Chapter 5, Part 4
I won't die no matter what you do to me so bring it on you yellow-livered shit-smears
CLOUDBURST
[ [ March 16
[ [ 20:50
The golden glare tore through the night. The roar of munitions and the crackling of magical energy poured down to earth. There had been an impact.
Sofie, Musubi, Ren, and Yamamoto flinched.
Berserker and Lancer had quickly adopted a defensive stance - crossed spears or raised shield above their heads.
Saber, Sigmund, Archer, and Gloria did nothing.
Of course, neither did Wodime.
Her snapped fingers had not moved, and her other hand still idly toyed with that small metal ball. Likewise, she knew that her eyes did not betray the slightest hint of irritation. Frankly, she did not feel any.
The attack she had called for had struck an invisible barrier approximately twenty metres in the air and failed to destroy a thing.
This too had been calculated almost twenty-four hours ago.
Like so, she was able to sort the wheat from the chaff. In other words, those who had reacted proved themselves to be unable to compete with even such shallow predictions as this.
Among those who had not… Saber was an exception. She knew that he possessed short-range precognitive powers, but he most likely simply didn’t sense danger. In other words, he would have only just realised the next prediction on her list.
That was──
A blue flash. Searing heat.
The sphere between Wodime’s fingers vanished, and the image in her eyes shifted to another angle.
Momiji Musubi’s kick was no small thing.
The woman’s heel had flown towards her skull at something like three hundred kilometres per hour.
Putting aside how durable that superhuman body was, speed like that was enough to easily decapitate any normal human, Magus or not. On top of that, the kinetic impact itself was dwarfed by those flames, even if they were merely an artist’s impression of the genuine Authority.
Wodime understood this woman’s abilities well enough to not underestimate a single thing. A distaste for this country did not blind her to the illustriousness of its arcana. Her underlying enmity was not born from a haughty dismissal of the foreign, but of strict and rigorous study. She had examined this little corner of the world well in advance, and she had found it wanting. For instance…
“Your curse is even more unsightly in person, pye-bitch. The fires of hell, wasn’t it? It’s genuinely rather repulsive to see such heartfelt brilliance poured into something so sickening. The one responsible for this must have been unspeakably degenerate.”
Oliphiaelé Wodime damn well knew better than to attempt to handle a hazardous substance with bare hands.
The metal in her hands that she had prepared was lead - the factor of Saturn, the god of seasons and time. Therefore, it had not been difficult to produce a kind of virtual timeline in which she had already moved aside with it as a catalyst.
At least, not for her. The Clock Tower did not hand out its ranks lightly, and it would have been a disgrace to the name of Brand if she could not evade something simply because it was a little faster than a human body.
Without so much as an incantation, she casually passed into one of the highest degrees of Magecraft as though she were lighting a match.
Lancer didn’t know enough about such trifles to be shocked. She took Musubi’s cue.
Boots lifted from the ground. She dashed for Yamamoto and the Master of Archer standing beside her.
Grab the girl. Decapitate the man. She had two hands precisely for moments like these.
But, of course, she was also well aware by now of the prowess of the Servant standing between them. They had fought before, after all. And therefore, given what she had learned about Archer’s speed, her reaction time, and her aim, the preemptive strike was coming right about───
She narrowly ducked past a flash of light. Shifting herself to the left, a flurry of glass knives flew toward her.
No, they weren’t aimed at Lancer. This was preparation - the more mirrors Archer had around the battlefield, the more she could control the fight with those damn beams.
Break them? No, that would only make more shards.
Dodge them? Less than ideal. Archer would still be gaining from that.
In that case…!
She did the unthinkable, and leapt forward.
Three blades sank into her flesh: two embraced by the right of her abdomen, the third caught by her upper right thigh.
Archer’s eyes widened, and she barely managed to throw herself back, narrowly avoiding a spear thrust.
The motion snarled and gnashed at Lancer’s flesh. She grit her teeth, but this was nothing unfamiliar. Those who couldn’t commit to stealing every advantage they could were the first to lose in war.
Ordinarily, she would have been able to easily heal from a wound like this Tribute - Flames of Life
Eilitherís Dynamene
“Musubi!” she signalled.
Musubi was already moving, launching a blazing slug at Sigmund as she sprinted.
The gleaming sword, raised to parry, turned black in a single blow.
This Lancer was some kind of insane. Archer had clearly underestimated her.
Honestly, even with everything she had learned from Mars, she wasn’t all too comfortable with this little distance against a significantly faster opponent…
“Master!”
Sigmund needed no further prompting. Yamamoto yelped as she was scooped up in his arm, and he dashed away from the growing duel.
Or perhaps that was not the right word. A ‘duel’ was for only two people.
“Cut that out.”
An invisible wave of destruction was betrayed only by the fierce teal glow of magical energy.
The divine wind shredded the ground between the pair, shattering the temple wall beyond them as the clash split to evade its fury.
Saber was losing his patience.
To have been dragged all the way out here already was bad enough. He and Sofie had come to accept the challenge of this pompous Clock Tower brat. He had not made his way out here to be an accessory to someone else’s playground scuffle.
Even with the lashing of the serpent’s tail, his eyes had not shifted from Wodime.
Apparently, she grasped his meaning.
“As you wish,” she chuckled, waving her staff.
As though plucked by the hand of its god, Ren was flung, screaming, across the temple’s courtyard.
Motors sang a low grind. Sofie’s machine-beast rushed forward, its knees buckling as it caught him on its back. Its claws scraped through the stones to bring it to a halt, and it bolted to its creator’s side once more.
“Doing good?” she asked.
“I’ve done worse,” he lied.
“How many times does this make it?”
“Only twice.”
“If I save you a third time, do I get a rare item?”
“Oh, I thought you were talking about almost dying…”
Sofie opened her mouth to utter some baffled query of concern, but thought better of it. She turned her head, looking to Yamamoto.
“You two get somewhere safe. We’ll take care of this.”
Ren nodded, climbing down and hurrying over to his fellow hostage. “Come on.”
Not bothering with the formality of watching them leave, Sofie took a step towards Wodime.
“Ah, don’t tell me,” the astromancer smirked. “Magus-to-Magus, is that what you want?”
“Whatever I end up doing to you, be proud,” she replied. “You’ve earned it.”
Archer and Lancer had repositioned themselves.
The one standing at the heart of that killing intent was, of course, the one who had interrupted them.
Saber understood their logic. It wasn’t mere retaliation. The moment he had exercised the will to step in, the two of them realised that the best option was to defeat the greatest threat of this Holy Grail War right now. Even Gloria, who’d apparently decided she wanted no part in either of the two bouts between Sofie and Wodime or Sigmund and Musubi, was standing behind her Berserker and watching like a hawk for openings.
Which meant that they had also realised, huh? Rider’s bombardment hadn’t intercepted itself, after all. That unseen barrier that it had collided with…
“You might as well join the party, Caster.”
A pregnant silence came like a curtain wondering if it should draw itself back.
Nils Herydir-Dragilaz stepped up onto the roof, looking down with a rifle in hand with an embarrassed smile on his face. A white crow, like a sunbeam, flapped forward onto the ledge in front of him.
These two had also predicted this outcome. The divination of the Yatagarasu was without parallel. Most likely, they had already predicted the plan that Rider’s Master had concocted and opted to bend it to their advantage in this very moment. If that shell had actually hit the ground, Saber would have been the one to survive in the best shape.
“I was gonna wait to pick you off when you weren’t looking,” Nils admitted.
“I know,” glared Saber. “And if you don’t want to die from my counterattack, then at least have the decency to ask someone to save you.”
“You won’t get that far.”
One last voice joined the fray. Kunai thrust in from the dark. The divine sword arced, deflecting it, and Assassin vaulted over it.
Archer, Lancer, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker…
If only Rider could have made it. If they had, this would have been far more efficient.
Saber’s feet spread. He raised his weapon, and the sacred wind churned.
“If you insist, then I’ll kill you all right here, you suicidal fucking animals.”
Lancer’s spear was the first to thrust.
The hair trigger was pulled, and an overwhelming hammer of wind came down like cannonfire.
Instinct did not let up.
The blow had been like mortar fire, like a bona fide explosion, but she had already predicted that. The spear in her left hand had devoured it.
A single swing would have been enough to parry it, but───
“Tch!”
He cast aside his footing, leaping away from a curving streak of light that bent right through where his head had been less than a second prior.
Waiting for him at the end of his dodge…
“12-gauge shotgun Benelli M4.”
A scattered slug was barely ducked under. A furious uppercut cleaved the barrel with an airburst that flung Nils back across the ground.
Even that had only been a ploy to keep him in place.
“Hyaaaaaah!”
Berserker came down from above, shield swung to crush him.
From below, he felt the presence of Assassin, stepping into reality to sever his spine.
He grit his teeth. The hilt of Kusanagi revolved in his hand, and he whirled to slash at the oni first.
Evaded, of course, but he drove her off.
That only left him wide open for the falling soldier. He needed only extend his leg.
The kick halted her fall, launching her back up into the air with a resounding clang as her shield saved her from the blow. Her feet found earth as she landed some metres away.
Yes, this was all to be expected. Every single one of these opponents had experience, genuine or stolen, on par with champions. Even the boy armed with modern weapons was wielding them with the competence of all of their actual owners combined.
To be able to coordinate a tactic or two was the bare minimum of group warfare. In a way, he was almost envious that they had the chance.
For in his lifetime, he alone had been supreme. Hundreds of gods had not been able to stop him. Champions were deserving of recognition, that was true. But even in such a childish battle of whose name was greater, in this land…
“Heheheheh… Ahahahahahahaha──!”
…the result had already been decided two thousand years ago.
Metal jaws clasped shut on empty air once again.
Oliphiaelé was already starting to get short of breath.
Evading into an alternate timeline was reliable, to be sure. There was very little that this mechanical abomination could do about it. In that sense, it was the ideal option - in fact, it was the only one that practically guaranteed that she wouldn’t be torn in half by the monster.
But of course, generating an entire other self and manifesting it into reality as the genuine article was intensive enough on its own. The amount of magical energy needed to produce such a result - to dedicate one’s own body as a shrine to Saturn, to accelerate the seasons while simultaneously maintaining their natural flow, and to harvest either one accordingly… Such a ritual, performed in mere seconds, would have been too much for an ordinary Magus to achieve even once.
The unsightly tangle pounced for her again. She collapsed the wave-function for the seventeenth time.
The Wodime clan had persisted for a thousand years without interruption. Oliphiaelé was one of the youngest Magi to ever rank so highly as herself. She had been awarded the colour of Purple for her accolades. She had rebuilt the ruins of her family’s Crest with great thaumaturgy that they had never before strayed into. None would quibble over the magnitude of her talents.
So why, why, why didn’t she have anything in her arsenal to deal with, of all the things in the entire world, the fact that this rudimentary automaton that was filled with metals - the catalysts for her spells - was covered in plastic?
“Polypropylene,” Sofie grinned. “Modern material that devalues the ancient. Natural advantage against metallurgy.”
Oliphiaelé’s face twisted in scorn. “Are you stupid?”
“Well, if you don’t want the comfy lie to make yourself feel better about losing to a washing machine…”
A scream of frustration. A sphere of iron evaporated, and sparks flew harmlessly from the side of the machine. The acrylic claws slashed again, slicing through the stones like water.
Indeed, the truth was far different. This was not a case of some esoteric conceptual advantage, but something much simpler. Magecraft was, in essence, the actualisation of Mysteries through magical energy. Therefore, stronger Mysteries would produce greater results with less magical energy.
But of course, it also followed that the depth of a Mystery was also practically irrelevant in the face of an ocean of magical energy. In other words, simple reinforcement of a couple of sheets of polypropylene could outclass even the thunderbolts of God if one only had a few hundred quintillion units of magical energy and the skill to control it.
Did Sofie outclass this girl so thoroughly? Not even close. Anyone would have scoffed at the thought.
This was the result not of simply being on a higher level, but of the careful application of pressure. It didn’t take very much to command the electricity within the motors and circuits to attack - barely much more than the energy necessary to compose the thought. But it was fast and it was strong, and to be certain that she was going to avoid it, the astromancer needed to exhaust a tremendous amount of power every single time. Sofie had no idea how much energy Wodime could generate in sixty seconds, but she was confident that she had the advantage in that regard. And if she was already generating more power in the first place right now…
She didn’t finish the thought. A pit opened up inside her.
“────?!”
A yawning cavern swallowed up the magical energy she had reserved for reinforcement.
Wodime didn’t miss her chance. Iron evaporated, and an unseen blade cleaved her beast in twain in a single stroke. Sparks flew - the artificial demon inside bled into thin air and dispersed.
Saber…!
Sofie’s eyes flickered back, briefly, to her Servant, taking in the sight of his five opponents.
It turned out that he was actually capable of struggling somewhat after all.
The fake witch, legs crossed as she sat atop the temple wall, cackled with glee at the sight.
“That’s what happens,” smirked Gloria, “when you pick a big gun with no thought for compatibility. My Berserker would have been useless if not for the skills I have, but I’m so perfect for her that she’s threatening your big scary Saber all the same right now. You should have picked tactically.”
What, was this woman so insecure about her chances in this fight that she felt the need to jump in to mock her at the first opportunity?
Wodime didn’t see it that way. A bright, satisfied grin spread across her lips, full of malice and loathing.
“A dear shame. It does seem that in the end, you simply lose to your own greed.”
Greed?
Ah, okay. Sofie was beginning to understand now.
They thought she was underqualified.
Was it the Magecraft? The modern technology? Was that it?
Yes, yes, she was a lowborn first-generation peon. Very funny. Her plebeian gut would bust with laughter any second now once it got the message.
But she had one thing she wanted to correct.
If there was one insult that she would not stand, it was the implication that she had not thought her choices through.
Deep breath.
“My lord Yamato!
Your struggle is valiant.
Shall I pay tribute?”
Saber gave a low chuckle. So they agreed: it was finally the moment of truth.
A flash of metal forced the spears of Lancer and the sword of Berserker away, and he met her gaze with beastly eyes.
“About fucking time, you dolt.
I’ve been waiting for you to!”
Request, confirmation.
Only a single onlooker understood what was about to happen.
“Caster, get back!”
Mishima didn’t have time to explain the command, and Nils could tell from her tone that she wasn’t about to.
His retreat wasn’t a millisecond too soon.
Between Saber and his Master, the karmic line expanded.
Sofie’s Circuits turned at inhuman speeds, and Takeru’s core roared.
The winds revolved. The temple shuddered down to its foundations as the land trembled in jubilance, exalting the homecoming of its long-absent prince.
The two of them, together, had spoken a poem.
Yamato Takeru had once coined this genre with his teacher - it was an adaptation of a form of Magecraft, the technique to bring forth a phenomena in line with the will of its participants.
Mishima knew of the way of Tsukuba - she had used it herself.
The spell had been simple, a mere conversion. Sofie’s magical energy would be dedicated to her Servant in its entirety. Her od, the mana in the air she commanded, even her very life. Everything from the thoughts in her mind to the heat in her blood was open to him. It was on par with turning herself into a ritual offering, and her warlike god hungrily feasted upon it.
With a ravenous hunger that would have devoured ten ordinary people in an instant, Saber took in his Master’s tribute, and…
“░░░░▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓███████████───────!!”
Sparks scattered, and blossomed into a firestorm. From within, a literal blaze within his soul spilled outward. Divine wind and astral flames blended together into a spectacle like a myth, and the conflagration towered up into the clouds.
Berserker was blown away, shield and all.
Lancer leapt away, thrusting at the flames to absorb them.
“Wha–?!”
Impossible, mocked the oroshi. It was as if her spearhead had been struck by a train. It was deflected away as though the wind had been completely solid.
Something was being absorbed, certainly. She could feel the magical energy within her body.
But there was simply too much power.
A second blow, to freeze it - but even that was dissolved in an instant under the sheer force.
Archer fired away, dozens of blasts into the burning vortex, but the divine flame was simply outmatched.
Saber took a step forward.
“It’s useless. My Master has already given me everything I need to finish this. Just die quietly so we can get this over with.
░▒▓█▓▒▒▓▒▓▓▒▓▒░▒▓▓█▓▓████▓▒░▒▓▓▓▒▒▒▒▓▓▒░▒▒▓██▓▓▒▒░ ░
Insane. Ludicrous.
The maddened serpentine hissing was tinged with intent.
He was simultaneously beast and man, deranged and lucid.
It was a paradox beyond reckoning for any familiar with the basic rules of Servants.
He was reasoning through his Mad Enhancement.
Unthinkable, yet obvious. His bloodlust, his serpentine nature were what had given him such abnormal power from birth, and this very Magecraft had been originally learned specifically to control it.
There was chaos in his heart, true. Mad Enhancement was certainly and completely active.
And yet, at the very same time, with the magical energy he had received, his Magecraft allowed him to sculpt that chaos into coherent thoughts - enough to even speak through the screaming.
The solution could be nothing else: he had constructed an entire second mind for himself.
Everything, Nils realised, fed into each other. Every single skill that Saber possessed reinforced and completed each other in a perfect harmony, and that - first and foremost - was what made him so invincible. This kind of might could not have been controlled without mastering himself.
And he had, without a doubt. The proof was before them - not in the flames and in the storm, but one simple fact.
Not a single stray ember from that inferno had set the wooden temple alight.
Every cinder, every vector, every current was perfectly within his grasp. The crushing pressure, the scorching heat, the howling pyre, the screaming cyclone formed a chorus of destruction without a single note in discord.
Behold him, it sang, and kneel before his might.
At long last, Yamato Takeru’s chains had finally been released. At long last, he finally had access to the power necessary to reach the heights of his strength that no normal Master could have ever allowed.
That was the sole limiting factor of the Saber-class Servant Yamato Takeru while he stood in his homeland. A Magus who attempted to reach the peak of his ability, even one with a long and prestigious bloodline, would simply be swallowed whole by the serpent and die.
But not this one.
Sofie’s breathing was haggard. Her knees were trembling. She probably couldn’t have walked if she tried, and she didn’t care to find out. And yet, she lived. She was able to slake his thirst for strength with life to spare.
And in return, this connection…
She raised her hand. A bolt of spirit fire leapt from her fingertips.
Wodime’s reaction was barely fast enough, phasing into another possibility just as the very air itself was incinerated.
“Compatibility? Choose carefully? Yeah,” she sneered, “I totally agree.”
Yamato Takeru was the ideal partner for the girl who monstrously tore through every world she entered.
She didn’t remember when she had come to that conclusion. She didn’t even really understand how far it went. But none of that mattered. She already knew it for sure.
The moment she had heard his voice for the first time, she’d understood that she had already fallen for him before they had even met.
She dared anyone to even try to conjure a better prince in all the universe for her.
If she had to offer herself up for him to become who he truly was, then so be it, she declared at the top of her lungs. An old-fashioned dipshit like that guy would have probably called her a ‘good woman’ for having the strength to.
And what of it? Who else in the entire world could have?
She revelled in the gaze of absolute horror from the two Magi who could only stare, because she knew that he wasn’t the one they were afraid of right now.
“What the hell are you?!” Wodime demanded.
It was a fair question. No human being could have mustered enough strength to feed this calamity and still be on her feet to keep fighting.
The pain coursing through every cell in her body was probably doing something to her brain, because all Sofie could do was laugh like him.
“Honestly,” she replied, “I have no idea!”
Ren gripped Yamamoto’s hand as hard as he could. He hadn’t been in this temple enough, but there had to be some kind of emergency exit somewhere.
“Jikan, what’s going on?”
Please don’t call me that right now.
The walls were starting to creak. He didn’t want to be here, and this place didn’t want him to be here either.
It was, after all, someone else’s Workshop he had stepped into - and no small someone either. It was taking every fibre of his being to reject the bizarre weight pushing down on him and Yamamoto.
The ground shuddered.
“What are they doing out there?”
The morbid curiosity forced him to wonder as well. Capricorn looked beyond the walls, to see…
“…I think they’re trying to end the ritual here and now.”
With such an overwhelming advantage while all but one of their opponents were in one place… It almost felt like a foregone conclusion for Saber.
A dark hum of intrigue came from behind his ears.
“Good for you,” the ghost praised. “Looks like you’ll get away without ever having to make that bargain with me after all.”
The grating at his brain was the last straw. Ren reached behind him, feeling for his neck. He needed to take at least one load off here.
───140.
He yanked out something hard, and felt the wound close up. Almost instantly, the nausea began to settle, his mind starting to clear.
He tossed the shard of lead aside, very eager to lose it in the shadows and never look at it again.
Yamamoto stared, dumbfounded. He offered an apologetic smile.
“It was getting on my nerves,” he said.
“I don’t even know what it was and that still feels like a stupid pun.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? Finding out that we’re not going to die has me in a good mood.”
She gave him a concerned look. “We’re learning this now?”
“I guess technically not yet,” he admitted. “I’m sort of counting chickens.”
“Then shouldn’t we keep moving?”
“…Yeah.”
Following his intuition, he stepped around a corner to–
Breath caught.
A heavy haze crept around the floor of the room. Yamamoto gasped.
It was like a forest, but these trees were horrific.
Ren had heard about this kind of practice before, but to see it done in person…
It felt like poison was embracing him. A vile, alien shudder brushed through his skin, and his heart pounded in protest.
Somewhere between fifteen and twenty human beings stood at attention, perfectly lined up, staring off into nowhere with their feet planted firmly in magic circles drawn into the floor.
It took him mere seconds to understand.
“What the hell is that?” Yamamoto whispered.
“They’re having their magical energy harvested,” Ren murmured. “They must be powering the Bounded Field.”
And if they didn’t have Magic Circuits, that meant that their life force itself was the fuel.
The nausea was beginning to kick in again.
“Oh, we have a real artist here,” the ghost commented.
“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t disturb them. We don’t know what might happen if we–”
“How?!” cried Yamamoto, cutting him off.
She rushed between the ranks of men and women, dragging him along with her by the hand with violent tugs.
“What are you…?!” he spluttered.
He followed her gaze, and he saw it.
Of course. How could he have forgotten? It was just this morning that she’d told him.
Dressed in the uniform of a shrine maiden, Fujou Eri stood right here, eyes vacant as the circle beneath her feet gently drained away her very soul.
Lancer was the biggest nuisance, so she was first.
Saber’s blade, carrying the might of the blazing typhoon, descended upon her.
Spear shafts crossed, barely forming a defence against the enormous blow. Her knees buckled, and she flinched as the blaze licked at her.
“I see. So fire is your weakness, is it?
░▒▓▓██▓▒▒▓▓██▓█▓▒▓▒▒───
He wasn’t looking, but he already sensed the next blow.
Berserker swung wide, her target vanishing in the blink of an eye, and──
“Ghah──?!”
The air was pulled from her lungs. A fireball struck into her chest, and the ground scraped against her side.
Lancer gritted her teeth, pulling the dagger from her thigh.
“Archer!” she cried, flinging it toward the burning titan.
But───
“”
Archer’s beams hit nothing. Saber’s flames consumed the glass blade, melting it before it even made it halfway to its target.
“Now then… I believe I told you to die.
░▒▓█▓▒▒░▒▓█▓▓█▓▒▓▓▒▓█▓───
He raised the divine sword, and the blade gleamed, both by the light of the flames and its own──
──and stopped.
Instinct, his sense of danger that warned him of attacks, had kicked in.
That alone was cause for alarm.
None of the Servants around were a danger to him right now.
It took in a number of factors when deciding what to alert him to - chiefly with prior experience used to sort through whatever minor sensory information that his conscious mind had dismissed. At his level, it was a kind of precognition in its own right.
In this moment, that sense of an ominous future was drawing his attention to the main gate.
────Clap, clap, clap.
“Man, that’s so cool!”
A figure he didn’t recognise stepped into the boundaries of the temple.
A short girl, cane in hand and sword at her hip, applauded the spectacle before her. Azure butterflies settled around her feet and on her person, glowing in the night with uncanny stillness, as though they weren’t entirely real.
Behind her was a blonde-haired woman in a wheelchair, dressed in dark attire. Some kind of crystalline horn protruded from her head, and an eyepatch covered the left side of her face. Her weight was the unmistakable mass of spiritrons that marked her as a Servant.
This was not Rider.
It was not Archer, it was not Lancer, it was not Caster or Assassin or Berserker.
And, worst of all, she was not the one who his Instinct was warning him about.
“That’s really enough of that though. Olive already knows, but the Grail is under here, so I have to ask you to not blow this place up or you might screw up the whole plan, okay?” the girl continued, barely batting an eyelid.
Gloria had paused, and Sofie was taking stock of the new arrival.
Wodime’s lips were trembling, trying desperately to stave off a giddy grin.
Nils’s eyes betrayed a glimmer of faint recognition.
It was impossible to see what was under Sigmund’s helmet, doubly so that it was under Musubi’s heel. Musubi herself frowned, suddenly very wary indeed.
“Assassin’s Master must be watching as well,” the girl assessed. “At least, I hope she is. I was hoping to thank her for her participation with everyone else.”
The pregnant air shuddered with Wodime’s laugh.
“So you finally showed yourself.”
“I do seem like I’ve done that,” the intruder agreed. “I do appreciate how you all stopped what you were doing without having to be made to.”
The Servant in the wheelchair clicked her tongue.
“Come on, Saber, don’t be like that,” the girl smiled.
Takeru frowned. Saber?
“Pat yourself on the back, Olive. But you could have just called me if you wanted to chat,” she said. “Endangering the whole ritual just so I would show up is a bit much even for you.”
Wodime paid no attention.
She had been waiting for this moment - for this precise opportunity to snatch dominion of the ritual right out of those smug hands.
“I’m glad you’re finally here,” she grinned. “Not resorting to any of your little tricks this time, are you? I should hope not. Because this time, Keystine, I am going to win.”
The girl nodded slowly. “I… can’t say I know what you mean by that, but–”
“Rider!” Wodime raised her hand, crimson mark shining. “By my Command Spell, kill her!”
A flash of light at the sigil burned away, and–
“Actually, don’t.”
The girl raised her own - a small square of myriad colours, which flashed back far brighter. A wave of bismuth pulsed through the air.
───Nothing came.
Wodime gritted her teeth. “Then by my second Command Spell–”
“Don’t even bother. I don’t even have to do it again. My Command Spells are about five times stronger than yours,” the girl explained. “Sorry about all this, everyone. I was trying to make a more dignified entrance, but we can’t have everything.”
She tapped her cane on the ground, and gave a dramatic bow.
“My name is Keystine Meluastea Yggdmillennia,” she introduced herself, “and I have been the Rulemaster of this Holy Grail War. Thank you all very much for coming. Before we begin the curtain call, I’d like to assure everyone that I’ve already arranged to have your Magic Crests sent home to your next-of-kin.”
Mirrors sparked into being - above, below, either side.
Assassin poised to strike.
Berserker raised her shield.
Saber braced himself.
Caster hastily levelled a pistol at the girl’s head.
“Master!” cried Lancer.
Keystine’s hand sparked in a thousand colours.
“Everyone in front of me, get lost,” she ordered.
And by her Command Spell, the Servants vanished.
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Originally Posted by FSF 5, Chapter 14: Gold and Lions I
