Perhaps there was a time in which the chamber had been a beautiful place. The marble columns lined with gleaming silver were certainly beautiful things. Those sculptures that were not broken showed the magnificent artistry of ancient times. But in the gloom of its countless shadows, faintly pierced by the scant rays of light that made it through small windows near the tall ceiling, the dusty cylindrical chamber seemed nothing but a long-forgotten tomb.
“He’s here…he’s here, he’s here, he’s here…!” a weak, hoarse voice, growing stronger and livelier with every word, like a ghost regaining the blessing of life. The woman, a voluptuous beauty with skin marred by the pallor of death, grasped the crystal ball with hands clenched like a harpy’s claws. Her body shuddered in weak, ecstatic tremors.
“Well somebody sounds happy today…” A new figure stepped into the stage, as if crafted out of the countless shadows. She was greeted by the diviner with a radiant smile, diminished in no way by the ambience or the woman’s own sickly appearance.
“Yes! He’s here, he’s finally here…!”
“Hmm…” The second woman’s sounds were muted and distorted by the mask smooth like polished jet that encased her whole head. In fact, not a single millimeter of skin was left uncovered by her dark and regal dress. The two rising black horns jutting out of the mask created the figure of a black goddess or a demon of secrets.
The two women fixated on the figure projected inside the crystal ball.
“That confident poise! The conviction in his eyes! Unfaltering will latent inside a feeble body! Such a magnificent soul, it can only belong to my beloved!”
The masked lady did not comment on the blatantly biased argument. In her mind, she began a countdown to the end. To several ends, in fact.
“Some Servants also came.”
“Unwelcome pests, the whole lot of them,” all but snarled the pale woman in the feathered dress.
“Now, now…” The masked woman’s conciliating voice carried a somewhat ominous tone, perhaps because of the mask in the way, or perhaps…
“…two of them were clearly brought here by
the rule of this world. They are as welcome here as you and I. It’s the one standing by his side that worries me.”
“Then let’s chop that whore into pieces,” spat the diviner. “Starting with that shameless hand.” She referred to the hand daintily resting on the young man’s shoulder; the faint hint of deep respect and affection carefully veiled in a simple gesture.
“We are not
demons or
barbarians, my friend,” smoothly said the masked one, her voice carrying the tinge of amusement within an inside joke only she could understand. “Let us see what happens for now. Berserker’s on her way; let her have her fun.”
The pale Venus was no longer paying attention. Her eyes, her heart, her everything were on the man inside the crystal ball, and her soul demanded its other half. Her entire being ached with longing, and it was her acceptance of
the rule of this world which stopped her from hurrying to his side, to shower him with kisses and lose herself in the scent of his hair. Tears escaped her eyes, which the masked lady carefully wiped off.
“My beloved…” whispered the pale woman. No time was too soon to have him in her arms again.
*********///*********
“Hmm…” The Master of Chaldea was surveying his surroundings with arms crossed and pursed lips, like a general of yore studying the field of battle. “I have to ask a few questions here.”
“Sure.”
“How come Mashu’s not here?”
“Hmm…I heard something about a medical check-up? I am unaware of the details. In any case, she is currently engaged with Dr. Roman.”
“Right. So how come you are here?”
“Ah! Well, I saw Master walking towards the chamber and then I had a hunch something interesting was going to happen. And here we are!” Her adorable lips puckered as she made a faux-thoughtful gesture. “Do you think I unlocked the Instinct skill?”
The young man blatantly ignored that—a critical skill in his job—and took the surroundings again. He admired the classical and blatantly Greek architecture of the white buildings rising atop the packed sand. He stood on a boulevard; an avenue as broad or even broader than those of modern metropolises, and his mind could easily conjure the heavy traffic of horses and camels carrying trade goods from countless distant lands. Instead of trees, pools of fresh water lined the middle of the street, probably split between those for human and those for animal consumption.
“…no contact with Chaldea, huh.”
“Nope. That’s why, until we deal with this situation, you can count of me as your right hand. You can call me ‘Mashu Hari’!”
“No.”
“Aww…”
The boy paid no attention to the Assassin-class Servant’s sulking.
“Alright, next question: why are those two here as well?”
He referred to the two Servants currently locked in heated battle with what seemed to be a veritable swarm of ghosts.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I would say Miss Nero and Miss Mordred were close enough to be swallowed by that light as well.”
Certainly, he had shifted without stepping into the coffin. He remembered the light, and what was probably Mata Hari’s voice calling out to him, and then they were there, and there was a battle raging all around them. It wasn’t just Saber Bride and Mordred; battalions of solders had taken to the streets to confront the undead threat.
“Well, for whatever reason there’s nothing coming from Chaldea, so we just gotta do what we can,” he concluded.
“Ufufu, Master’s easygoing way of life is truly the best.”
“Uwaah, why is the me other people see so different from the one in the mirror…?”
Mata Hari did not regret her spontaneous choice to flutter around her Master that morning, made the very moment she learned of Mashu’s medical obligations. She had not expected them to end up in a sort-of-singularity thing, but like her Master, as a Servant she was one to take things as they come.
“Anyway,” the boy put his self-loathing in the back of his mind and focused on the trial at hand. “This is normally the Doctor’s job, but we have to figure out where and when we are.”
“Well…” Mata Hari resumed her mock-thoughtful face. “The sandy terrain, the architecture, and the strong scent of the sea could imply anywhere along the south and east Mediterranean. But I’ll go all in and say we’re in Alexandria, Master.”
“Yes, Mata Hari, I also saw Cleopatra over there.”
Indeed, the last Ptolemaic Queen stood a distance behind them, rallying the troops—or simply standing around and letting her sheer presence act as motivator; it was somewhat unclear. It was also unclear whether this was the living Cleopatra or the Servant. What was clear, on the other hand, was that it was a matter of time until her attention turned from the ghosts to them.
“Victory is upon us! Radiant! Beautiful! As is natural.”
“Yeah, what the Father-looking Roman said.”
His Servants had stepped out of the fray and a brief glance confirmed that the ghost threat had been mostly subdued. Cleopatra’s soldiers were taking care of the final push forward, cleaning the streets from the presence of the undead. The two blondes strode towards him with disturbingly similar “praise me!” looks of expectation on their faces.
“Umm…” he began, scratching the back of his head. “We got thrown into some strange situation, but you guys went and took care of everything. You’re amazing.”
“Amazing…amazing, huh…” Nero seemed to be chewing on his choice of words, her musing barely hearable beneath Mordred’s boisterous “you got that right!”.
“…very well! Not quite strong enough, but I’ll acknowledge Master’s proper praise!”
The young Master had to admit his surprise when the chariot bearing Cleopatra darted past his group, receiving only the briefest of glances. The radiant beauty praised by the world clearly had more important things in her mind.
“Onwards, my brave soldiers! Today is the day we reclaim the
Soma!”
The soldiers’ war cry filled the streets of Alexandria and their lines began to press forward, deep into the heart of the city.
“…looks like that’s where the action is,” he mused, to the delight of his Saber-class companions.
“Then there lies our new stage!”
“Right on! Come on, Master! Dunno how we got here or what’s going on, but there’re bad guys we gotta beat up, right?”
“Ufufu, isn’t this exciting?”
“Glad you girls are enjoying yourselves…” murmured the last Master as he took after his much faster allies.
*********///*********
The Master of Chaldea was not a stupid man, and did not waste the chance to get some idea of the setting. A young soldier who had witnessed Nero’s and Mordred’s fighting was more than willing to answer the strange but brave foreigners’ questions on the way.
As it turned out, the Soma was the royal mausoleum in which the remains of Alexander the Great rested. However, the original Soma had been replaced by a different, much larger building. Nobody could explain how it happened, and all attempts at approaching the building were met with opposition from all sorts of arcane things like ghosts and iron constructs, in seemingly endless numbers. Those things did not appear as long as people stayed away from the massive building, but Queen Cleopatra could not simply let things stay as they were.
“Can’t really blame her,” mused the Knight of Treachery. “Some mysterious building popping out in the middle of your capital? No way Father would be okay with that.”
It did not take them long to find Cleopatra at the back of her army. The clustered residences of Alexandria had been replaced by broad, open space, fitting for a battlefield. About two hundred meters and a wall of aggressive spirits separated the Queen of Egypt from the building that replaced the Soma.
It was as if a second building had grown beneath the original mausoleum, pushing it upwards to tower over the entire city. It was a three-layered pyramid atop which rested a classical mausoleum, with columns that supposed an also-pyramidal ceiling, atop which stood a massive statue: four huge horses pulling a chariot ridden by a couple.
“…huh.” That was Mata Hari. “Isn’t that…?”
“How glorious! How magnificent!” Nero, on her part, was jubilant. “Truly, I am blessed by the Olympians! A stage more fitting I could not ask for!” Her radiant smile was turned towards her summoner. “Master! Beneath the shadow of this mausoleum, let us wade into battle! Or rather, let us be wed! Right now!”
“Your priorities went way off-road just now!”
“But, Master! We stand before the greatest monument to love! In front of this Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, let us seal our eternal bond…” Whatever words were left in that sentence, they were drowned in the silence of a suddenly pensive Roman emperor.
“…hmm…now that I think about it, was Halicarnassus always this sandy?”
“Silence your idiocy, foolish swordswoman!”
Finally, Cleopatra had deigned herself to step off her chariot to address the peanut gallery.
“Do not claim to ignore where you stand, for there could not be another city like this one on our fair Earth!”
Nero was about to honor the present with a long monologue on the greatness of Rome, but found herself piercingly interrupted before she could even start.
“Well said, Cleopatra the Seventh!”
Potent words heard by all in the city brought the battle to an abrupt halt, at the same time a lone figure stepped out of the darkness beyond the marble tomb’s sole entrance.
The first thing the young Master noticed were the horns: growing horizontally from right over her…bovine (!?) ears, then making sharp turns to rise straight upwards. Ashen hair, eyes like glowing embers, and a small body with taut muscles…
“…it’s a little Asterios.”
The Master gaped at Mordred.
“Don’t say it!” He hissed. “Even if everybody’s thinking it, don’t just go and say it!”
Mata Hari laughed, delighted. Cleopatra took some steps forward to meet the approaching figure, who walked undisturbed by soldiers or ghosts. They parted like the waters of the Red Sea, as if acknowledging this was not a matter for common living or dead to involve themselves with.
“So that is, indeed, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,” said the last Queen of Egypt.
“It is,” confirmed the woman. A second later, her face shifted to a dismissing scowl.
“A brilliant deduction from the failed queen.”
Paying no heed to the displeased frown on Cleopatra’s beautiful face, the horned woman then assumed a rather pleasant expression that somewhat reminded the Master and his Servants of one Raikou.
“My, never took you for one so spiteful. Or was that your dark sister speaking?”
Back to scowling.
“While you are rather accepting on the one who brought us all to ruin.”
Back to motherly.
“Through no fault of her own, I would say. If anything, isn’t she quite lovely? As expected of our chil—”
The woman had smacked her own head with the flat of her hand.
“Will you knock it off already!?” And it was then that she noticed the looks on everybody’s faces. “Oh, this is just wonderful; now even the loon in the fetish bride dress, the loon in the edgy armor and the one who is clearly a prostitute—”
“Exotic dancer!”
“—think
we are the weirdo.”
Her eyes then rested on the young man clad in Chaldea’s white uniform.
“My apologies, last Master of humankind,” she said as she greeted him with a polite bow. Then she tapped her head with a gloved finger. “It’s like a chicken coop in here.”
Scowl.
“We resent that! Rather, you’re the worst of us!”
Relaxed again. The young man thought of his usual days at Chaldea, of the many overwhelming personalities he was surrounded by, their many needs and their often-dangerous eccentricities.
“…I understand, to a degree.”
“Ufufu…”
Mata Hari got a glare for that. The horned warrior woman examined the boy for a few seconds, until her eyes widened and her expression changed to show her newfound respect.
“You do indeed. Must have it though, don’t you?”
“Like you can’t imagine.”
The voluptuous Assassin a step behind and to his right mocked him with a faked harrumph.
“Muu…Master, I find myself oddly displeased by this latest exchange.”
Again, Nero was not allowed to dwell on that line of thought, as Cleopatra seized the reins of the conversation.
“I take it you are not Artemisia the Second, ruler of Caria.”
The newcomer pointed at the tomb behind with her thumb.
“Nah, she’s inside. Rather reserved, that one. And the other one really should stay inside, so it’s better if we come out alone. We couldn’t just let this game end without taking a good look at our child, you know.”
“Yes, yes! Isn’t she a darling?”
Cleopatra was not pleased with the horned woman’s smile and all its affection.
“You are no mother of mine.”
The woman’s face contorted into pure, undiluted hurt. Then she groaned.
“Aaaah, you went and said that,” she complained. “We are the one who has to bear with all the sobbing and whining and crying. Not fun.”
“Um, miss…” Mata Hari, as replacement for the party’s voice of reason, chose to intervene before they went into another tangent.
“Ma’am,” corrected the horned woman. Then she shrugged. “Actually, our title is a lot longer, but let’s go with ma’am for now.”
“Uh, alright, ma’am. Could you be so kind as to telling us who you are and…well, what your purpose is?”
The horned woman’s face became serene like a night in the Sahara.
“We could, joyless woman, in deference to your propriety.”
“That adjective was completely unnecessary…” murmured the Assassin, a somewhat dark aura swirling around her. The Master pointedly looked in the opposite direction and pretended not to have seen anything.
“It’s rather simple: our guardians cannot stop a team of sufficiently motivated Heroic Spirits. Therefore, we came in person. The two in there probably want to stick around a while longer, so we can’t let you inside just yet.”
“You have no intention of telling us your name,” declared Mata Hari.
“Isn’t that how it works?” replied the grinning woman. “Figuring out your heroic enemy’s true identity is half of the fun!”
“And there’s only one way to figure it out!” Mordred took a step forward, sword in hand. Nero followed suit with a hearty “umu!”
“I think I don’t really get it, but the city will go back to normal if we beat you and your buddies in there, right? Master, say the word!”
The woman’s grin only widened at Mordred’s words.
“Much better! That’s such a brilliant way to face life: boldly, brashly, confidently, without a care for the small details!” She laughed. “The living me would have envied you, young knightess.”
“Enough of this,” firmly declared Cleopatra. “We’ll break through ourselves!”
The horned intruder shrugged. “Have it your way. We know you are not stupid enough to throw common soldiers at a Heroic Spirit, so what’s your plan for that?”
“I don’t need a plan!” Mordred declared as she launched a preemptive strike, throwing all her might into a powerful swing that cut the air just to the right of the enemy (?) Servant.
“…huh?” Mordred’s confusion was quickly drowned by pain. A punch to the gut sending her flying over her allies and well into the forest of men that was Cleopatra’s army.
“…yeah, I’m not joining this one,” declared Mata Hari.
“As if I’d let you.”
“My, my heart just skipped a beat, Master! Is this the so called ‘suspension bridge effect’?”
The boy’s reply was lost in the army’s war cry as they renewed their assault on the ghost guardians. Nero too jumped into the fray, and the horned Servant faced her with her gauntleted fists. The Master of Chaldea was already well-accustomed to the amazing battles between Servants, so he rather focused on figuring out just what happened earlier with Mordred. Mata Hari made herself as small a target as possible, throwing magic bullets are a ghost here and there while their surroundings were filled with the unceasing sounds of metal meeting metal. Nero’s artistic swordsmanship was a dance of rapid slashes, each and every single one countered by a firm punch. When Nero switched to slower, mightier blows, the horned woman lowered her stance and put a wider turn of her waist on each attack.
And then, Nero missed a blow, her slash falling a hand’s length to the enemy’s side. This time her Master could see the obvious confusion on her Servant’s face just before that same face was pummeled and sent to the sky with a mighty uppercut.
“Nero and Mordred don’t miss,” he said.
“Of course they don’t,” agreed Mata Hari.
“So, what does she do?”
Their horned enemy did not seem interested in going after Mata Hari or the Master. She stood calmly waiting for the swordswomen, occasionally grabbing a solider that got too close and throwing him at a rapidly angering Cleopatra. It did not help that the horned woman countered Cleopatra’s light shots by punching it.
“That’s a fine radiance, my child! Truly befitting of a pharaoh! But you have to try something different! Wahahaha!”
“I’m no shameless brute’s child! Disappear already, filthy dung beetle!”
“You call divine punishment if you insult these beautiful horns, my child! Or beetles!”
“Filthy things are filthy!”
“Wahahaha, good, good!”
“Master, lemme have another go,” Mordred said as soon as she made it back to the front. Her face was hidden by the helmet, but it was easy to imagine her expression at the moment. “I just need another try and I’ll figure her out.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“She is spirited, a delightful opponent,” answered Nero instead, looking still a little wobbly. “But mine and Mordred’s sublime techniques are superior. Either of us can defeat her, but only once we overcome her skillful subterfuge.”
The boy took a good look at his two Servants: the confident, proud emperor making herself look taller as usual, and the armored knight pretty much vibrating on the spot.
“…go get’er, Mordred.”
“Yosh!”
And Mordred was on the target, and just like before, her swing missed, as if she had finished it way too early. The clone of the King of Knights grinned triumphantly inside her helm.
“I know your trick now, you bast—oof!”
“Looks like she got it,” mused the Master upon the sight of Flying Mordred 2: Magnetic Boogaloo. Further discussion was interrupted by Cleopatra’s move.
“Enough playing around. The Queen shall dish your punishment herself! Be grateful, then disappear!”
“Oooh, Noble Phantasm right away,” commented Mata Hari, as she could feel the accumulation of magical energy preceding a Heroic Spirit’s finest feat of power.
The horned enemy, on the other hand, seemed disappointed.
“Foolish girl should know better by now. No wonder she was the doom of our kingdom.”
A compassionate smile.
“Now, now, she is clearly distressed, and very worried about the Soma.”
Her head suddenly dropped, letting her long bangs conceal her eyes. Her voice, too, changed into something raspy and irregular, as if spoken with a burnt throat.
“A lesson must be taught, nonetheless. Show her our radiance, child.”
“Sure, sounds fair to me.” And back to normal.
Both Cleopatra and her opponent raised their right hands, aiming at each other.
“This is the snake of time…”
The horned woman delighted in the look on Cleopatra’s face when the same exact words came from their mouths. Similar, but not quite identical, serpents orbited their bodies bursting with magical energy.
“The omen of Egypt’s downfall!”
“The harbinger of the last glorious dynasty!”
The two serpents shone with radiance like the sun’s, swirling faster and faster as if competing with each other.
“I command you as the final pharaoh!”
“We command you as the divine dynastic mother and ruler of Egypt!”
“
Uraeus Astrape
O, serpent who finishes the time of daybreak, come to me
!”
“
Uraeus Eilisis
O, serpent who shines in the primordial abyss, arise now
!”
Almost everybody else had to cover their eyes long before the seemingly identical Noble Phantasms clashed and surged upwards in a torrent of plasma like a spear impaling the sky. Stray streams of energy lashed out and blasted nearby buildings, monuments and trees. The pillar roared like a tidal wave and cleared the sky of any and all clouds.
“Is it safe to look now?” asked the Master sometime after the cataclysmic clash.
“Mostly,” admitted his temporary right hand.
“They…wiped each other out?”
“Nah,” corrected Mordred. “That woman’s Noble Phantasm swallowed Cleopatra’s and then took to the sky on its own instead of coming for us.”
Cleopatra too had noticed the defeat of her technique. Her knees trembled, but her pride as the pharaoh stopped her from falling on them.
“Do not look down on yourself, my child,” spoke the horned woman with a calm, conciliating voice. “Under normal circumstances, our Noble Phantasms are equals in power. This time, however, I have a territorial advantage that gave me victory.”
“I knew it!” Mordred called out. “You’re a Caster like Xuanzang!”
“Wrong. I have been brought into this world as a Berser—watch out!”
A new swarm of ghosts sprouted out the ground, surrounding the Master of Chaldea and isolating him from everybody else. Mata Hari cried as she was bombarded by multiple simultaneous magic bursts at point-blank, her body flung like an old rag until it crashed with a group of confused soldiers.
The young man was surrounded by translucent white, and then he wasn’t. Arms embracing him from behind, the scent of ashes and wormwood, and two wonderful mounds pressed on his back.
“You are finally here, my beloved brother.”
And then, dark.
*********///*********
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shiiiiiiiiiiite.”
The same person who cursed rolled her eyes at the cursing.
“Uncouth words unbecoming of a pharaoh. Control yourself.”
Head hung low. Eyes behind bangs.
“…Berserker.”
Head high. Cold, scathing face.
“Not. The time—urk.”
And then she was getting a faceful of Mordred’s horned helmet, the Arthurian knight grabbing her by the horns and bringing back the motherly face.
“Ah, um, n-not the horns, please?”
“Alright, you goddamned whackjob, you damn better tell me he’s alright and how to reach him, right now.”
Back to normal face.
“…we are sure you already realized we use magnetism, so why are you still wearing that armor?”
“Wrong answer.”
Simultaneous blows flung the two women in opposite directions, the Egyptian queen crashing hard against the Mausoleum’s wall near the entrance. They quickly got back on their feet, and two very upset swordswomen stepped forward, rules of chivalry be damned.
“You do realize you still will have a hard time hitting us with those swords even after figuring out the trick, righ—ugh!”
A magical blast smashed her body like a speeding truck, making her gasp in sudden agony. It was follow a second one, and a third, and an unceasing barrage of smaller shots.
“No, wai—ow! We can’t—ow! Non-elemen—ow!—tal magic is—ouch!—not fair!”
And then Mordred and Nero learned that the opponent who had caused them so much trouble was in fact not very good at dodging.
The lone figure that walked past the two Sabers did not relent in her pitiful, careless assault. Ignoring Cleopatra’s calls and the Berserker’s annoyance at her feeble opposition, the weakest of Servants fired, and fired, and fired over and over again, until her target fell flat on her rear out of sheer volume of weak attacks received, and she was towering over the far superior Heroic Spirit.
“Where is he.”
A lone drop fell on her mostly uncovered chest, pulling Berserker to look up at the woman whose shadow envelop her and whose voice disarmed her.
“Please.”
Berserker found herself enraptured by her eyes moistened by tears soon to be shed.
“…what’s your name, young lady?”
“…Margaretha Geertruida Zelle.”
“Mata Hari? Don’t mess with us, Mata Hari’s not a magu—ow!”
“
Please.”
There was no anger, only desperate need.
“Revered ancestor.”
Berserker looked to the side, where Cleopatra, too, pleaded without words. She sighed, and then raised both her face and her voice so she could be heard even in the depths of the tomb behind her.
“Hey, Masked Queen! You really shouldn’t have let’er do that! It’s over, you know? Over!”
She then addressed Cleopatra.
“Pull your soldiers back; we all need to rest if we want to take on those two. We will attack tomorrow.”
“But—”
“The lad will be fine, those two will not harm him. I swear on my honor and pride as Great Bat, Child of Ra, Daughter and Wife of Amun, Bride of Horus, and King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Now let me get up, Mata Hari.”
While uncertain, the Assassin acknowledge the solemn words of the other woman and took a step back.
“I cannot make promises about his virtue, though.”
“Eh!?” The sound came from more than one woman.
“Don’t you get it? That woman of all people has fixated on him. It’s beyond messed up.”
The former Ruler of Egypt and Cleopatra’s ancestor faced Chaldea’s three Servants with equal parts worry and amusement.
“Your opponent is history’s greatest brocon, you know.”
To be continued in Part II – Mausoleum
Originally Posted by Adlet
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