Fate/ False Arcana

A story that takes an odd twist on the Holy Grail and the Servants. I don't know how often I'll be updating this thing, but maybe I can keep it up, eh?

Fate/ False Arcana
Raise Thy Hands and Grasp at the Miracle, oh Heroes of the Day.
For Thou has but One Soul to Sell.

Devil

Run! Run! Run! Her legs burned with it. Her lungs screamed with it even as her mind turned white. Stars danced in her vision, her ears ringing louder and louder with each desperate step. The sound of her own pounding heart has become her world.

Turn left! Then Right! Down narrow back-alleys and across main roads so empty of life it had to be a dream! It had to be a dream! It was a dream! Please be a dream!

She heard the ragged breathing over the tinnitus. The clicking of claws on concrete. Too many claws! The screech of metal rips through the silence of her own, shrapnel from the shredded trash can flying down the alley, a piece cutting through the sleeve of her shirt, biting into skin. She recoils from it in instinct, warm blood staining her clothes, trickling to the pavement.

Exciting the thing behind her.

She flys out of the alley on desperate feet, tears streaming. Across another road where stopped cars with neither drivers or passengers wait at lights frozen red.

A dream.

A dream!

A dream!!!

It has to be a dream!!!!!

Glancing back over her shoulder, through stinging eyes and blurring tears, she sees it again.

Like a beast out of hell, countless legs as black as night whirl and clutch at the ground. Claws like sickles glitter in the sun. A body like a centipede, long and dark and covered in thick black fur, lined with countless rending legs.

But that head…

A gaping maw of teeth like a thousand needles. Three slavering tongues dance and flicker in jaws wider than her shoulders! Four eyes like blood, two above, two below. A black beast erupts out of the alley, racing for her.

Looking back was a mistake.

Her feet catch on the curb, sending her rolling. The pavement drives the shard of metal deeper into her arm, splattering a stream of blood on the concrete. Her back slams into the brick face of a small cafe. Her hazy mind notes she bought ice cream with her friends there last week.

The maw opens, the black beast rushing through the air like an arrow.

Was it some primal instinct? She lunges forward, not even aware of the movement, and the beast crashes into the brick and glass of the small shop. Glass shards fly along with dust and grit, pelting her, bruising her, cutting her.

But she’s running again. That’s what matters.

She can hear the rending sound of the beast pulling itself free.

A dream! A dream!! A dream!!!

Yes. All a dream.

A nightmare had come to the waking world.

She ran on, half blind from tears, sweat stinging wounds and eyes, as the beast loosed a scream that was half roar, half hiss. The windows of the nearby shops shook in their panes, cracked, spiderwebbed.

She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t hear and felt dizzy and nauseous and…

She couldn’t stop it.

Her legs gave out as she felt something warm trickle down the sides of her head. Her ears were full of fluff. She couldn’t hear anything and her whole head hurt.

She retched, emptying her stomach right there.

All she could do was wait for it.Wait for those dark claws to dig into her flesh, those teeth to rip her into chunks of bloody meat. To swallow her in pieces. Or maybe it would just swallow her whole? Maybe she’d still be alive when…

She felt it. A great pressure from the world, like a burst of wind pushing against her. She forced the eyes that had closed open.

She was facing the sun, so high in the sky. And there, framed against that light…

A person clad in shining armor, a halo of the sun’s light casting their body in shadow. She felt that this person was saying something, but... but she couldn’t hear!

She tried to speak, tried to warn, but her voice wouldn’t work. She couldn’t get enough air! Get out of here! Run! It will kill you!

And then that armored form turned away, and a shadow fell across her world.

The beast lunged, fang and fury crushing down like a serpent’s strike.

And then the form held a sword.

And the world was filled with blinding light.

She felt the roar despite deaf ears. The world itself seemed to shake as an armored hand swung a glittering blade and filled the whole of her vision with light that eclipsed the noon-day sun. Only that armored shadow remained, burning into her vision, into her memory.

Her eyes closed. She could still see that shape with her eyes shut. That armored shadow.

And then her mind faded, so that she felt nothing.

Okay, now I'm definitely intrigued. Nice horror vibes going on, almost Lovecraftian, if I may be so bold as to make comparisons.

You have my interest.

Dreamer

She woke screaming in a dark room, cold sweat running down her spine, between her breasts. A thin white gown clung to her body, stuck with moisture. Simple sheets dampened with sweat bunched around her. She reached to peel them off, and felt a sharp tug at her arm.

Visions of black terrors chased through her mind, of the nightmare shapes that had hunted her, whether it had been a dream or not. The fading memories of a thousand sharp-fanged deaths, claws rending her to pieces over and over for the eternity of a dream welled up inside her. Every shadow of that night-veiled room hid new terrors to her shaken mind.

The blinking of electric lights became hellish eyes gleaming.
The clicks and whirrs of machinery became clawed feet clicking, scraping on pavement.
The rush of air through an open window became the breathing of monsters on her sweat-soaked body.

And then it was gone.

The pain was the pinch of an I.V.
The lights, the sounds, the feelings, all became what they were.

She had woken up in a strange place, but familiar, too.

A hospital room.

The terrors that had haunted her dreams were left in the vestiges of memory. Only one remained vibrant, but was it real, or a dream? As her breathing and heart rate returned to something more normal, she tried to gather her thoughts, to separate dream and memory. Those two things were not being very cooperative, though.

She took a few deep breaths, deciding it would be better to take stock of what was going on first. She knew where she was, generally at least. A hospital room meant she was being cared for, right? The breeze from the large balcony windows helped, though the fluttering of the curtains made her think of ghosts. She really didn’t need more scary things right now. Best to just shut that image out.

Ahhh! Better. So, why exactly was she in the hospital in the first place? All she could remember was that dream. Haaah! Best not to think about that. She wasn’t a very brave person. Dealing with scary things like that was something better suited to Kaede-chan. But, how silly was it to be scared by a dream like that? How childish. She knew better than that! A dream is a dream.

She took a look at herself.

Seemed like she had quite a few cuts and scrapes? One of her arms was bandaged. The sounds were a little weird… This… This was like what had happened in her dream. Maybe it wasn’t…

The curtains fluttered, the breeze from the window sending them flying with sudden force. She couldn’t help but turn to look and…

Ah, you’re awake. The voice seemed to ring in her head.

A shadow loomed behind the curtains, resting on the balcony’s guardrail. A few strands of hair, long, blue hair, drifted into the room, but she couldn’t make anything else out. No, that wasn’t true. It seemed like there was some kind of blue light on the other side of those curtains, something like moonlight in the night air.

She felt fear creeping up again. Her nightmare, and then her injuries, the deep rooted feeling of weariness that was quickly rising in her, and now this strange person…

Too soon, too soon. But…

She felt the darkness creeping up in her, so that she didn’t hear the rest, if there was anything more. The last thing she saw were the dark ears of an animal. But something like that shouldn’t be there…

Release

She was discharged a week later. Altogether, she had been in that room for ten days. It had taken some time, but her family and friends had explained what had really happened. Not that she remembered it actually happening but a little memory loss wasn’t too unusual for a concussion.

Café Caprice, the little restaurant from her dream, the little shop she had visited on so many occasions with her classmates, was gone. A gas leak. Not only had the building exploded, but there had been a lot of damage to the surrounding buildings. The shockwave had destroyed the windows of every business for a block. They were still finding debris from the explosion in unexpected places.

She had been on the street near the shop when it blew up.

She was lucky.

If she had been any closer…

She really didn’t want to think about that. But still, she couldn’t remember why she was there. Kaede-chan, Kane-chan, even Ayaka-chan, no one knew why she had been there. The last they remembered, she had been walking home from school with them. No one remembered when she had left them, or why.

It was all just so surreal.

She found herself sighing a lot. A week had passed since then, and her injuries were mostly gone. Her ears still rang, but it seemed that the damage hadn’t been as bad as it had looked at first. She had some new scars, something she was none too happy about. She had a make-up exam to take. Still. And then there was the house work that needed to be done… It seemed that her siblings had tried to help, but that didn’t always work out.

But she couldn’t let herself get down! She was lucky to have survived that! That was something to be really grateful for.

And it wasn’t that dream.

Normally, her dreams faded, but that nightmare, and the weird dream about the hospital room. Those had stuck with her. They still made her feel uneasy. But they were dreams, and dreams stayed where they were, in your mind.

She did find herself daydreaming more and more these days, though.

After all, it wasn’t very often you dream about a knight in shining armor saving you from a terrible monster, was it?

She felt a little smile tug at her lips. A radiant hero. A brilliant, shining hero had saved her. Even if it was only a dream, a childish dream, it was something romantic.

And so she had found herself walking home alone again. There was no practice today, and most of her work as the team’s manager was done. It was strange, but more and more lately, she found herself just wanting to put it all down and walk. Just walk through the city. She didn’t feel like she wanted to run away. It was… something else? She wasn’t sure what it was. She wanted to finish what she started, but she just found her mind wandering more and more, and when that happened, she’d find her feet doing the same.

Maybe there was something wrong with her? Some kind of lasting effect from her injuries? But she couldn’t bring herself to worry about it. It just felt… natural. Maybe it wasn’t normal, but was that so bad? She sighed again.

Yes, there was something wrong with her, wasn’t there?

After all, here she was, sitting on a park bench, when she should be heading home. She was just staring at the sunset over the bay. She had chores to do, a meal to cook, but here she was. What had gotten into her? She leaned forward and sighed one more time.

“You keep doing that.”

“Ahh!” She jumped at the words but…

Her feet tangled, and she found herself sitting again. In the grass no less. She had a new injury to add to the list.

Meanwhile, the speaker just looked at her over a crepe for a moment.

And then burst out laughing.

She wanted to cry. It was embarrassing, and it hurt, too! She felt mad, but, but… Sigh. It really was her fault. She couldn’t get mad over that.

The girl’s laughing slowed, and she managed to speak. “Haah, I’m sorry, it’s just, I thought you realized I was here. Are you alright?” She reached out her free hand.

No, she really couldn’t be angry. It probably was pretty funny to most people. She had never really thought of that kind of thing as funny, but that was just her. “Y-yes. I-I’m fine.” She wanted to sigh again, but it would just be silly now, right? She took the hand, and pulled herself up. And then tried to brush the dirt off her backside. “Thanks.”

She took the chance to get a closer look at this surprising girl.

She was short. Young. She looked like she might be in Junior High. Her hair was really long, dyed blue. It made her think of that dream about the hospital. She was wearing a simple green hoody, and blue denim shorts with frayed cuffs, the top of her head covered in a big blue denim hat that matched her pants. Her skin was pale, and she was thin, making her look fragile. Her eyes were so striking, though. Deep red. It had to be a trick of the light. Or maybe contacts. People didn’t have eyes like that naturally.

“Alaya.”

Hmm?

“My name. Alaya Shiki.”

“Ah! Umm. Saegusa Yukika. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Hmm? Oh? Did you forget? We’ve met once before.”

Eh?

Intriguing... >_>;