wow rude
wow rude
Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
It's already annoying enough to see you lot whine about raff on the discord but could you please keep your nonsense off the thread?
Yeah, I'll take it back, it was uncalled for. Sorry Raff.
True Rider
Thanks.
Plaza Sotomayor, Valparaíso
Day 04
Morning Phase – 14
Severe cold (-30°C/-22°F)
(BGM)
“So? What do you think?”
The last great emperor of the world’s first empire, Naram-Sin, lies dying on ground long devoid of snow or ice. It is an unpleasant place to die, resting on a bed of slush created by the burst of heat from earlier and the energy released in his final battle. Yet, he looks entirely calm and content as his body breaks apart into worthless spiritrons.
His slayer already departed. Having exchanged their last words, the girl with her priorities straight hurries to help those she wishes to help. The one who speaks to him right now is, well, who else?
“…I do not know how it happened in the age of myth, but that Dancer cannot defeat you,” he states, to no surprise from the woman.
“…so you agree.”
“But you will lose.”
Maid and fallen king stare at each other for a single long second. Naram-Sin smirks.
“Well, I am not the one with Clairvoyance here.”
The Maid’s expression remains unflappable.
“…any last words?”
The dying Servant, too, remains his jovial self.
“I think I have some time, so let me talk about my aunt for a bit.”
These words are sufficient to make The Maid raise an eyebrow.
“…let us hear it, then.”
“Oh, so you still pamper me after all.”
“I do not remember ever doing such a thing.”
“Haha, I guess not.”
Another pause. A more meaningful one, between two people who know each other yet do not in the most authentic sense.
“I don’t need to tell you this, but I met the Ornament of Heaven in the last years of her life. Well, she never looked her age, but that was to be expected.”
Lancer looks away from the woman, letting his eyes fixated on the gloomy sky well above him. The blood-boiling presence of Saver’s melam is gone. It feels both relieving and disappointing at the same time.
“To me, to everyone, she was the living proof that the gods were still there. That even if we could not see their faces, they were still watching over the world and over us. Wherever she stood, it was as if the gods stood right behind her. Whenever she spoke, it truly felt as if she did so in their behalf.”
He speaks of memories only he sees—or so it would be if he were talking to any other person.
“She taught us how to communicate with them even if we could never meet them again. A completely new way to experience the gods, to reach out to them. I did not get it back then. Rather, I only understood long after she was gone.”
He sighs the sigh of a man who laments the foolishness of youth.
“She changed the world to a degree kings and emperors like me could never match with our wars and conquests. My life became a mostly forgotten page in the book of history, while billions of people in this modern era still pray to their gods in the same ways she taught us.”
His words are spoken softly, but they carry obvious pride. He is a man who knows he comes from the finest lineage, and bears that privilege like a second set of clothes.
“It took me so long to understand the way she looked at me; at the world altogether.”
He snorts.
“A person who accepted the road she had taken, and where that road had taken her. A person who had become exactly what she had aimed to become. She was complete.”
A chuckle.
“She was more than a human, and more than just Ishtar. She was a transcendent being, who would have never bothered with ‘Holy Grails’ or the likes. She did not die of old age; she chose to leave the world when she concluded she no longer belonged to it.”
His mirthful eyes return to the woman looking down at him.
“In other words, she was nothing like you.”
The words fail to disturb The Maid, who is well aware of all this.
“That is only natural. It is why I am the one who came and not she.”
Lancer is struggling to keep his eyes open, but he still finds the strength to speak.
“It is also why you will lose.”
“Perhaps. But I do not intend to go down easily.”
One last sigh. It is a mournful sound, but there is still humor in that face that lost its pallor.
“Of course not. Goodbye, fairest of all goddesses.”
“Goodbye, last good scion of Akkad.”
After that, The Maid is alone, looking down at the remnant left behind once the Servant has been claimed by the Grail. This ritual uses a method completely different from Fuyuki’s, after all. She knows it would have been a lot simpler to use her Noble Phantasm to deploy a more straightforward implementation, but that would have denied her the enjoyment of research and development.
With a flick of her finger, that remnant disintegrates through accelerated spontaneous decomposition in a way that would probably piss off the Nomikatas for trivializing their magecraft. She destroys it because she is not the type to hand over advantages to her opponents if they failed to claim them themselves.
Alone with her thoughts, The Maid processes the events of the morning anda conclusion.divinescalculates
“The morning’s final result…is up to the remnant of my last Master, it seems.”
*** ***
Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, Cárcel 471, Cerro Cárcel, Valparaíso
Sheer cold (-31°C/-24°F – Thermal Sensation 58°C/136.4°F)
Character Status
(BGM)
We have to get out of here.
Even if there are two people there fighting for dominance, there is something they have in common: they both want to kill us. Take advantage of their conflict? The moment we attack, they’ll focus entirely on retaliation, no matter who is in control of the body.
The problem with running away would be…
“Liria!” I hiss. “I’ll create a smoke curtain, and then we run. Can you take Nomikata?”
The girl, who is still in the middle of the regenerative process to regain her hearing, needs a moment to figure out the fragments of sentences she manages to catch.
“…right!”
Alright, let’s do this. Come on, soil of Valparaíso. You hate this guy too, don’t you? So help me mess up his day!
“Urrraagh!” It feels like a part of my soul pours out of my body when I grasp the uneven ground with both hands. I call upon the earth through the fissures already created throughout the part of the battle I missed. I ask not for flame; what I want is…!
Deadly black smoke rises from the fissures as if expelled by a hose. The volcanic miasma quickly becomes a cloud centered on Berserker, who battle with itself is now riddled with coughs and hacks. However, there’s no way this will be enough.
“Go!” I call out, my own sight also limited by the trails of smoke also surrounding me like a dark raiment. It seems to be unnecessary, for I can hear Liria’s footsteps leaving me towards Nomikata. Alright then, before I leave after them…!
“Come on!”
After the smoke, the earth itself rises into a dome that envelops Berserker in darkness. It probably won’t hold him at all, but the only thing that matters is that we’re no longer here when he breaks out! But, shit, it really gets rough when it doesn’t involve fire! What does that say about me!?
“Liria! We’re going down Cumming!”Status Change
“Listo!”
We took a rather roundabout route from the church to reach this place. We now leave through the opposite route, the same one Berserker himself used to get here. The tall wall isolating Pantheon Hill and its cemeteries standing ominously to our right. For a moment, Liria glances in that direction—no, she looks past the entrance to the cemeteries, to a green-colored two-story building. I think it’s a budget hostel; no idea why it grabbed her attention, though.
Cumming Street makes a broad arc downhill, the kind of slope skaters just love. At least it’s easy on our bodies for now.
“”¿Cuál es el plan?What’s the plan?
Yeah, it’s more comfortable talking in Spanish, of course.
“If Maria’s on the way here, she’s traveling in a straight line.” She is a Servant, so she does not need to follow the street layout. “We’re taking the stairs to the funicular to get to the next hill, then we hope we meet each other on the way.”
“…as good as anything, I guess.”
We can still hear Berserker’s incoherent shouting inside the dome of packed earth. Looks like he’s still busy dealing with his personality conflict. I hope he chokes to death in there. There are also sounds of battle somewhere northward, in the direction of the sea. Who the hell is fighting over there? Actually, I don’t really want to know.
“Wait!” Assassin abruptly comes to a halt. Her posture low and wary as she looks towards the house to our left.
(BGM STOP)
“Javier, there’s somebody over there.”
Well fuck. And Nomikata looks awfully pale, it really doesn’t look good.
“Wait!” A voice I think I recognize calls out from inside the house. “It’s us, we’re coming out.”
(BGM)
“Senta!” I gasp out at the sight of the artificial girl holding on to Caster to be able to walk, her uniform tatters. Anybody can see the spots of dried blood here and there; what the hell has she been up to till now?
“Haha, you sound like you missed me…sheesh, you’re taking ‘smoking hot’ the wrong way, sweetheart.”
Even her teasing comes out too feeble to count. I have to stop myself from approaching her after the reminder of the cloak of smoke and cinders still enveloping me.
“Oh, young Seigi!” Caster gasps out, almost dropping Senta to examine the man on Liria’s back. “He looks…”
Terrible? Fucked up? With a foot through the pearly gates? Yeah. I get you.
“He took a nasty blow from Berserker.”
“He took a lot of nasty blows from Berserker while you were out of commission, Javier. And I mean a lot,” Liria retorts in the tone of one who knows she is not making a good joke.
“Oh, but it’d be difficult to apply healing right here…”
“Yeah, we hafta get moving,” Liria insists. “That lunatic up there could come after us any second now. I have Presence Concealment, but you guys…”
“Oh, that will not be an issue,” Caster calmly retorts, already drawing cuneiform symbols in the air like I’ve seen The Maid do a few times. “I can create an effect similar to Presence Concealment to hide us from Berserker. It won’t work against anything else, though, so we must nonetheless remain cautious.”
“That’s…kind of over-specific, even for magic,” Liria murmurs. For some reason she’s taken the lead now, and I feel a bit uncomfortable because I can’t even help carry anybody.
“Don’t make such a long face, Javier,” Senta whispers with a weak smile. Her face, already on the pale side, looks almost deathly in her current state. Really, it is as if she would drop and break into a million pieces if Caster let go; that’s how weak she looks.
“Even if you can’t fuck without inflicting third-degree burns, I’ll still love you.”
“Har, har—”
A terrible explosion from uphill almost knocks us all down.
“Holy shit!” I hear myself yell.
“I’d say he got out of your cage, Javier.”
“You don’t say,” I retort at Liria, who looks as worried as I do at least.
“Yeah, yeah, cut it off with the flirting and let’s get the fuck outta here.”
“You call that ‘flirting’!?” Liria hisses back at a weakly smirking Senta, but indeed get moving, leading out suddenly larger group towards Santa Victoria and Cerro Alegre, at least until…
“Wait.”
With a single word, everybody huddles against a wall right round the corner of Parini with Elias Avenue.
“Soldiers?”
“Soldiers,” Liria confirms my suspicion. “Five of them at the base of the stairs.”
Makes sense; the access route to the funicular is a well-known, practical route. The thing is, we can’t go around them, because that would lead us straight to whatever or whoever is making that ruckus further downhill.
“I could try sending my familiars, but…”
The sounds of fighting could lead Berserker to our location. We need a move capable of taking out all those guys in an instant. I could do it, but it would involve a big ass explosion, and that would be pointless. Maybe Nomikata could do it, but the guy cannot even stand on his own right now.
“The cold is getting to young Seigi,” says Caster. “At this rate…”
Yes, enduring this cold while healthy and active is one thing. Doing so after taking multiple wounds and losing consciousness is a whole other can of worms.
“Maybe Javier should carry him after all.”
“He needs warmth, not being set on fire, Senta.”
However, it turns out we don’t need to worry about these soldiers after all.
(BGM STOP)
(BGM)
A veritable meteor drops in the middle of the street, the explosion devouring the bunch of soldiers who did not even see it coming. The problem is that everybody and their mother in the whole goddamn city definitely also heard that.
Of course, there is only one person so recklessly opportune.
Huh, she is back to her former attire…no, it’s not just that.
She looks tired. She looks like she is going to fall asleep right there in the middle of the street like a horse. She even uses her sword as a cane and sighs like an old woman after confirming not a single soldier is left. After that, she turns to us, greets us with a halfhearted salute…and then frowns.
“Javier, buddy, you’re taking ‘smoking hot’ the wrong way.”
“Pfft!”
Stop smirking, Senta. Also, stop looking so smug; we are in a crisis here.
“I want to facepalm, but I can’t,” Liria mumbles, her hands busy carrying Seigi Nomikata. “This is the worst.”
We have a problem when the Servant with the demonic arms and fly wings makes the reasonable commentary.
Maria’s nose twitches as she gets near.
“You stink of divinity, Javier. You stink worse than rotten girl over there.”
“Well yeah, fuck you too,” retorts Assassin, finally switching back to English to match Maria.
“With that stink? No thanks, I feel I'd catch something nasty.”
Well, at least Senta is enjoying the banter between the two overpowered blondes. Liria has a halfhearted scowl on her face as she adjusts her hold on Nomikata. By the way, I don’t smell Liria’s corpse-rot at all; I think my aura of flames gets rid of it before it reaches my nostrils. Cool.
“Well, I guess you’re no so tired if you can talk back like that.”
“No, I’m fucking exhausted; it’s just my witty muscles and my ass-kicking muscles are different.”
Maria does seem to have a retort for everything today. Too bad the energy in her words is not matched by the energy in her voice.
“Anyway, as I was sayin’, Javier: That stink’s a total relationship killer; we’re not sharing a bed again, not even by accident.”
From the looks of the people around me, any retort to that would be a mistake, so I’ll just stay quiet. This is when I need another guy as support, Nomikata!
The jokes end when she is standing in front of me along with the humor in her face. She gazes up and down my form cloaked in fire and noxious volcanic fumes—which by the way do not sicken me in the slightest, good to know—with a look I cannot quite describe.
“So? You alright?”
…I guess she’s not just talking about my physical health.
“I don’t know, really. But I think I’m getting better.”
She snorts, and the smile returns to her face.
“You’re not the judge of that, idiot.”
…right. Lily said as much, did she not?
“But…it doesn’t look like you’re about to break apart any time soon; that’s good. Dig the new hair color, very anime.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, Maria.
Maria only spares the briefest of glances at the others before setting her eyes on the slope leading uphill and back to (what remains of) the city’s Culture Center.
“Good job staying alive, guys. Really,” she murmurs. It is a strange thing to say; it almost sounds as if she is apologizing for something. Then she jerks her head towards us. More precisely, towards Senta.
“And you look a lot less dead than last time I saw you.”
“Found a good doctor,” says the girl who is trying to grin with a tired face. “You’ve also had a rough morning, sword girl.”
“…I know I’ve reached rock bottom when a Nazi is considerate towards me,” Maria says tiredly, but there is no trace of ill will in the words. She really just sounds tired. “Where’s the Herald? Is she—?”
“When I send it to look after the people in the church it was in way better health than all of us together. I can tell it’s still alive and kicking; aside from that…”
“You made a contract.”
“Eh…?” Liria utters with a somewhat haunted look.
“We gotta have a chat about that, but now I guess I should deal with the guy up there, huh.”
“M-Maria, you sure? I mean, you look tired—”
“Not so tired that I’d lose against that chump, Javier. You guys take redhead someplace safe before he freezes to death. I’ll go end that guy.”
Maria, you look almost as pale as Senta, and that Berserker’s weird. I can’t even tell if he is weak or strong. I’m…not sure whether going after him now is the best plan.
Choice Time
Catalog of Somewhat Original Servants
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So the Maid is more Ishtar than Enheduanna, got it. Thanks for the tip Lancer you are worthy of the Best Class.
As for choices... 3 is the clear option. When you kick down the door and beat someone to death in their house you don't do it solo, you do it with the whole squad. Beside's everyone needs a minute to say the least.
Quest of Fate
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THE MATSWith a flick of her finger, that remnant disintegrates through accelerated spontaneous decomposition in a way that would probably piss off the Nomikatas for trivializing their magecraft. She destroys it because she is not the type to hand over advantages to her opponents if they failed to claim them themselves.
ISHTAR YOU BITCH
- - - Updated - - -
also uh 3 I guess
3.
3.
Let's take a breather folks. Hopefully not too close to Liria though
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
3
Worst Goddess Strikes Again
And yeah, 3
The Act of dozing off in the afternoon is a luxury indeed.
Coffee would be nice, though.
[Collection of my Servant Sheets]
Now Revamped!
You know, I wonder if she's sort of similar to Filia, not Goddess Ishtar itself but a system that contains part of her will and power. In this case she would not be Enheduanna herself, but the incarnation of the system created by her to unite with Ishtar... which would also explain her Alter Ego denomination. Lancer Lily, while being an specific stage on Enheduanna's life, is still Enheduanna herself. In contrast, The Maid could be a piece of Enheduanna's ego that has acquired independency and adopted a different personaity and identity. Heck if she is the "process" through which Enheduanna became a Human God, it would make sense she keeps trying to create new ones, it's part of her "programming" so to speak. Anyway this is just speculation so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
+1 to this. Gotta regroup, make a plan.As for choices... 3 is the clear option. When you kick down the door and beat someone to death in their house you don't do it solo, you do it with the whole squad. Beside's everyone needs a minute to say the least.
True Rider
Seems pretty unanimous, but
3.
You can discussThe OG RequiemConQUEST and other Quests in Discord (disc is much more active here).
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Hmmm... Before we decide, Daneel, is there any way to recharge Maria's energy without resorting to "CGI dolphins" or similar? I know we were worried about what drawing on Javier's "divine" energy might do to Maria, but perhaps with Alambique he can turn it into something more "palatable" to Saver?
Though really, I'm tempted to just pick option 3 because I think it will lead to more story and dialogue.
- - - Updated - - -
"Before we decide." Oh, Spoony, you sweet summer child. :-P
Anyway, I'd still like to know that, but yeah, I'm voting 3.
You heard it here, CGI dolphins are on the table.
Quest of Fate
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I mean, I'd rather take the Liria route, myself, but sure!
None of that's happening if Javier can't turn his fire off lol
We have plenty of ice of hand mate we’ll make do
- - - Updated - - -
Actually, shit, Seigi needs medical care and probably some mana after that fight too
Last edited by Bird of Hermes; May 26th, 2020 at 02:03 PM.
Quest of Fate
Apocrypha Universe Fate Quest Project
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Beast's Lair Discord Server For Fate Quests
Hermes Servant Collection Master Post
What are you implying here, Hermes? Even in another person's story, you still want to claim rights to the H-scene? Does your greed know no bounds???
True Rider
CGI dolphins[George Takei]Oh, my![/George Takei]Seigi needs medical care and probably some mana after that fight too
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A wise and beautiful woman who exudes an aura of grace. She is a sly, cunning, manipulative person who always gets what she wants, whether through trickery or ruthlessness. Her own fighting abilities are low, but she should not be trifled with. What does she ride? Men, of course!
