Top floor of the Neo Ishtar Temple
“──!”
Haruri saw a Heroic Spirit riding an oversized horse.
It was the female Servant who followed the Saber out of the giant hole in the ground.
The pit was surrounded by a tallish wall of ice created by someone’s magecraft, preventing the black stream that conquered the forest from flowing in.
“A Rider…? How powerful…!”
The Heroic Spirit’s parameters unfolded as a honeycomb pattern before the Master’s eyes.
Seeing the opponent’s power, Haruri immediately went on guard and surrounded herself with bees clad in lapis-lazuli armor.
A bee’s sting would mean nothing to a Heroic Spirit.
But as Ishtar’s head priestess, Haruri didn’t have the option to stand and watch.
“Hng…”
A swarm of countless
bees blocked Hippolyte’s way.
Having immediately deduced that they were familiars, she looked around until her eyes stopped at the girl at the entrance to the top floor.
“The temple’s priestess…?”
Hippolyte skillfully turned her horse back and dashed to reach the temple’s entrance area in one jump.
“I take you to be the priestess guarding this temple! I must ask your forgiveness for the affront of visiting the sanctuary on horseback! Please understand these war circumstances!”
Hippolyte has been in her position both as the daughter of Artemis’s head priestess and as a queen and warrior leader guarding her temple.
Therefore, despite this god being not one she worshipped, she voiced her plea instead of disrespectfully running wild.
“I have nothing against your faith! But my allegiance to my Master doesn’t allow me to stand and watch as an ancient god frivolously toys with human society and subjugates its people! Thus I beseech the divine emanation returns to the ancient times!”
Hippolyte boldly declared war against the goddess.
The bees controlled by the girl believed to be Ishtar’s priestess surrounded her…
But Hippolyte manifested a giant axe in one hand and swung her arm in sync with her horse’s spin.
A wind strong enough to repel the hurricane’s gusts instant blew away the swarm of bees, and the horse-riding Hippolyte declared her intent to the priestess.
“As a warrior and as a queen, I don’t wish to take lives without need. You’ll let me through to the temple’s interior.”
Having announced that, Hippolyte grabbed her horse girdles, ready to dash through ignoring whatever the priestess attempted.
There was a concerning skull mask producing shadows on the corridor to the inner sanctum, but her immediate plan was to ignore it.
When she decided on what to do, a divine voice of arrogance reverbed from above.
“That’s blasphemy, daughter of the Western war god.”
“!”
“Or should I call you… warrior chief of the moon goddess temple?”
Hippolyte looked above and saw a goddess on a floating ship carrying a warhammer modeled after 7 snakes.
“You weren’t summoned by Alaya to defend humanity, remember? You’re just a Servant in a Holy Grail War. You want to drive me away for humanity’s sake? Not a very funny joke if you ask me.”
She was surrounded by bright light.
Not by a blinding halo, but instead by a peaceful and transparent glimmer with the same soothing sensation as looking at the blue sky.
Her club produced a torrent of energy and Ishtar herself produced bright light.
The combination of these two kept her protected from the infinite shadows attacking from all directions.
(A god. Even before this confrontation, I already knew she was an entity a tier above us Servants despite the limitations of the Lesser Grail as a host body.)
Even so, Hippolyte didn’t take a step back. From her horse, she glared at the Mistress of the Heavens above her and proclaimed:
“The reason of my summon matters not! My body is always a shield for the oppressed and my arms are the blade they’ll use to resist! That is my oath to the moon goddess and my father, the war god!”
With this bold declaration and the matching words from the goddess, Ishtar’s priestess discovered Rider’s identity and let the words leak from her mouth.
“The queen of… the Amazons.
While Hippolyte argued loudly and with a glare, Ishtar closed her eyes and sighed.
“Dear me. First the piece of junk, then this spiteful Assassin, and now you…”
When her eyes opened again, their glimmer was unbelievably cold as she unleashed her Charm Authority in full.
“
You’re all underestimating me a bit too much.”
For a moment, it felt like the ground around the temple crumbled down, but what actually happened was that the giant temple floated to the skies.
The giant harpoon remained chained at its tip and the golden chain connected to the launcher rose, like a rope bridge from the city to the floating fortress.
“What…”
Even Hippolyte was startled. She readjusted her horse’s posture so they wouldn’t fall off the shaking temple.
“You thought I didn’t notice the bunch of mice sneaking underground?”
Many holes opened in the ground that previously sustained the temple, revealing human figures moving about.
“I see the basis of the plan was the idea that the temple was boosting me… Not wrong, but if you thought that wrecking the temple was what it took to kill me… Yeah, that’s blasphemy.”
Ishtar raised her hammer as she spoke.
While also charging her magical energy on the warhammer described in legend as being able to deliver death to her enemies without her needing to swing it.
“But I gotta admit, it was pretty bold of them to use their Servant as the decoy. I’m about to pulverize them because I need them gone from my world, but they’re the kind of humans I really like, you know?”
While sincerely stating she likes them, she prepared to hit the mages below the temple with death.
“Kallion!”
The horse neighed and jumped in response to Rider calling its name.
Rising amidst the raging storm as if its own weight meant nothing, it crossed the forest skies using the flying trees and the floating ground fragments as platforms.
“Rage forth, War Sash and Diamatheia!”
Hippolyte unleashed the power of her Ares sash Noble Phantasm and replaced her axe for a bow.
The sash overflowed with divine aura, imbuing the arrow with magical energy of a different color from the one filling the temple.
The fired arrow traveled in a straight line toward Ishtar, repelling the hammer blow loaded with her divine aura.
The shot also blew away the walls Ishtar set.
“So close.”, Ishtar declared with a fearless smile to the falling Hippolyte. “If this era had the domain of Artemis or Ares, you could have pierced me with that shot.”
And then, when she was about to aim for Hippolyte with the same Cita hammer she swung to parry the arrow…
Countless Gandr curses flew the temple below her.
“!”
Although the fragments of curse couldn’t break through her walls, they obstructed her vision, giving Rider the opportunity to land her horse and position herself to protect the people inside the temple.
Two figures appeared on the top floor of the temple.
Two women wearing contrasting red and blue outfits. It was easy to tell they were both seasoned mages.
“We made it in time. Although it vexes me that the only ones who managed to reach the temple were you and I.”
Rin barked back at the mage in blue–Luvia.
“Very well done, Hyena. I was just following your path because I figured a graverobber would know the right infiltration tunnels.”
“How many times will I have to tell you this? Refer to me as The Most Elegant Hunter in the World.”
“I can’t call ‘elegant’ someone who stops to correct me at times like this…Here goes!”
Amidst her banter, Rin spent a jewel to shoot an energy bullet.
Roughly at the same, Luvia spent a large amount of jewels to deploy a wall and a shower of bullets to limit the flying goddess’s movements.
A
shadow lurked around the two but showed no signs of attacking them or Hippolyte.
“More importantly, what is this
shadow?”
“Good question but ignore it while it’s not harming us! Can’t complain about having more allies!”
“True, after we came this far, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with trifling matters.”
Despite what they say, Rin and Luvia were constantly paying some level of attention to the
shadows.
The two are mages, and any mage can tell that the
shadows surrounding the temple are deeply related to death and that this concept of death wasn’t necessarily being directed at them.
It’s harmless to them unless they set their feet where they shouldn’t.
That’s the conclusion that made the women focus more on the flying goddess.
“I hear you’re claiming to be goddess Ishtar… pretty low-brow of you. Though I suppose that’s exactly what she is in the myths.”
Rin went for a cheap taunt but—strangely enough, Ishtar simply stopped in midair and closely observed Rin’s face with an expression of doubt.
“? What? Do I have something on my face?”
Rin was puzzled since she was expecting an immediate comeback. The goddess looked pensive as she opened her mouth.
“Have we met before? I’m not asking about this vessel homunculus, I mean the actual
me.”
“Huh? Me? Meeting a Mesopotamian goddess? You don’t need to play jokes on me, your presence here is already enough of a joke. If I had met any troublemaker on your scale, I’d have remembered it.”
While Rin only got more confused, Ishtar looked like she had found her answer.
“...If this uneasiness is only on my side, that must mean my connection is to a different version of you… Which means…
I have no reason not to get rid of you.”
After some nodding—The goddess swung down her hammer without a shred of hesitation.
Immense shockwaves descended from the sky but Hippolyte’s arrows neutralized the impact at the last second… and the
shadows take advantage of that timing to come out of their state of reduced activity and gush forth, swelling to encircle the whole temple as they attacked Ishtar.
“Ugh, will you ever stop? I already destroyed your Spirit Core. How long are you going to take to disa…”
Partway through her sentence, she noticed what was happening and her expression went cold.
She flew Maanna further above and glared at the swarm of
shadows again from a distance.
“Oh… I get it.
So that’s what this was all about.”
Rider, Rin, and Luvia went hiding further inside the temple while the shadows were covering them from view.
“Masters, why did you show yourselves? If you arrived at the temple, you should have…”
It was Rin who answered Rider’s question to two of her Masters.
“Sorry, Rider. We know that the plan was to destroy the altar from the inside…”
Luvia, the self-titled Most Elegant Hunter in the World, completed the other’s sentence with a shrug.
“But have you seen this temple’s altar? It was just a collection of gems sold in Snowfield’s common jewelry stores. We found nothing that could be called a catalyst or an artistic sense.”
“On the lack of proper Sacred Treasures, what’s is stabilizing the deity in this land instead is that woman, the Berserker Servant, and that stupid hurricane.”
With Rin’s additional explanation, Hippolyte glared at the sky above her.
“...Then to stop the world’s alteration…”
“I do think blasting the whole temple would slow down the alteration and weaken her Authority a little… but for a more significant solution, we have to take out one of those three.”, Rin was certain. “Door A has a hurricane, Door B has a Berserker, and Door C has a homunculus with a curse or a Divine Spirit or whatever inside. Splendorous prizes all around. I think I wanna cry.”
“Getting rid of Berserker’s Master would be inelegant, but an option, no?”
Rin, in all her Holy Grail War experience, shook her head to Luvia’s question.
“From what I saw… that Master has a magical energy path connecting goddess and priestess. Killing or otherwise neutralizing the girl would only get her Master rights automatically transferred to the so-called goddess.”
She paused for a moment to think about Berserker.
“A rainbow halo, the guardian of Ishtar’s domain… Considering the intel we got from Mary observing the fight in front of the hospital and its tag-teaming with the Bull of Heaven, that Berserker is 100% Huwawa.”
Huwawa.
The guard of goddess Ishtar’s garden, the Lebanon Cedar Forest.The monster that terrified Gilgamesh in the world’s oldest Epic.
But it was ultimately taken down by Enkidu when they and Gilgamesh visited the forest. It’s believed that after death, its monstrous characteristics were integrated into the world, later spreading to Greek lands and influencing many monstrosities, such as the Gorgon.
“We asked that Saber to hold Berserker back… but we might have demanded too much of him.”
X X
Western forest
Saber dodged Berserker Huwawa’s right arm, but the intense shockwaves of the blow still sent him flying.
Before they knew it, the Bull of Heaven’s movement had vanished the black flood that covered the land, and half of the trees that succumbed to the venom and miasma were knocked on the ground.
Anywhere else, the trees would have withered, rotten, and vanished, but it was presumably the blessings of the goddess operating from the temple to the forest that left things as they were.
After a tight landing on a nearby tree, Saber looked above and yelled.
“What the hell! The temple is floating, Lancer! Are those the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”
“Absolutely not. That temple doesn’t meet the quality standards of a garden, much less does the goddess revered in it.”, answered Enkidu, trying to contain Huwawa’s limbs with golden chains flying from every possible direction.
“Is that how it works? What are the shadow geysers, though? I know it’s the same thing that was recoloring the underground area…”
Shadows extended upward all over the place, defying gravity with their power. They fed on light to give chase to the flying goddess.
“Those are… the shadows of the ravine.”, mumbled the assassin with no name.
She was also participating in restraining Berserker, combining multiple Noble Phantasms to keep her opponent in check.
“An exalted one… used his thread of life as a receptacle to create a true entrance to the netherworld.”
“The netherworld?”
The nameless assassin’s words intrigued Saber, but upon watching Berserker snap Enkidu’s chains, he readied his sword instead of demanding further explanations.
“Ok, that would make this huge Berserker this netherworld’s Cerberus! How exciting it is to be able to slay so many monsters in a single summon!”
“Slaying monsters? That takes me back.”, Lancer ran next to Saber. Their words carried a hint of sadness; of self-blaming. “I wonder why… considering there were no monsters in that forest.”
“...”
Saber had run past Berserker’s back with superhuman speed, but hearing that, he turned 180 with a sudden brake and spoke.
“I don’t know your reasons… but you don’t consider this Servant a monster, do you?”
Saber prepared his Noble Phantasm during the conversation.
“Yes… She’s human… They all are…”
Saber charged his sword with magical energy as he asked, and Enkidu focused their energy on their limbs as they answered.
“It’s thanks to her that I learned the meaning of life… She’s my first friend.”
They told themself that, but their determination didn’t waver.
Saber readied his sword. Enkidu saying “She’s human and my friend” about the giant monster showering them with light of calamity was all the answer he needed.
“Ok, sorry for calling your friend a monster! Let me rephrase that!”
Saber grinned as the glimmer of magical energy concentrated on his sword.
“First the goldie and now this… How exciting it is to be able to meet all the amazing friends you have!”
Words without shame, but also without malice.
“An opponent worth defeating! Assassin and I will keep her here, so
you go do what you want!”
“!”
The action so far let Saber know that Lancer’s goal was not to defeat Berserker.
But he wouldn’t criticize them for it.
He got where he was by always doing what he wanted, and he believed Lancer was just as free to do the same.
“The real me… doesn’t belong in such an exciting place. He must still be burning in purgatory, as that was my greatest wish in life. So my point is… this version of me is a duplicate or a fake. Doesn’t matter which. The only one of me I care about is the one that’s here.”
He said something similar to what he said about Ayaka to the students of the El-Melloi Classroom.
He remembers a war where people from different sides united for a common goal.
It was an obnoxious experience, but at the same time, an exciting one.
The man now manifested as a Saber valued his momentary impulses above all else and believed those were worth staking his life for.
He ascended into a Heroic Spirit and was allowed to dash again for a short period—all that he built up in life was for the sake of making his heart flutter in this momentary present.
Things would be different if he was summoned in another Saint Graph. It was quite possible his philosophies as a
king would show more pronouncedly in these other forms, mainly his Rider one.
But this time he was summoned as a knight, and a few days ago, he found his goal for the Holy Grail.
He will make allies and fight alongside them. But otherwise, he will do what his heart tells him to.
He’s not someone who would want to stop his allies from doing what they wanted as well, and even if he wanted to, he would never put that into practice.
“Our time is short and our memories will be gone once we return to the Throne! But
records of it will remain forever like a page in the book of our lives!”
He increased the glimmer of his sword and his radiance was reflected on the wet soil.
Noticing that, the Berserker stopped engaging the assassin with no name, turned its upper body to face him, and began to light up her halo.
“If someday, perhaps after the end of humanity and the planet, there comes a day when my true self is allowed to leave purgatory and gets a chance to read this ‘book’...”
Saber smiled with heartfelt joy despite how serious he was about this personal conflict.
“The least I could do is write one page I can be proud of, right?”
And before Berserker had the chance to shoot her rainbow-colored calamity…
Sword of Ever-distant Victory
”EXCALIBUR!”
One glimmer dominated the forest, unleashing its light in resonance with the shining chain of gold in the sky.
The sword, unable to withstand it, crumbled to dust—but in exchange, the rising slash cut through Berserker’s body to reach the heavens, also dispersing the light of calamity.
The first Excalibur that Enkidu saw was one done with a branch when they formed their alliance.
Obviously, a branch and a regular sword are as different as heaven and earth, but that point aside, Enkidu judged the Noble Phantasm they saw as almost recognizably more developed than it was before.
The Heroic Spirit without a conscious goal in the Holy Grail War found his wish and officialized his contract with his Master.
Enkidu didn’t know about this change, but one thing they did know was that something in this Holy Grail War enabled Saber to regain his original power.
Watching him from behind, Enkidu responded with their own serene smile.
“I owe you one. I see, so this is what an
alliance is about…”
While Enkidu recorded this subjective information in their body, they looked at the floating harpoon in the sky.
And then they placed their hand on the ground, causing the dirt under Saber’s feet to shine.
“!”
To Saber’s surprise, he found himself surrounded by… numerous replicas of famed and treasured swords created by Enkidu’s Noble Phantasm, Age of Babylon.
“That’s my modest way to thank you. Feel free to use them until they break.”
Each sword was a Noble Phantasm so legendary that Saber never had a chance to find them in the era he lived in… but Saber had no hesitation in replacing his sword with one of them and charging his magical energy into it.
“Thank you… You’re way too generous to be that Goldie’s friend.”
Enkidu flew away with a rare expression of awkwardness, unable to tell if Saber was serious or joking.
After getting back on her feet, Berserker’s eyes saw Enkidu.
Trapped by her madness and the power of the Command Spell, she extended her right arm to them for no discernable reason.
The lynchpin of the gods who once killed her.
A terrifying weapon. A hated enemy.
But now they turned their back to her.
As the bright green figure flew beyond the reach of her arm covered in metal, she saw the momentary illusion of a small flower crown… but the tiny fragment of her soul that recognized what that hallucination was instantly drowned into vast hatred and fear.
They wished greater death and ruin upon the one who brought them death and ruin.
The simplest law of retribution invited a new brand of madness.
And when all was consumed by the negative emotions…
Berserker’s sight was once again covered by a slash of light.
X X
Enkidu leaped as they felt the flash of Saber unleashing his Noble Phantasm behind them.
Enkidu’s calculation produced serial predictions that Saber’s Noble Phantasm was powerful but not enough to defeat Huwawa.
They could feel a strong magical energy path between Ishtar and Huwawa, connected through the temple and overshadowing the relationship between Master and Servant.
Meaning that Huwawa’s Saint Graph won’t shatter unless they steal control of the temple or remove Ishtar’s divinity from the land.
In a sense, Huwawa now was harder to defeat than she was when they challenged her alongside Gilgamesh.
(Even so… I was more scared that first time.)
Strength alone can’t frighten Gilgamesh.
What’s truly scary about Huwawa is the human madness within her—madness manufactured by the gods—and how this madness doesn’t erase the true human hearts deeper within.
If Gilgamesh saw Huwawa as she was now—connected to the temple, completely under Ishtar’s control, and with her human hearts concealed by the power of a Command Spell—he wouldn’t bat an eye.
But it was undeniable that her facet as a lackey of the gods switching to the forefront gave her power beyond the limitations of a Servant.
That was all the less reason to hesitate.
They were currently using Saber as a tool to buy time.
Enkidu interpreted the facts as “a tool using others for its own purposes”.
This perceived contradiction could form cracks deep within their Saint Graph.
But the cracks were no reason to stop.
They were also completely in the dark about whether or not their
next plan of action was the right thing to do.
(Maybe my wish is doomed to never ever come true, no matter how many miracles reunite me with Gil and Huwawa again. Am I doing it to save a friend or am I once again forcing an undesired salvation?)
Regardless of what the answer is, since they decided to be their own tool, they needed to see their goal to its conclusion.
─ You go do what you want!
Saber’s words returned to them.
Their Master wished for the same thing.
“You talk like it’s easy.”
Their phrasing sounded like a complaint, but their voice delivered bigger hints of joy. Enkidu’s recording circuits reproduced a scene of the past.
A record of the city of Uruk in an age now lost to time.
(What was I back then? Did I remain ever the tool of the gods? Did I turn over and become my friend’s tool? Did I offer myself to far more people? …Or did simply live for my own wishes, doing what I wanted to?)
Now that they were a Heroic Spirit with an objective perspective of their life, Enkidu could find an answer to this question, but they deemed this calculation as pointless.
The only thing they could do now was to tell
the girl what lay beyond the cedar forest and who they became after reaching and resting there.
For that very purpose, Enkidu needed to once again destroy what Huwawa was staking her life to protect.
Destroy the laws of one goddess ruining humanity with her blessings and control.
For that, there’s no line they wouldn’t cross.
They were willing to break every last bit of their Saint Graph to overcome this momentary fantasy.
That was what Enkidu established in their settings as “what they want to do”.
“He said I’m more generous than Gil…”, Enkidu mumbled to themselves, once again remembering Saber’s recent words. “Oh, I get it.”
The grip of the earth twisted by Ishtar completely stopped the giant harpoon.
The Divine Weapon landed on top of it and touched the harpoon with their hand, fusing their Saint Graph into the harpoon.
It was time to cage the beast called “goddess”.
“
Maybe Gil became a hoarder because I was too much of a spender.”
The building-sized harpoon regained its brightness…
and shrugged away the dirt grabbing it by splitting its tip and hilt into 16 parts, spreading above the forest in the form of a fishing net.
Each of the 16 harpoons was loaded with Enkidu’s magical energy and pushed forward with an intense charge, ripping through the divine air.
But a dreadful roar echoed through the world, desperate to stop them.
“─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─”
Having noticed the spike in Enkidu’s magical energy, Berserker reached out for Enkidu despite Saber’s Noble Phantasm knocking her on her back.
She enlarged her left arm, literally ignoring the laws of physics, and tried to crush all the harpoon parts and the countless chains attached to them within her now cedar-sized fingers.
But…
Fantastic Recollection
”Zabaniya”
The Noble Phantasm of the Assassin with no name didn’t allow it.
Berserker unleashed her oversized palm with enough force to obliterate everything with a touch, but the moment she touched the nameless Assassin blocking her way, her giant left hand turned into smoke.
And Berserker’s hand wasn’t the only thing that did.
Assassin's own body also vanished into a smoky cloud of morning mist, completely drifting with the wind.
“─ ─ ─ ─”
2 seconds later, when Berserker regained awareness of her left arm, it was back in the state it was before she stretched it, and Assassin was on the ground, unharmed but breathing heavily and on her knees.
This was the amazing feat of a leader named Hassan of the Intoxicated Smoke, considered the best assassin in the history of Hassan-i-Sabbah, discounting the First.
The assassin specialized in intoxicating his targets with a special smoke, but his true power was to inebriate himself, the opponent, and the world, erasing the
borderlines between everything, turning himself into a literal smoke signal that enchants the world. In combat, this gives him the overwhelming power to return any and every enemy attack to zero.
His last moments had him switching off his technique and offering his life to protect a village, and learning this story was the inciting incident that led the unnamed Assassin to develop her respect for the Old Man of the Mountain lifestyle.
Not even the assassin with no name was able to perfectly copy his supreme technique. While the real deal could turn himself into mist for seven days and seven nights, she required immense amounts of magical energy to replicate it only for a few seconds.
Even so, her action clearly changed the battle state. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was a decisive factor.
Because this short engagement resulted in Enkidu finally capturing the temple with the split parts of the “harpoon” they fired. Snowfield City and its temple were hereby fastened in place
by the chains of the Age of Gods.
Originally Posted by asterism42
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