complaint. She is simply too accustomed to the certain image she learned to project at all times.
“What’s with that deplorable reinforcement, me…?”
It is not just the limitation of her capabilities in her current Saint Graph. Her usual means to do magecraft feels restrained by the World itself. The nature of the singularity should not be enough to cause this, so she can only guess her Alter Ego is up to her bothersome ways. In that case, Lily has to find a workaround. She feels almost insulted that Alter Ego thinks something like this can even slow her down. Of course, it is pretentious to think like that while bleeding her guts out.
“If there’s no point in trying to dodge, then—!”
Lily cannot plan for the actions of third parties, at least not without preparing divinations beforehand. This is doubly true when the third party in question has Presence Concealment. Therefore, she is unprepared for the tackle that pushes her out of the hound’s rampage. She hears herself hitting the soft ground, but she also hears somebody else crashing on something hard joined by the sound of too many bones breaking.Spoiler:
(BGM STOP)
She knows. Even before her eyes turn in that direction, she already knows.
(BGM)Spoiler:
“Stupid girl!” she yells/screams/cries, body pushing her forward and steps pulling her towards Liria Colhuán’s utterly broken form. The hound does not appreciate Lily’s sudden celerity.
“Away with you!” roars the petite girl at the encroaching maws. The great beast finds itself in the jaws of an even greater upsurge of soil like some sort of prehistoric predator. Lily cares not for the hound’s struggle, instead kneeling by Liria’s shattered body, her face a mask of disharmonious rage and anguish.
“Why!? Of all the stupid things…!”
A single blow completely obliterated Liria Colhuán. It is not merely a consequence of Garmr’s overwhelming physical prowess; Servant Assassin has a conceptual disadvantage against dogs. There could be no other result from a confrontation with the Herald of Fimbulwinter, that remarked in the Poetic Edda as “the greatest of hounds”: both the wicked demonic Servant and the hopeless human vessel now lay dying, blood already creating a scarlet cradle of snow beneath her limp body.
The hound breaks out of its trap in a roar of fury. Lily makes a vague gesture with her left hand, and the hound’s frustration grows as it finds itself in a vice grip a second time.
“I just…I thought I…” A weak, incomplete fragment of a sentence is all Liria can afford. It is all Lily needs; she can complete it in her head. Her jaw goes rigid as she struggles with her own words, her own thoughts. There are so many things she could say, so many reasons to scold her, so little time.
“Like I need the kindness of a cheap whore…!” she manages to gasp out. Liria can nonetheless perceive the difference between the words and what shines in Lily’s moist eyes. When she struggles to smile, Lily takes her limp hand in both of hers, only letting go of one to entrap the Hound of Hel inside yet another vice of compacted soil.
Lancer Lily comes to terms with herself, realizing that this whole time she still sought the means to survive. She still believed she had to somehow overcome the Hound of Hel and survive. She still believed she had to confront Alter Ego, even if she is also a realist who acknowledges her chances to defeat her in battle are very small.
“That’s right; I should know better than this,” she says to herself as she rises back to her feet, just in time to renew Garmr’s entrapment. “Better leave the goddess-bashing to the goddess-bashing expert. I will do the things I am better suited to do, and the things I want to do.”
Garmr breaks out yet again, roaring as angrily as ever. Every iteration of Lily’s trap lasts less and less, for the hound’s bestial instinct is also the instinct of a warrior. It is learning exactly how much of its monstrous strength it needs to release itself.
The hound leaps and is promptly caught in another maw of earth. It roars, muscles swell, and a single push is all it takes to break out, flinging pieces of rock in every direction; some cannonballs, some darts and knives. Lily is struck by a barrage of her own making and knocked to the ground.
It is not only the Herald who is strong. Lily herself is not well practiced in combat magic. Her specialty are major rituals: procedures that demand lengthy preparations over a considerable period. Things like exorcisms, purifications and divinations; grand magic that bestowed divine auspice upon the land and its people. Her base skill is enough to match any modern magus, but straight combat against a martial Heroic Spirit is asking too much of a ceremonial priest whose techniques demand time and effort for their potent effects.
(BGM STOP)
On the other hand, Lancer Lily is most decidedly not your run-of-the-mill priestess. Furthermore, she has spent a few years with a girl who is more into that kind of “needlessly bombastic art”, as Lily herself describes combat magic.
The hound charges; its body is a hurricane of rage and teeth and death. It will devour Lily in the blink of an eye. However, the girl has already dipped a finger on her wounds and flung the blood away, the droplets floating and gathering in a specific configuration.Spoiler:
(BGM)Carcer
An explosively loud, yet low-pitched sound, like the clapping of two giant stone hands or the closing of a mausoleum’s doors. The trap is at least twice the size of the hound this time; a gargantuan mound of earth that rises to swallow it whole. Lily only needs a single geomantic figure to gain the valuable seconds she needs. Slowly, struggling against her wounds, the small Servant stands once more.
“Alright…that girl’s silly system works well enough for this. Then let’s go with Cauda Draconis, Carcer, Conjunctio and Via for the ‘Mothers’—!”
(SFX)
The air vibrates. The land moans. The world receives the hound’s cry and bemoans its end. The howl itself is fear, the omen poison to the hearts of the living. Lily is a Servant: one of the dead with an even stronger connection to death through one of her Personal Skills. Therefore, the howl does not hamper her, and she receives it with her usual unflappable mien. She cannot react to hearing Liria’s choked gasp before fear and blood loss pull the heavily wounded Assassin into catatonia, for Lily cannot take her eyes off the hound that effortlessly walks out of its prison unmade. The howl that announces the end of the world is also that which breaks the hound’s fetters and sets it free to fight in Ragnarök.
Lily feels the wind pick up and the temperature drop; magical weather conjured by the howl of the endtimes. It is the wind of doom that takes away all benediction, for the time of death and only death has come.
“Not good…yet helpful in a way.”
There is no time: Liria is in danger, and the hound as it is right now knows no other thing but to slay everything in front of it. Of course, she never planned for a long battle.
“Alright, come and kill me.”
Garmr does precisely that.
The small Servant’s form all but disappears. Only her ankles and feet remain visible, thread-like streams of trickling blood now adorning once flawless skin. Instead of dripping into the soft ground, however, droplets of blood leap off Lily’s skin, ascending gently like dandelion seeds. The hound in its self-inflicted madness can only see it as a new threat. Neither it nor the unconscious Liria yet feel the magical energy in circulation—the technique is too subtle, too masterful for anything other than another top-class magic user to perceive.Spoiler:
The jaws move; the beast bites and bites, and the sounds of teeth piercing through flesh reverberate even through the magical blizzard, yet a strange tension rises along with the horrific performance. The flow of magic intensifies even as Lily’s life should be fading away. Again, the earth hums, but it is no longer a lamentation at the impending endtimes. It is a lasting murmur; one that might have been there the whole time, echoing for eons, but it is only now that Lily’s magic makes it perceivable.
Then, a rumble. From inside the hound. As if a stick of dynamite had exploded in its gut. A moment later, the great beast is a good ten meters away from a girl so bloodied it makes no sense that she still stands. Only magic could make such a thing possible.
“Good instinct,” murmurs the girl covered in her own blood mixed with dog saliva. Her whole body is pocked with bite wounds. Her clothes are barely recognizable as anything more than drags sticking to her swollen skin. “Tearing you apart from the inside would have been too easy.”
The hound desperately looks and sniffs around, paying less attention to Lily than perhaps it should.
“Are you wondering how I made it through your Magic Resistance? Ah, probably not.” Indeed, the Herald is not of a mindset to meditate on such things. “Nonetheless, the answer is right here.”
Lily’s blood has arranged itself into a geomantic array. When it begins to emit an eerie luminescence, more of the blood Lily spilled leaps into the air to create reproductions of this arrangement.Spoiler:
“So twenty-four at the macroscale is my limit as a Lancer,” muses the small Servant upon counting the final number of arrays at a glance. “Hmm. It is a good, auspicious number.”
For all the damage she has received, for all that she looks that she is about to (and by all means she should) drop dead, Lily appears in complete control of herself and the situation. She is calm and confident, because now they are playing by her rules.
Ritual magic demands time, effort and resources. The expected results are great, so the involvement necessary for its completion is only proportionate. More often than not, such rituals also require multiple participants well trained to perform together under great pressure, for the cost of failure is also proportionate to the desired results. Ritualists in general, both ancient and modern, are poorly prepared for the very different demands of magical combat.
However, the same cannot be said of the priestess above all priestesses. The one all who came after her looked up to and sought to imitate in reverent awe. What she lacks in training or actual experience, she makes up for with sheer, transcendental genius.
Garmr snarls and charges yet again.
“Carcer plus Puella.”
Two vaguely hand-shaped lumps of hard soil raise to meet around the hound’s neck; a leash and a prison reinforced by magic—the hound’s howl denies Lily herself any magical blessings, but the same does not apply to the land itself. Garmr does not even need to howl a second time. Neck muscles tighten and thicken, and the beast sets itself free with a show of sheer physical might.
“Via plus Puer plus Acquisitio.”
Things that can only be described as ethereal spears emerge from the bloody constructs to strike the beast from all directions. Seemingly unaffected—or too much of a rampaging beast to care—, the hound opens its many-toothed maw once again.
“Via plus Conjunctio plus Cauda Draconis.”
Lily manages to leap back, sinking into one of the many leafless trees dead by the cold that promptly becomes splinters beneath the beast’s claws. A second later, a dozen more spears strike the hound’s right flank and successfully manage to make it stumble this time, just as Lily steps out of another tree behind it. Naturally, the Herald perceives her new location right away.
As if responding to the glowing blood, the earth too glows, itself an eerie blue-purple. The magical winter unleashed by the hound’s howl still rages, but the torrential snow sublimates into mist the moment it touches the ground. The humming of the earth intensifies, until it becomes like countless voices speaking in unison in a tongue indecipherable. When a ring of blue flames encloses their clearing in the urban forest, the hound releases something like a yelp of surprise.
“You realize it, do you not?” says Lily, never taking her eyes off the hound even as she struggles to keep them open against her swollen brows and the blood trickling down her forehead. Her body glows as well, acting as a conduit for the excessive amounts of magical energy needed to fuel the spells she is performing in unison. Smoke pours out of her many wounds as she literally cooks herself from the inside out.
“You already have an affinity with this singularity of cold and death, but now you feel it more strongly, do you not?”
Every single geomantic array consists of fifteen figures. Each figure is therefore both a single-action spell and a line in a fifteen-line spellcasting. However, the medium for a geomantic ritual, as it name says, is the earth. In this case, the iron in the blood. Inside every single droplet, iron molecules have also rearranged themselves into the same geomantic array. This is the “fractal grand ritual” improvised by the genius priestess from the Age of Gods, who has had decades to soak herself in the knowledge of the modern era.
“These ritual grounds are now a netherworld.”
Each geomantic figure contributes to the grand ritual, yet at the same time acts as a single-action spell on its own, or it can be combined with other figures to produce new impromptu effects. It is this multipurpose utilization of geomantic figures that no modern-day magus is currently able to replicate.
The glowing fog rolls ominously and the humming of the earth becomes the bleak murmurs of countless souls long departed. The hound still sways its head from side to side, conflicted between its instincts warning it of danger and the deep sense of nostalgia that takes over it. It is not its netherworld, but it is a netherworld, and at such it still feels a little like home.
The same blue flames drawing the perimeter of the ritual grounds now dance around Lily’s body, licking open wounds without care or mercy. The girl just grits her teeth and brings her hands forward, closing them one above the other as if she were holding a staff or a polearm—it is a rote, prepared motion, not unlike magi who use specific words to initiate their spellcasting.
(BGM STOP)
“I, who was deprived of the warmth of Dilimbabbar, entrust myself to you, Maiden of Ganzer.”
(BGM)
When Lily finally closes her eyes, the other four eyes present immediately turn to her. Garmr can feel it all too acutely. Even Liria is jolted back into awareness by it: the indescribable certainty that there is somebody else present. A fourth person—no, a fourth entity—has arrived to this battlefield.
Her steps cannot be seen, but they can be felt, for every single one of them is a declaration of her sovereignty. Her figure exists in the rolling fog, in the sway of the dead branches stirred by the blizzard winds, and in the murmurs of the dead turned groveling adoration. She is everywhere and nowhere, every passing second her breath and Lily the beacon that anchors her to this artificial reproduction of her kingdom.
The wind rivulets among the trees, its hissing words for Lily’s ears only.Spoiler:
“No, that one is not for you to claim. Thank you for your concern,” she says neither to Garmr nor to Liria. For whatever reason, there is a small smile on Lily’s swollen face.
Tongues of blue flame dance before the young priestess’ eyes, which she promptly struggles to roll under swollen and bleeding eyelids.
“Please do spare me your negativity, for my work is without flaw. She can perceive what I am doing, but she cannot peer inside these ritual grounds.”
A flicker of red-blue lightning jumps around Lily’s shoulders.
“So you know the Dancer is here as well. Your words are reassuring. Now, with your magnanimous permission, I shall…yes? Oh, the spear? I gave that away years ago. Yes.”
The one-sided conversation ends. Right after, a storm rises. Wind painted gold surges outwards in every direction to match and push away the hound’s blizzard. The circle of flames around them rises into a veritable wall, wholly separating—and thus detaching—the rest of the singularity from this tiny netherworld.
Power, magic, authority—all these things seem to seep out as godly radiance from Lily’s body. For it is no longer a human or a Heroic Spirit who stands facing the Hound of Hel, nor presenting her back to Liria Colhuán.
Creating the imitation netherworld does not need nearly as much complexity as Lily has deployed through her fractal geomancy. The twenty-four blood arrays, and the iron molecule arrays hidden within each of them, are necessary to beckon a goddess and to reproduce a Noble Phantasm using the methods of orthodox magecraft, albeit deployed to an extent never conceived by any orthodox mage.Spoiler:
“Guardian hound,” she speaks, and the beast lowers its head even as it growls, instinct telling it that the speaker is not the same girl it has been trying to kill all this time. “I know who you are, and the pain that overcomes you.”
The growls intensify as the beast shows its bloodstained fangs.
“Do you loathe me because I remind you of your master long departed?”
The hound barks loudly and furiously, seemingly disapproving of the words. Its posture suggests an imminent attack.
“I have nothing against you, but this child has called upon my power to stop your rampage before you unmake yourself. We can do this the proper way, or the unbecoming way my shameless sister would choose.”
The hound charges. The goddess sighs. The hound’s charge ends when the beast loses its balance and hits the ground snout first, its body shaking as if afflicted by seizures.
“Did the Ornament of Heaven not explain it to you? You are a Servant summoned spontaneously by the Singularity itself, and you are sustained by the ambient magical energy; that same magical energy now under my sovereignty as mistress of this netherworld.”
Naturally, the Herald has no ears for such explanations. Its mighty bulk struggles against the magical energy wrecking it from within and hampering its capacity for action. One leg at a time, it plants itself firmly on the ground, no longer charging like a living hurricane, but merely stretching its head and front paws in the hopes to reach the hated enemy.
“So be it, then. Behold the judgment of the Annunaki. In this frigid shrine of the godless moon, you shall know repentance..”Kur Kigal IrkallaElegy of the Goddess Cradling the Moon in her Hands
It is like a flash of lightning, abrupt and blinding. As if every single air particle had been transmuted into energy. As if every single dead in the Valparaíso Area since time immemorial had joined into a lone scream of defiance. As if a scribe deep in the bowels of the earth had crossed the hound’s name out of a list of those welcome in the netherworld. The judgement of the underworld manifests itself a pillar of castigating divine radiance spearing through the ground and striking Garmr from below before expanding to engulf its entire form and most of the ritual area. If the beast is roaring in defiance or howling in pain, it cannot be heard over the shrieking sound of the rampaging energy challenging the heavens themselves in its fury.
The goddess closes her eyes serenely as her medium is unraveled too. As stipulated by the choice of Cauda Draconis and Conjunctio as the first and last figures used in the ritual respectively, this grand spell is the culmination of its caster’s existence, by subjecting her to the same power unleashed upon her opponent. Without her anchor, the goddess cannot manifest. She does not need to any longer, though, for her job is done.
“It flees,” says the goddess of the hound. “Good.”
It is indeed good, for it means it regained its mind enough to choose to flee.
“Now that its rage has been overcome by even greater power, it should know better than to self-destruct. The damage already done to its Saint Graph, however, I cannot restore.”
She is not a goddess of healing, after all.
Still wreathed in the plasma-like pillar of power that is unmaking Lily’s body into scattered motes of light, the goddess turns to look down at Liria Colhuán. The girl lost consciousness at some point, likely overwhelmed by the collapse of her body plus the crippling pressure of the power manifested around her.
“Go on, priestess. Dream your final dream.”
An uncharacteristic, ungodly chuckle escapes Lily’s lips still whole.
“How ironic, that it took my sister denying you the rest of the pantheon for us to finally become compatible with each other. It was a delight to receive your prayer, Ornament of Heaven.”
Inevitably, the goddess spends her last moments gazing in wonder at the last remnants of her power unleashed, now scattered like cherry petals; at the trees not yet uprooted, swaying lifelessly in the sheer cold; the ceilings of buildings just beyond the lifeless forest, and the grey sky only tinted by the distant aurora.
“Really, thank you very much.”
The goddess does not allow herself to blink as she admires the world forever beyond her reach.
*** ***
An Indefinite Location
A jolt of fear strikes Liria Colhuán as she finds herself suddenly on a tall location. The vista before her is as alien as it is awestriking. Where she is because secondary to the more immediate wonder of when she is.
(BGM)
Before her eyes spreads a city built on baked mud-brick, its many buildings arranged along narrow unpaved roads and alleyways; a jigsaw in seeming defiance of any pretensions of proper city planning, smaller and larger buildings all but entangled with each other.Spoiler:
The place upon which she stands appears to be enclosed; a city within the city. Looking down, she can gaze upon many people like ants, bustling here and there with the unmistakable frenzy of urban activity. She sees people gathered in the dozens for the sole apparent purpose of socialization. She sees potters at their work, the trails of white smoke released by ovens, a team of weavers working together on a tapestry as long as ten men, and a woman gesticulating in the universal language of haggling. She sees lines of people clad in linen robes, kilts and skirts carry baskets and jars to groups of men and women adorned with silly-looking conical hats carrying either staves or clay tablets. She sees a line exclusively for farm animals disappearing inside an enclosed structure, and the wide chimney spewing dark smoke that suggests the grim end awaiting those creatures. Above her head, a cruel sun strikes without mercy, but the people of this city are well accustomed to it, and know to avoid it.
It is a place like none Liria knows, probably like none exist in the world she is part of, yet it feels unmistakably human, for the things that define civilization remain unchanged since the dawn of mankind. It is almost offhandedly that she realizes she has her ordinary human hands.
“I don’t know myself,” the much familiar voice suddenly speaks to her right. “Why I’m showing you this.”
Lily stands two steps away, gazing at the same scene, with eyes much different to Liria’s. However, the Chilean has no mind to ponder what goes through the other’s mind. She is confused, relieved and wary, all at the same time. The only certainty is that she wants to hold the other and so she does.
“Stop it. You are infecting me with your flatness,” retorts the ancient Servant in her most offhanded voice.
“Lily! The, the Herald! What happened—!?”
“Well, I died.”
(BGM STOP)
The simple yet certain and effective delivery almost makes Liria’s legs into jelly. She nonetheless needs to hold on to Lily to remain standing. It is chilling. It feels painfully cold, inside her.
“…what?”
(BGM)
“More precisely, what remains of me is solely this dream you are currently experiencing. Once you wake up, I will cease to be completely.”
It feels unreal because the explanation is exactly such. The solidity of Lily’s body in her arms feels reals, but why would Lily lie to her in such a morbid manner?
“…what…?”
“I went well past the limits of my Lancer container by beckoning Lady Ereshkigal, but I did not have the power to overcome the Hound of Hel myself. Furthermore, you were dying, so instead of letting my Saint Graph break apart uselessly, she was kind enough to use it to put yours back together. She is not a healing goddess, but your Servant is a demon of the dead, so there is some affinity there at work.”
Lily seems to be not in a hurry nor bothered by the need to explain things. She is also unbothered by the tightening of the other girl’s embrace. A group of robed men walks around the two girls in two precise rows, seemingly unaware and uncaring of them. Lily watches them walk down the long flight of stairs, her eyes clouding with disdain. Catching herself, the Lancer instead finds it a better idea to return the embrace, albeit clumsily.
“Child, let us sit down.”
“No,” quickly refutes the other, and she at last sounds the apparent age of her body. It makes Lily shake her head a bit.
“I am a Servant who has clung to this world for thirty years. If anything, I well overstayed my welcome. Now, let us sit.”
“No.”
“You have no issue acquiescing to the men you spread your legs for on a daily basis, yet you cannot perform a simple request from me?”
For that, she gets a half-pout, half-glare from Liria, who nonetheless does as told. They sit, shoulder to shoulder, and watch the bustling city for a while.
(BGM)
“So…I take it this was your home,” Liria bring up in a morose voice. It is a lame attempt at making conversation—or rather, at ensuring that Lily keeps talking. That she can still feel her touch and hear her voice.
“It was the place where I lived for most of my life, yes. However, it was not home.” Lily shakes her head despondently (At the city? At herself?).
“It was never home.”
The words carry an unspeakable weight, but it is several millennia too late to offer comfort to this young-looking Servant. Liria is no longer looking down at the city. Her eyes are on Lily’s profile, somber yet serene, apparently unbothered by her imminent doom.
“How strange,” Lily finally speaks again. “This place puts me in a foul mood, but we are nonetheless here, which implies that, to some degree, I wanted to see this.”
It is possible to see the sadness and gloom dissipate from Lily’s expression, leaving only the calm serenity that would suite a face much older.
“Perhaps I needed to see this. To remember my mistakes, the things I did not do, the lessons nobody taught me, before facing you one last time.”
When she turns her head to face Liria’s tearful gaze, Lily wears the smallest smile.
“It is time to weigh anchor, Liria. From this moment onwards, you sail on your own.”
It is a crushing blow. Liria feels every phoneme, for she knows the thousand truths Lily has merely implied. Her lip trembles. Her face cracks. She wants to look away, but she really does not want to, and the result is just a twenty-seven-years old wreck pouring tears in front of the one she loves as a…what, exactly?
“Your mother is dead.”
Yes, Rosa Colhuán is dead. The woman who sold her virginity to the highest bidder. Liria hated her, but also pathetically relied on her because she did not know better. Her mother was her North Star, even if it only guided her deep into the abyss.
“I can no longer hold your hand.”
Yes, Lily will leave her too. Liria knows very well that she has relied on the Servant all these years. If her mother is the one who directed her everyday actions, Lily was the one who helped her get through them. Lily was her rock, but no longer.
“And that child will not save you.”
Yes, Javier Lucero is not her “prince on a white horse”. She has to let go of that baseless delusion that he would one day emerge from the waves to sweep her off her feet and take her away from her shitty life. He never had reason to; he does not even remember her. And that guy has plenty of issues of his own to resolve before he can start thinking of saving others.
“This is how it is,” Lily declares without mercy. “Childhood is over for you, Liria.”
Yes, time waits for nobody. It is not the child who matures and blossoms into an adult; it is the world that decides that you are not allowed to be a child anymore.
“I have a few pieces of general advice to give you, but before that a single plea.”
Lily takes Liria’s hands in her own and they are soon wet with the Villarrican girl’s tears.
“Do things. Liria, go out and experience the world. Strive for and achieve things. Care not for the afterlife. Care not for worlds beyond your own. We already knew this and understood this in my era; it is not complicated at all: Liria, the meaning of life is to live.”
She chuckles.
“It is that simple. To live, and to love, because love is the pinnacle of life’s experience. To love a man. To love a woman. To love your offspring. To love your neighbor. To love your community. To love those above you and those beneath you. To love your vocation. To love your life’s work. To love those who follow on your footsteps. Love whatever you want, but love. To love is to live, and there is too much to love in this world to waste time worrying about the next. And most importantly, love yourself.”
One of numerous tears drop in the interstice between their hands held together. Lily squeezes a bit tighter.
“Love yourself, for the love you hold for yourself is the fountainhead from which springs all joy. Even if you live the rest of your days without knowing the love of another person, as long as you love yourself, you can know happiness.”
Liria is not prepared for such words. Her body feels enfeebled, and her head falls forward until it is resting on their hands held together.
“But, I dunno how to do that…” follows Liria with a painful admission. “You know I really amount to nothing. I mean, I work hard every day, but in the end, you know, I’m just a whore—”
“Stop that.”
Liria finds herself looking at Lily’s hard stare, pushed at the chin by a small and gentle hand.
“You are Liria, and you are a prostitute. You are not ‘just’ anything.”
This girl, this iteration of a certain Heroic Spirit, is still inexperienced and incomplete. She is light years away from the enlightened one, the one who became a complete, authentic and transcendent Human God. However, she knows and understands the value of all things. That, in itself, is her greatness.
“You are the hero of your life, not the victim.” After studying Liria’s crying face for a second, Lily shrugs to herself. “Well, it bothers me that you are not aware of it, but if that is indeed the case, I will say it. As many times as it takes for you to never forget it.”
Lily’s hands move to grasp the other girl’s shoulders. Her hold is firm, demanding attention and implying that her words are important and must be listened to.
“Liria, I am proud of you for being you.”
Had Liria Colhuán ever heard such words, or anything like those words? The answer should be obvious.
*** ***
(BGM)
The sun continues its course along the dream sky. As the afternoon nears its end, the temperature drops, even faster than Liria expected. Naturally, both girls are Servants and this is a dream, so they have little reason to worry.
Indeed, Liria should have realized from the beginning that time inside dreams has no correlation to that in the real world. Lily sure is taking her time to die. Thus far, there has been much reminiscing the past and much of Lily narrating tales of her travels in the past three decades. Liria rests her head on the other Servant’s lap, while Lancer carefully wipes her tears with her fingers.
“…very well. It would not feel right if I leave before delivering some more concrete advice regarding this singularity.”
Liria frowns. She would rather not have to talk about that, but she understands the point.
“Inevitably, it all leads to a confrontation with Alter Ego. You cannot beat that one, do not even try. The only one who has a chance is Saver, but it would not be prudent to just push her in her direction and force the fight. Even if Alter Ego can predict all your moves, she will not act preemptively or take advantage of her position of strength to crush you before you can be ready. That is not her style. She is passionate, but not brash. She will dedicate herself to her own things and gladly face you whenever you are ready. That is how she expresses her confidence, or rather her pride: she will face you, and overcome you, when you are at your absolute best.”
“Sometimes I still can’t believe you two are the same person.”
Lily glows, apparently pleased by the words.
“Do remember that she is neither me, nor Ishtar; she is the aspect of me who is also Ishtar. It is completely different from my ‘transformation’ into Ereshkigal out there, that was merely beckoning the presence of the goddess using my body as a medium. It is what the snobs at the Clock Tower call ‘spiritual evocation’, also used by spirit mediums, shamans and yorimashi. It’s nothing special.”
Nothing special, she says.
“Alter Ego’s technique is also nothing special in essence, but it remains nonetheless unattainable to all but the most wickedly brilliant. Unfortunately, there was a point in my life in which I was not quite mentally stable; I can only apologize for the pathetic result of my unparalleled genius at that time.”
Truly an exemplar of humility.
“Archer is a matter of not allowing him to use his main Noble Phantasm. If he uses it, somebody will die. It is as simple as that. There is no more I need to say.”
Lily pauses for a moment, seemingly hesitating about the following issue.
“Berserker…is not as much of a threat as he believes himself to be. Saver can deal with him with little issue. The problem I see in that is that Saver might not be available to engage Berserker, what with all the enemies out there. Furthermore, Saver taking on Berserker could expose her to being sniped by Archer. In that case…”
Indeed, she is hesitating. Not for too long, though.
“…I did prepare for this eventuality, of course, but I really did not want it to come to this. In the absence of Saver, my foolish student will be the key.”
“You mean Seigi…?”
Lily nods glumly.
“He is the key, but he cannot defeat Berserker alone, naturally. Ideally, Caster’s support would close the gap between the two. The most important thing is to never leave Alter Ego alone with him.”
Liria is well aware of how dangerous The Maid is, but there is something about the way Lily says those words that implies there is more to them than The Maid’s wiles.
“He no longer remembers, but he met Alter Ego many years ago. She knew his secret long before he himself came to know of it, and she will not hesitate to use him and the big sister if she gets the chance.”
By this point Lily seems to be talking more to herself than to the girl resting on her lap. She is clearly immersed in her thoughts and worries.
“The last thing we need is the big sister rampaging in this place. It was hard enough for me to pacify her that one time, but Alter Ego would just crush her beneath her heel; their compatibility is just that bad.”
Lily’s frown deepens, as her reflections seem to take her into directions even she is not comfortable with.
“Moreover, Alter Ego’s singularity has weakened the boundary between the current world and the phase of the Reverse Side where the divinities of my era yet persist. The rampage of one who can tap into the foundation of all existence…could end up awakening some very real horrors.”
Seigi Nomikata’s big sister is scary. Lily decides to put the topic aside, as if merely bringing it up were a bad omen. There is no sense in further tempting fate.
“That leaves the matter of the Grail. In that regard, the biggest risk might just come from our dearly beloved.”
“Javier…?”
Lily nods.
“Indeed, he is probably the least suitable individual to get a hold of a self-perpetuating wellspring of magical energy. Rather, the problem comes from what dwells within him, which is also an automatic system of a sort. It cannot not tap into the Grail if given the chance. Well, it all amounts to how well he can impose his humanity upon the inhuman flame. On that regard, I have a favor to ask you, Liria.”
At last, it seems Lily is properly regarding the other “real” person there.
“Wha-what is it?”
“There is something I need you to do, should that child overextend his reach of the divine flame.”
Lily leaves nothing to chance, explaining carefully yet concisely what she expects from Liria Colhuán in case of such an emergency. The result is a grimacing young woman, face tinged with a slight blush.
“…eh? Really? That’s what you want me to do?”
“I am certain you are well beyond embarrassment, girl. I can no longer be of any help to him, so we have to go with the next best thing. And now that your Saint Graph is back in working order, it is time for you to wake up.”
(BGM STOP)
With that, the tears return effortlessly to Liria’s face. Hours have passed in this dream, an overstretched inevitability that made Liria further dream of returning to a sunlit world not wracked by the selfish desires of a woman made goddess. A world where the only person who has truly loved is not dead.
“No.”
“Yes,” Lily responds firmly and leaving no room for retorts. She is the first to pull herself away and stand up, leaving Liria without a lap to rest on. “Let us say our goodbyes.”
(BGM)
It is only when she stands up that Liria realizes what is happening. As the afternoon dissolves into twilight, what she believed to be the lanterns and bonfires lit by the city’s inhabitants to stave off the growing cold and the encroaching dark turn out to be something else. Just like Lily herself, the entire world is breaking apart, countless motes of light swaying and flickering away like dying embers stirred by the breeze. There is an absoluteness to it—there is a poignancy in its finality that breaks Liria’s heart even further.
It is too painful to watch, but turning her eyes away from the disappearing world only reveals the much smaller scene of Lily’s own slow disintegration.
“Don’t go,” she says before she can think her words.
“Life is a ceaseless succession of goodbyes, Liria,” declares the other girl, her smile feeding off the sadness implicit in those words. “I cannot stay any longer. Rather, there is nothing left of me to remain.”
Indeed, Lancer Lily no longer has a physical form. All that remains is the dream shaped of the last of her magical energy, and that too was never to last.
“I’ll miss you,” admits Liria in a broken voice. Lily nods.
“And I thank the gods for allowing me to touch your life, if only for a short while. I can only hope you learned something. If only a single one of my lessons remains close to your thoughts, I will have succeeded as a teacher.”
The modern girl shakes her head almost desperately.
“But I…!” She needs to catch herself before she chokes on her own breath and tears. “I, I dunno if I can make it on my own. I don’t think I am ready—”
“You can and you are.”
A hand half-unmade reaches out for and rests on Liria’s small chest. The disappearing Servant is smiling again, serene as ever, perhaps in the same way she smiled at so many who followed her footsteps in this ancient city.
“It’s alright, Liria. You are not alone. I am right here,” she says, patting the left side of Liria’s chest. “So, it’s alright for us to part.”
Lily will not be spared from one last embrace—strong, tight, desperate. She does not return it this time. She no longer can.
“You were…you are…!” Liria gasps out between sobs. A mother, a sister, a friend, a teacher, a guardian; none of those words are sufficient. The last fortress protecting Liria Colhuán from the cruel mercilessness of an uncaring world is breaking apart in her arms. She is the young bird forced to fly off a nest that has caught fire. From this point onward, she will be truly and wholly alone.
“A light heart and a light step, Liria. Waste not your breath putting yourself down; you are strong. Had you lived in my era, you and I would have been colleagues.”
Liria Colhuán cares not for exhortations to optimism.
“I love you.”
“My body and soul belong to the gods. I have no need for the affections of a whore,” Lily replies in a flat voice that elicits a giggle out of the hopelessly sobbing girl. “Work responsibly, okay? Don’t go catching any ugly diseases.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Make sure your partner washes properly before you part any parts of them in your mouth. Also, use proper lubrication; saliva makes for a poor lubricant, by the way. Make sure to properly urinate and wash yourself after intercourse.”
“I don’t need you telling me how to do my job, you virgin!”
“If you ever stop by London, look for one Nina Ahrens,” Lily continues unabated. “She is dear to me, and I am confident you would get along great.”
The abrupt shift in topics rattles Liria a little, who can only nod dumbly at the indecipherable bit of advice (?), her chin rubbing Lily’s shoulder, which breaks at the contact like old bark flaking off a tree trunk.
“Ah…” she utters mournfully. “Lily…!”
“If you ever find something you wish to do, something you believe is worth striving for; if you ever find your call in life, Liria, and you need help in your pursuit of that ambition, STRIFE will be there for you. Kiara will take over now that I’m gone, and she should be easy to find.”
Liria nods for no real reason.
“I…I’ll be fine,” she says more to herself than to the dying Servant. If she says it, she might just start to believe it.
“Yes, I know.”
“I…I can keep going. By myself.”
“No, not by yourself. Because you are never alone. Man is too weak to face the battle called ‘life’ all on their own.”
Joy and sorrow swirl together into something painfully ticklish and deliriously bitter.
“Lily—!”
The word ends in a gasp at the feel of the softest lips on her nape.
“This is it, then. From this day forward you are an adult.”
A small forehead allows itself to rest on that same nape—surrender even.
“Go with my love, Liria.”
And the lone girl is swept away in a whirlwind of stars; the scattered fragments of abroken apart—dreamworld
(BGM STOP)
*** ***
Concepción Passage – Stairway
Severe Cold (-32 °C/-26 °F)
(BGM)
Fiore Forvedge is not sure herself why she stepped out of the hotel at the top of the cliff. She spent several mind-wrecking minutes hunched down under furniture, fighting the avalanche of terrifying impressions assaulting her from the base of the hill. First, it was the “monster” lurking inside the cave, which for a while she thought from walk the stairway and sniff her out in the hotel. Then there was the even greater threat of a Servant—what else could it be?—charging out of the cave and likely trampling the “monster” in the process. The Servant was a maelstrom of rage and killing intent; its presence an almost tangible miasma of threat, announcing that it would shred apart anything that stood in its way. And somebody did exactly that.
Fiore felt the battle. She felt the tremors of terrible strikes on her skin. She felt the rising buildup of potent magic. She heard the growls, the barks and the chilling howl that made her feel like giving up on everything, take the nearest sharp object and end her life right then and there. And she most certainly felt the culmination of the magic at work and witnessed the rising surge of magical energy that pierced the sky from the hotel’s broken windows.
She then knew emptiness, the inevitability of death, and the promise of new life. She discovered the misery of those left behind by the dead, and the satisfaction of a life well lived and well ended. That pillar of radiance was filled with all those feelings. It was oppressing and painful, but also relieving and encouraging, almost as if saying, “You are still alive, aren’t you? Then why aren’t you shining like this?”
Like a strict and distant, yet supportive and thoughtful mother.
Fiore was charmed by it. When she felt no longer the presence of a Servant nor the sounds of battle, she could not stop herself from walking out into the cold and down the stairs to the base of the cliff, perhaps hoping for the tiniest glimpse of whatever filled her heart with such ache and such joy. She thus becomes the first to notice the disappearance of the cave, replaced with an almost vertical wall of concrete; the reality of modern Valparaíso reasserting itself in the absence of the demon’s Marble.
She finds not the source of the great magic. That one is no longer in this world. What Fiore finds is a lone figure in fetal position, half buried in snow and almost looking like yet another corpse in this frozen city.
“Liria!?”
Unmindful of her own cold and the stinging ache in the tips of her unprotected fingers, Fiore hurries to brush off the snow blanket covering the girl who is also a Servant.
“Liria, what happened here!?” she asks urgently. “Were you involved in the fight? Are you hurt…?”
The questions die, however, when she realizes Liria is not paying attention. She is sobbing quietly; clutching a handful of snow in her monstrous hands like it is the most precious thing.
“Liria…”
Strangely, it is this softer voice that is caught by Liria’s perception. Her head moves, and bloodshot swollen eyes seek out the face of the woman kneeling at her side.
“She’s gone…” speaks the fallen girl almost in a whisper. A haunted, tired voice to match her look of desolation. “She’s gone, and I’m all alone now.”
Fiore does not know whom she is talking about, but she understands what is happening all too clearly. Thus, she knows precisely the one thing to do in this instance.
The former magus calmly and wordlessly pulls the Servant into her lap and holds her tightly while she wholeheartedly and unabashedly cries and bawls for the one departed.
Catalog of Somewhat Original Servants
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Thank you for this.
Quest Master's Note: Lancer Lily's profile has undergone a major update.
Catalog of Somewhat Original Servants
In Progress: Fimbulwinter Quest Project.
Beast's Lair Quest Discord Server
This was beautiful, Daneel. Thank you.
- - - Updated - - -
People who are more knowledgeable about Mesopotamia, could Lily / Alter Ego be Enheduanna?
This is exactly my theory
Hermes delusional rambling
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
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Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, Cárcel 471, Cerro Cárcel, Valparaíso
Day 04
Morning Phase – 07
“I’ve had enough.”
(BGM)
Everything begins, of course, with flame.
“Gah!” Liria exclaims, her voice abnormally gruff. She is sure she is not the only one.
Sheer cold (-31°C/-24°F – Thermal Sensation 42°C/107.6°C)
It is more than heat. It is a wordless judgment and a fiery declaration. Her heart shudders as her traitorous mind recalls memories of her mother’s bitter words and the jeers of those who cared only for her body. This is, however, completely different. The hostile presence that both produces and is the flame cares not for the person named Liria Colhuán.
The growing heat spreads into the air, stirring it into rising currents. Wind and heat batter all the present, but neither compares to the sheer presence that envelops, smothers and asphyxiates. The roaring flames engulf Javier, but that which is also the flame is even larger, impregnating the air, the soil and even their hearts. It is everywhere and anywhere, for the flame is a terminal of the World and the World itself, and it is clearly displeased with what it perceives.
Liria is not the only who is wary. Even the scorpion man seems hesitant to attack her again, for nobody call tell who will become the first target of the smothering hostility.
“It’s…even stronger than yesterday…!” Seigi gasps out, his body sweating heavily under layers of winter garb.
There is one, however, who does not relent. The thing of molten rock, devoid of fear, howls its own defiance.
“Gah!” Liria exclaims a second time, gritting her now abnormally long teeth to a degree that distorts her snout into something even uglier. Seigi’s knees fail him, for the flame’s response to the magma thing’s roar is a spike of aggressive, hostile intent like a spear through the heart, like a lightning bolt to the brain stem. It is the certainty of the tiger stalking you in the bushes, the incoming tidal wave and the hopelessness of plague. It is as if every single tragedy the natural world can inflict on a person lurks inside that flame.
“Sei—!”
There is no way a warning is allowed. The master of the volcano responds to all hostility with merciless castigation.
Absolutely everything in the vicinity of Javier Lucero explodes.
Liria has not the chance to do or say anything, only leave the ground. What she believes are screams reach her ears for a moment, but they disappear in a maelstrom of concussive force and vertigo. Fortunately, she is far enough away and she has the constitution of a Servant, so she does not take much in the way of damage. Her sight becomes a blur of cold tones, air currents sweeping her off her feet and playing with her as if weightless. After a moment, she remembers she has wings now, and quickly enough she stabilizes and shoots herself upwards like a firework. Beneath her, the expanding wave as if a spell of purification sublimates all snow and ice in its path, regaling the frozen city with the lost blessing of heat. She is then witness to the distant sight of the stained glass at Father Schrer’s church, which had mysteriously endured thus far, finally shattering inwards and raining as fragments into the sacred building.
The Cherufe is gone, wholly swallowed by the firestorm. Seigi Nomikata…still lives. He lies on the ground, too close to the flames for comfort, yet not moving away for some reason. Liria can only glance at Seigi’s fallen form for a moment before something more important and more dangerous grabs her eyes: a black palanquin carried by half a dozen soldiers, its ceiling adorned with a swastika. Another dozen soldiers surround it as its escort, and at least half of them are already aiming the long tubes of rocket launchers in her direction.
“Aaaaaaa la rechucha putos saco ‘e weas!”
For all her worry and cursing, theirs is a fruitless effort. Assassin has never been faster. She is truly like a fly in the air, changing directions and making complex trajectories with trivial effort. She makes it look easy, but as she flies she is fighting the presence of whatever the spawn of Tiamat was made of, its anatomy and physiology fighting to overtake her own. It will not last long: powerful as it is, it belongs not to the current structure of this World, and therefore is subject to its rejection, far more strongly than any Servant does.
Moments later, she is kneeling by Seigi’s side, dismayed by the sight of the young man bleeding out of his shattered eardrums, his skin suffering the consequences of overexposure to great heat. His body shudders, mind too overcome by pain to put any opposition to the permeating hostility of the divine flame.
Today’s Liria Colhuán, however, does not know decision paralysis. She wastes no time wrapping an arm around him and pulling him away from the fireball with a great leap, her arm already working in restoring his body to fullness, even at the expense of her own physical integrity. She is already bearing with the lingering pains of the sword to his gut, might as well add more to the stack.
“Don’t worry, man, I’ve got this,” she tries a lame attempt at comfort. No amount of years in the “service business” could have prepared her for this; she is a prostitute, not a nurse. Besides, Seigi cannot hear her now.
Liria’s gaze narrows when the fireball spits something out.
“I guess him dying like that is just too much asking, huh—!”
Her words come to halt when she has to endure the pain of her eardrums exploding. Her mouths spits out expletives she no longer can hear. Her heart beats faster—she knows the damage will regenerate, but it is still scary to lose one of the five senses. As she takes Seigi’s wounds in his stead, the young Brit stirs back into activity. At about the same time, the one released by the fireball also begins his struggle to rise back to his feet. He seems to be saying something to the flames, or rather to the person inside them. When she catches Seigi trying to talk to her, she stops him with a hand sign.
“Retreat a little. There’s no point in fixing you up if you’re just gonna get burnt again."
They do retreat even further. The heat is simply unbearable, and standing too close to the flame is just asking to get burnt. The man formerly a magma creature is now openly yelling at Javier; not that Liria can hear anything, or that she would care if she could. That man’s words are of no worth to her.
If anything, the sister’s absence is more conspicuous. There is no way María Magdalena Vyhmeister missed the roars of her brother-turned-monstrous beast.Diego Vyhmeister
They cannot retreat. Berserker might be taking his sweet time making his way to this place, but he will inevitably arrive. The scorpion man is still out there, and it will eventually decide on its next plan of action. Moreover, Liria already lost one of the people who saved her. There is no way in hell she is abandoning the other.
“I can’t hear shit right now, so keep your mouth shut,” she says in an unnecessarily loud and poorly inflected voice. Her skin stings, now looking like she lay under the sunlight for way too long. “Lily told me how to deal with this, but I need a clear path! We need to open a breach through that flame, if only for a moment!”
*** ***
(BGM)
What am I?
I am life. Flame. Spirit.
I am the breath of the planet, its life’s pulse and its higher conscious.
I am diminished. To manifest in this form is a diminishment. It is necessary, because the rules have been twisted, misshapen to accommodate the rebellious primate.
The hills moan, crushed beneath the weight of what they call “civilization”. The trees cry, surrounded by artificial structures, their soil replaced with concrete. The streams lament, their waters tainted by unnatural substances and unspeakable amounts of filth. The blood whimpers, its flow grotesquely altered by self-centered construction and landscape modification, and then further defiled by those who would use the lifeblood of the very planet to fuel their own greed.
I am that which lords over hills and mountains.
I am the murmur of the moaning earth, the flame slumbering beneath the ground, and the roar of a world that knows only outrage.
I am that which castigates the unruly and begets all order.
I am the one who controls, judges, and corrects.
I am ngen.
And I will restore this land.
Threat assessment.
Two mortals to the right and behind.
A human female possessed by a foreign demon. Or is she in control of the demon? Regardless, it is an unwholesome thing. The flame shall cleanse her.
A human male…containing an accumulation of souls, only one distinct among them. How wicked. How depraved. The flame shall cleanse him.
To the left…a monstrous being not of this world. A creature from the space outside and beyond the World, offspring of neither Trenten Vilu nor Caicai Vilu. It does not belong here. The flame shall cleanse it.
Further away in that same direction…that is…one of the exalted spirits of humankind, summoned from the throne beyond time. If it fights for the sake of humanity, it will stand on the way. The flame shall cleanse it.
From the direction of the boreal star…something aberrant. It feels like a second so-called “heroic spirit”, but it is distinctly different. A smaller frame. A fragment of foreign divinity. It is connected to the monstrous beast, and a plethora of lifeless dolls accompanies it. Whatever it is, it is certainly unwelcome. The flame shall cleanse it.
The flame shall cleanse everything in this land so violated.
Corrective action begins right this very moment.
Warning! Status ChangeChoice Time
Quest Master's Edit: Because I'm an idiot who forgets things, two notes:
1. Javier's character sheet will be updated tomorrow. I will also put the link for the Level 3 Regression Steps for your perusal.
2. For this particular choice, there will be no announcement in case of a tie, because a tie unlocks a different action.
Last edited by Daneel Rush; February 3rd, 2020 at 08:30 PM.
Catalog of Somewhat Original Servants
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Last edited by SleepMode; February 5th, 2020 at 07:00 PM.
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
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3. Against the monstrous beast from imaginary space.
Of course, we aren't gonna target our friends. Targetting Berserker or any other who isn't in the immediate vicinity will leave will leave Seigi and Liria vulnerable to the Scorpion Man. Targetting it both accomplishes something (admittedly, with the chance of Berserker getting Javier) and gives Seigi and Liria more time for a retreat.
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A wise and beautiful woman who exudes an aura of grace. She is a sly, cunning, manipulative person who always gets what she wants, whether through trickery or ruthlessness. Her own fighting abilities are low, but she should not be trifled with. What does she ride? Men, of course!
