Fate/Mythologie

[Rafflesiac]

>blue and green hair
>chelicerae (spider mandibles)
>(Mer)Curie

That's ORT, amigo.

[warellis]

>blue and green hair
>chelicerae (spider mandibles)
>(Mer)Curie

That's ORT, amigo.

Oh god, that magical girl version of her is running around? What the hell is the PI then?

[ItsaRandomUsername]

This was an absolute joy to read, and as a Caliboi you did a good job encapsulating the Golden State school experience with only a few select details.

It does feel pretty T-M so far. But then again, I've always been a sucker for the nods.

[You]

Thanks everyone for the comments and raff for looking this all over. Here is Chapter 2.

2/ Day bye Day

There wasn’t time to go back to the Mission and change into my Ash Lock. The best I could prepare was a simple suggestion on my Mission Prep sweatshirt which stopped anybody questioning why a student was jumping rooftop to rooftop at breakneck speed while on his phone. There’s nothing to it, just one foot after the other. Keep calm and carry on civilian because everyone else is minding their own business so you should —

“Ah,” I stretch my arm out to grab the ledge of a roof.

I totally missed the landing. Too close. What did Cherry say? When you’re using a suggestion, you need to pay attention. Make sure you don’t lose yourself in the equivalent exchange. Come on, get a grip. Pull yourself up and keep going. Not too far now.

My excuse for that lapse: Cherry wasn’t answering her phone and I can’t trouble an old man on his deathbed. As for the city rangers, getting government employees involved in a potential combat situation would only make matters worse. I’ll be on my own, but that’s what all the training was for. Just before entering the trail take a deep breath and calm down. Instead, I choke on my own saliva.

Magical energy saturates the mountain trail, but there was no sign of anyone else. It looked as though a firestorm had roared through the area. All the brown grass and foliage that covered the trail is nowhere to be seen and the smoke from the cluster of blackened trees hangs low in the air.

Strong fire, but it hadn’t spread. One of the Masters was prudent enough to section this area off with a bounded field so the battle wouldn’t set the entire mountain ablaze. More interestingly, the number of trees on this trail had exponentially increased since the last time we surveyed this volcanic plug. Tolosa county might be out of the drought, but there hasn’t been enough rain to support a burgeoning minor forest this side of the Grade.

Mountain trails in Tolosa are usually covered in shrubs that won’t protect you from the sun. You can usually see everyone hiking that day from the base of the mountain. These trees that have appeared overnight must be some mystery. My hand strokes the trunk of the nearest tree to confirm my suspicions. Instead of scraping against well-worn bark, the trunk bubbles, sucking in my hand.

THE BAND WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY.

dO nOt fOrgEt

Crying women fill the beach. Too exhausted, too cold, too sore. So burn those ships. Burn our captors-turned-husbands’ hollow ships. We may never see our homes again but you already ensured there would be no home to return to. Trapped as we are, at the very least, we will make sure you are no less trapped than we. Helpless loneliness in a foreign land should be your only reward, o’ bronze-armored heroes. On this altar of flames, let us make and take our marital vow; let only unhappiness sprout from this wedding bed.

THE GREED WAS BUILT ON USURPATION

Do NoT FoRGeT

YOU CAN (NOT) PRUNE THIS BRANCH. SEVEN TREES A FOREST DOES NOT MAKE IF ONE IS ROTTEN. YOURS MAY BE AN EMPIRE BUT MINE IS OUR SIN BEFORE IT WAS OURS.

With a yelp I snatch my hand back from the inside of the bubbling tree. I don’t know what I just saw but my head won’t stop throbbing no matter how much I rub it. I’m far from an expert but these trees might be made of something that shouldn’t exist on this plane. The other Servant was right to burn them down; too bad they weren’t able to burn them to dust.

So, this is the aftermath of a battle between mysteries. I don’t have any combat experience, but I’ve been training for this since I was ten. I won’t let myself be shocked. All that I’m meant to do is help with two weeks’ worth of damage control — make sure nothing gets out of hand.

When I read the previous reports on the Holy Grail War, I was able to write off the scale of damage, saying that it wouldn’t be that bad in Tolosa because we’re better prepared. When confronted with this wanton destruction, I can’t help but wonder if the Mission is just a scapegoat for when the entire city burns. I shake my head. Alright, we discussed the protocols every fortnight for the last year in those shady town meetings. I’ll be fine. This city will be fine.

Home button, contracts, search bar, c-i-t-y-space-r-a-n-g-e-r, home phone, because I never save numbers on my phone as anything other than home. The city rangers should already be on high alert since we sent them a picture of the spirit board when the sixth Servant was summoned.

The phone starts making the call; I wonder who’s on duty tonight. If it’s one of the interns from the local college, I’m going to have to hang up and ring the emergency number. Someone’s not going to be happy about being dragged away from their TV during primetime. Eh, wasn’t Mr. Kars saying how awesome it was getting Hulu with his family’s Spotify Premium plan last week? Okay, I feel less bad now.

The first ring finishes. Usually, there’s no problem with reception in this area, so the call should go through after the second one. But, that second ring never comes since I have to tap cancel. The hairs on my arms are on their ends again and this time I might actually be sick from the amount of magical energy no… pure divinity that’s permeating the air.

Throw all the hotpot from lunch up and wipe your mouth already, there’s a good boy. Now, take a deep breath, and extend those threads of consciousness. What you’re looking for isn’t the incandescent, burning star in the middle of the school that’s obvious to anyone, but any smaller embers that might be wandering nearby.

Okay, I was a little worried that some regulars who had a bit too much to drink at Central Coast might come this way or some of the tourists eating at Splash would waddle down towards the creek beside the high school after a clam chowder bread bowl. There doesn’t even seem to be anyone lighting up before having a beer or three in the public-school parking lot. In any case I better get going; I can feel the beginnings of a bounded field.

*****

I bet the Fishing Cats have never played a team that could tear up the turf like this. The Astroturf is repeatedly ruptured, the soil underneath sprays from the football field onto the track, and the goal posts are transformed into giant tuning forks. The shocks from each clash resonates with anything made of metal creating an eerie hum that lingers over the battle. Even the bleachers I’m hiding myself under are rattling like they’re in danger of collapsing.

I made it inside the bounded field before it was fully established, so the conjuror shouldn’t know there’s an extra person inside. Bounded fields aren’t really my specialty even if they should be. From what I can gather, this field is only meant to obscure the battle and repel anyone who might be interested in coming into the stadium. As for the caster, only one Master is visible from this angle. The other could be obscuring themselves with the bounded field. It goes without saying, there’s a clear advantage to being able to observe your enemy from an unseen position.

As for the reason why the Masters haven’t noticed my presence yet, well, it’s right in the middle of the field — two men larger than life itself. It might be more apt to call them forces of nature. One statuesque man, naked except for a warrior’s skirt rushes into the fray like lightning. His fist that surpasses Godspeed repeatedly aims for the other’s vital areas. But if the first is like lightning, then the other man, encased in steel, is like a tornado. With an ornate great shield in hand, he redirects each blow before using his entire body to slam into the warrior. This is a battle between Servants, supernatural combat beyond the comprehension of humans.

The only thing on my mind right now are those Marvel superhero movies I watched with some other kids in middle-school. Impressed by what I saw, I tried to incorporate some of those acrobatics into my regular training. The old man bopped me on the head and asked where I got such idiotic ideas from. Luckily, some of the movies had been uploaded to the streaming platform the Mission subscribes to for ‘Movies at the Mission.’ When he watched the battle scenes he softly yawned and told me this wasn’t how people in our line of work wanted to move or fight. In these movies, he said, the flow of the battle is always centered around the protagonists. Directors do their best to portray the protagonist's drama through combat while trying to entertain the audience. In the battlefield, even though everyone may have roles, everyone will fight as if they are the protagonist. Real fights like the one unfolding before my eyes are a jumbled mess of apprehension and ego, not a well-choreographed blade dance.

After what seems like the tenth exchange of blows but possibly the seventieth, the Servants break apart from one another. The warrior relaxes his grotesque muscles and looks at his Master with a slight frown. A normal person would crumble under that gaze. In fact, just looking at the scene sends my heart into a panic. Instead, his Master meets the gaze with her clear red eyes. They remind me of the prologue of Snow White, where Snow White’s mother sees her blood on the snow. That pale hair and pale skin looks so unearthly at first glance, but the more you look at her — the more you look at her the more you realize how inhumanly natural she looks. Strange. We were told the Einzbern were no more, so there’s no way an Einzbern homunculus was going to be present in this iteration, yet here she is.

“I was mistaken to insult you.” Deliberate or not, the giant Servant calls everyone to attention. “Your blows have cleared my mind. But wispy clouds are much more visible hanging from a clear sky. Faithfully, you are a proper hero. So why? Two-on-one, especially when the singular is a lady is never honorable.”

The armored Servant removes his helmet. He must be so proud of that beard that somehow accentuates his jawline, “I would have never dreamed to hear a pagan monstrosity talk of honor.” His face may be worn from countless battlefields but there’s an unquenchable vigor in his eyes. “But that lady you spoke of and sought to aid is far from harmless. Surely, your esteemed self must have encountered those of the fairer sex who were more serpent than angel in your illustrious adventures?”

Eyes distant, the almost-naked warrior rubs his chin, “Slight, aside….”

The sound of a grenade going off fills the field a second before the strange ringing of metal grinding against metal. In less than an instant the armored Servant was sent flying into the opposing bleachers. No one saw the warrior move. Truly, with that body he may as well be an ancient marble statue. But that dust cloud rising from the bleachers says otherwise. Taking advantage of the lapse in attention his words created, the warrior must have closed the gap in less than a second to send the knight flying before any sort of defense could be raised.

“Yes. Slight, aside,” The warrior turns on his heel to face the damage he caused as something materializes in his hand. “You’re quite right. That lady was quite far from harmless. But, you, you may as well be a continent away from harmless.”

He raises and pulls back the monstrous, black thing in his hand in one motion. I blink. A barrage of projectiles fills the night between the warrior and the bleachers. Each one of those projectiles was shot with enough force to bring down a small house. All of them rain down upon the already devastated grandstand, clearing the previous cloud of destruction and giving birth to a new, much larger one. The tremors from the attack even shatter the portion of the bounded field behind the grandstand.

One of the three knight classes — knight of the bow, Archer.

The class make up for their low base attributes with seasoned tactical reasoning and extremely powerful trump cards. Intuitively, one would expect that the Archer class would indeed be made of soldiers who use bows; however, contrary to common belief, the qualifying conditions is merely the possession of a projectile Noble Phantasm or special abilities related to projectiles. With their class skills, Magic Resistance and Independent Action, they are highly regarded as scouts or rangers. Think Legolas or Jennifer Lawrence. This Archer is more like mobile heavy artillery than an elf or a girl from a movie I’ve never seen.

It takes a few seemingly minute-length seconds for the cloud to dissipate. For even the greatest Servant, a barrage of A-rank attacks is more than certain death. Yet, there is no body among the rubble, only a shield broken beyond repair.

“Haaa —!” A hearty shout accompanies a wide swing at Archer’s blind spot. The brilliant cloth on the knight’s armor is charred; the armor itself is bent and fragmented in multiple places. There’s even a deep gash above the knight’s eye, but he does not, cannot, care about that now. Because, in the place of that beaten shield, those two arms are carrying the weight of an enormous war hammer swung with all of the knight’s strength.

“Archer!” His Master’s bell-like cry lets all of us know how serious the attack is.

Archer’s surprised expression tightens with his leg muscles. Pivoting, Archer meets the attack with his bare first.

Hammer meets fist.

There’s a saying about an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. This is more like two unstoppable forces. The raw magical energy of their clash electrifies the entire stadium and the aftershock shatters all of the stadium lights. Some of the benches are crushed or ripped off the bleachers.

The two in the eye of this maelstrom haven’t moved an inch.

“Your name is almost too easy to discern if you bring that out.” The knight’s voice is raspy. He draws his war hammer back and puts some distance between himself and the warrior.

In reply, the giant silently flexes his hand. His fist is undamaged. But, I was wrong in my previous description. He didn’t retaliate with a bare fist; it was wrapped.

“Bring out your trump card. It won’t help, but at least you’ll perish into the night knowing you gave your best.”

The knight chuckles. The tone is anything but lighthearted. “If I were to use my trump card, it would bring shame to your name, for you would be known as nothing more than a great hero who couldn’t even last the first night.”

Murderous intent so intense I almost lose consciousness flavors the magical energy radiating from the two. It’s so excessive that it saturates the entire bounded field, oppressing everyone in this location. The only ones allowed to breathe in this space are undoubtedly the two in the center. That was why no one expected the little pebble that was thrown between the two Servants glaring at each other. A tiny, tiny pebble, insignificant as the ripples it would make if dropped into an ocean. Yet, the fact would always remain that the stone was indeed cast and the ripples drawn. Most of all, weak as those ripples may be, they were just strong enough to move someone’s fate.

[Leftovers]

I really appreciate the choice of PoV in an observer/overseer type. Also impressed with how smoothly you slipped the atypical (culturally, for a HGW fic) narration into the action. Pretty good sell for the ultra-contemporary setting so far.

[Imperial]

Color me surprised. I thought we were in for at least three chapters of slice-of-life shenanigans and character introductions before we got to the Grail War proper.

I am of the same mind as Leftovers. The Church/overseer perspective of a Grail War is an interesting one. I particularly liked the touch of our hero having clean-up crews on speed dial or texting out a picture of the spirit board to let everyone know the storm is coming.

You've done a great job capturing a worm's eye view of the grandeur of Servants, and you've left a lot of neat hooks hanging all around with characters like ORT-tan and this extant Einzbern homunculus. I don't have much to say beyond "great start" and here's looking forward to more.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

It's a poetic motion, of sorts.

In T-M works with a very interactive design philosophy, like F/sn being a visual novel with multiple choices, making the POV character be a Master, i.e. someone with an active role in the story, helps to make the story feel personal and invested in.

Making the POV character the overseer is not only a fresh twist in regards to Fate/ tradition, but also from a meta perspective, as it could lend itself to the readers becoming accepting of their now much-more blatantly passive role in the story's progression. It's a neat concept, I dig it, and the presentation is kept fresh and engaging by virtue of your writing style and characterization approach. The little details add up, help to paint a picture that distinguishes Fate/Mythologie.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Just binged the whole thing on FFN, and while I was skeptical of the concept and title at first, you've got me now. The POV character being both a blank slate and an overseer is nice, as are his connections to Dilo and the juxtaposition with his fake normal life. Also, while I initially thought the whole thing was a bit too flowery/poetic for my tastes, I now kind of dig it, since it sounds like a TM work, and it is somehow still engaging.

[You]

Just binged the whole thing on FFN, and while I was skeptical of the concept and title at first, you've got me now. The POV character being both a blank slate and an overseer is nice, as are his connections to Dilo and the juxtaposition with his fake normal life. Also, while I initially thought the whole thing was a bit too flowery/poetic for my tastes, I now kind of dig it, since it sounds like a TM work, and it is somehow still engaging.

Thanks for checking it out. If you don't mind me asking, what about the concept made you skeptical?

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

I dunno. The title was a bit of a turn off, and also, it seemed like a run-of-the-mill Grail War fic. That, and the first prologue or whatever confused me with the poetry. Reading past it made me realize how genuinely good it is, and it's clearly a top-class Grail war fic.

[You]

I had the same concerns when I came up with the idea. If I were to tell this story in the frame of a Grail War, what was the point? Isn't it just another run-out of the mill Grail War?
If you look on FFN.net these are a dime a dozen and no matter how you differentiate your story that foundation will always be there. A Grail War is really just a Grail War.
At the same time, I wanted to tell this story through the lens of a Grail War because it was the medium that fit the narrative the best.
When you said you were skeptical of the premise, I knew what you meant. I just had hoped maybe you had a better sense of that feeling and could put it in words better than I could.

[TehChron]

How do I put this...I think I understand where you are coming from with the whole "skeptical of the premise" bit, and frankly speaking I admit that I am too. And in my case, that has less to do with the locale (seriously, that Clam Chowder bit in Central California raised *serious* SoD flags until I got a good look at the town that served as inspiration) and more to do...With how this entire affair feels purely transactional.I don't want to say "Just business" but more in the specific sense of an exchange being made on the part of the PoV character. He's just out here, putting in the work and effort to see a fight between legends and in order to pay the price of admission he has to put the work in to keep this stuff from blowing the masquerade.

I suppose another way to put it is that, this Grail War as you've presented it feels very very mundane. A large part of that has to do with the perspective of the character himself, because he views this as less awe-inspiring as we'd normally expect from the perspective of a normie, or even the veneer of contempt we'd see from a proper magus. Instead we see a dude who views this entire affair as just another part of his life, a bump in the road of his eventual journey. There's a brief element of wonder in the latest chapter to be sure, but since we as readers are outsiders looking into things from the point of view of what is effectively a salaryman related to the Grail War itself, that second or third degree distance from the personal element that makes Grail Wars really pop means that said impact is largely absent.

It strips from it the wonder of the experience, and renders the Grail War as just another commodity, another experience to be consumed by the mediator and the reader along with him. So yeah, looking back, "transactional" is actually a rather apt way to put my takeaway from it.

Hmm. Still excited to see everything else about the story, though. It looks really good so far.

[You]

What's SoD?
I think you've just described what I wanted to capture with Chris, very well. If you're able to get that much out of the first three chapters, I must be doing something right.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

If I may be honest, it was more the misspelling of mythology. Petty, I know, but when it comes to canvassing the vast array of fics for me, sometimes the title and blurb have to do.

[Rafflesiac]

Suspension of Disbelief, I assume.

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Definitely it. Also, I find Chris interesting because he references Kurogiri, Shirou, and Kirei, yet he is a unique character all on his own. I wonder how the events may or may not shake his current mentality.

[Zurvan]

What if it's just written in a different language?

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

If so, my apologies. Wait, that does sound like French now that I think about it...Quel dommage! J'aurais du savoir!

[TehChron]

Suspension of Disbelief, I assume.

ya dis

[You]

oh yeah I think it's pretty widely known if you live in California the central coast has really good clam chowder
I guess not common knowledge if you live in other states, especially the east coast