Continuing...
When I was born, my first experience was a kiss.
The next was gazing upon the face of a man so overjoyed he may as well have seen a goddess. I did not know these things, the way these experiences could be put into words, until a few seconds later. Knowledge sprang into my mind, as easily the light was coming into my eyes, the air into my lungs. Reading, writing, speaking. Over the next several minutes my mind processed the half-lifetime worth of information that it was supposed to have, but never learned firsthand.
I traced the connection, the source of the reservoir my mind was drawing its education from. I learned of Olympus and the gods who resided there. I saw the face of Aphrodite, my “mother”. My mirror image- no, I was the one who was imitating of her. She was the one who had breathed life into me. What did that say about her that she gave a gift like this on a whim? Was it for my benefit, or for the man before me?
I stared at the man, who was too in awe of me to notice my momentary awkwardness and ignorance. All the data was in settling in place; now was the time to put it into practice. I felt a fluttery feeling in my stomach and a quickening of my heart just looking at him, and spark of electricity when he had touched me. I knew this feeling all too well, even if it was for the first time.
Love.
//
Hate.
Hunger. Cold.
Assassin let these concepts rush through him like a mantra to energize what was left of his psyche. The cold had sapped all his strength at first, but then the voice of Winter had spoken, and now the cold exhilarated him. Empowered him. He saw now, that the humans were all vermin. Cowering in the dirt, thinking what, he wondered? That they might escape the coming storm? No. The world will freeze until its surface was but ice. And not even the remaining enemy Servants will live to crawl, blackened, from their holes. They will-
He shook his head and focused. It was easy for his mind to wander and revel in what the Winter was planning to unleash. He had been chosen for his tactical ability and his stealth. His skills as a soldier and spy naturally melded with the Winter's nature as a hunter. Assassin dimly remembered being a God-fearing man, implacable as he cut down his targets. But even he had panicked at the monster that had held him down and force-fed him chunks of human flesh. But most of former memories were mere shadows now, covered up by the howling blizzard that was the Winter’s mind. And with the Holy Grail, that storm would become reality.
Try as they might, the enemy Servants would not find him no matter how many of his minions they killed. They were only five against an entire city. The boy king in the tower seemed to have exhausted himself a moment ago, after firing his arrows for hours straight to no avail. Fiddler, his old enemy, would pass the point of no return in time and succumb. The woman on the horse would as well. Though she looked young and innocent, it was clear to Assassin and the Winter that she had given in to lust for battle in life and had drunk her fill of blood. The military tactician in Assassin, the part the Winter had deigned to keep intact, knew Rider would be an excellent lieutenant.
Saber? A whore who relied on beauty and seduction to win. Not a threat. An existence like the Winter was above lust; the only pleasure Saber’s flesh would give him would be as food, her screams providing the evening’s entertainment. Her terror once she realized her powerlessness, at not being able to coquet her way to victory, would be so satisfying.
No, the only real threat was the
mad Lancer. Assassin knew the God that was one step behind the prophet at all times, guiding him to victory. It was impossible to sneak up on him, and his holy aura burned away the Winter’s minions. This sort of power meant that turning Caster and Rider at the very least would be required to overwhelm him. Perhaps Archer as well, if the boy was still in a state to be useful.
Frustration and impatience gnawed at Assassin, and he let out a screeching howl despite himself. Some ten or twenty minions close by responded in kind. It didn’t matter if anyone in the street below heard them; it would just sound like a shrieking wind drawn into the tall buildings, as was typical in a coastal city like this one. More sounds from his pack drew his attention to a lone figure running down the street. Rider was moving as well, still a ways off but coming in the same direction. They must have been following the path of Archer’s homing arrows to mop up more of the Winter’s minions.
When he saw the interloper’s blonde hair and white dress, he leaped from the rooftop to meet Saber. The timing was perfect to indulge his craving for fear and flesh. The harlot was no danger to him; he need not bother with stealth.
//
I rushed down the street, straining my senses for any enemies. Wendigo corpses littered the streets, killed by
Tutankhamun's arrows. After the pharaoh had collapsed, Rider and I moved out to hold a line until Archer recovered. We were both at a disadvantage, since the horde of undead was unaffected by my charming aura and Rider’s blizzard-conjuring Noble Phantasm, her main method of battlefield control, only made the winter wraiths faster and stronger. I made up for this deficiency by calling upon the arms mastery of Ares, consort to my patroness.
Every time I did so, I was reminded of the first time I had done it. My husband was an older man. The temple we built in our small village had attracted so many people to it that a city was founded. We had named it Paphos, after my daughter who had taken over for me as head priestess after my husband’s age began to catch up with him. That turned out to be a mistake. Rumors spread of how I did not age, even after decades of being in the public eye. The rumors said that the goddess Aphrodite herself lived on Cyprus, the island of her birth, sharing the house of Pygmalion the sculptor. Then a crowd of people formed outside our house, demanding I show myself. They were crazed by lust, wanting me for themselves. My husband had stepped forward as the broke down our door, spear in hand, but what little military training he had failed him just as his aged body did, and the second man through the door caved his head in with a club.
The next thing I knew, I was outside, surrounded by dead bodies. In my hand was my husband’s sword, an old rusted thing. The blade was red with blood, chipped all over and the tip was broken off. I was gripping it so tightly that the wooden hilt had splintered; it was just a bunch of wood fibers around the tang clenched in my fist.
I could not let my husband’s death be forgotten. The first thought I had was that I should repair his sword that I had ruined. Death and loss makes one think and do strange things, I suppose. I found a shaft of ivory in his storeroom, and his sculpting tools. Now that I had a task in mind, the connection to the gods in my mind that had gone unused for so long opened again, this time calling for the aid of Hephaestus, the god of smithing and crafting. With every degree of separation from Aphrodite, my learned skills were weaker. After disposing of the bodies and burying my husband, it took me three days to carve a sword from the ivory just the way I wanted it, even though crafting a weapon such as this was child’s play to the smith god.
Both of our wedding rings had been shattered in the attack, my husband’s crushed underfoot and my own broken apparently after I punched someone, if my bruised knuckles were any indication. I carved two new ones, big enough that they could fit around the sword hilt as decoration. Even if the blade took longer to make, the end result was the same as if the gods had carved it. The flash of memory ended when the blade was fully out of its sheath.
A dozen wendigos hit the ground in front of me. I didn’t even break stride as I cut through them. Caster had been kind enough to give me a silver stake, one of the few substances that could seriously damage the wendigos, and I had spent the previous day reforging it into the edge of my sword as a sort of detachable combat scabbard. The ghouls fell, their armored skin sloughing away at the site of their wounds.
At the intersection, a much larger wendigo hit the ground with a crash. It was taller, fifteen feet high, but no more muscled than the others. It made him look even more gruesome, stretched out and gaunt. And it was a he; I could tell by the remnants of his beard and dark curly hair. The only other identifying feature was the sword at his hip, looking like a dagger on him now that his height had tripled. Hand-forged to eighteen inches long, useful for a stabbing thrust. Assassin was not the man I had known some days ago, when our separate assaults on Lancer had been interrupted by the first wave of wendigos, followed shortly by Caster’s desperate bid for an alliance.
Berserker, for that was who stood before me, however much he looked like Assassin, lunged with blinding speed. His height and agility afforded him greater reach, and he crossed the intersection in an instant to sink his teeth into my shoulder. But my armor was faster, forming reflexively around my upper body and deflecting the Wendigo’s bite up over my shoulder. Since he was so close against me, I couldn’t put any force behind my swing, but I was able to land a shallow cut down his side. He landed on the ground behind me, immediately springing back, claws outstretched. I moved into his reach as his claws were repelled as well. The skill of Ares was guiding me into this next swing into his stomach. Emaciated as he was, there was not much to cut through. Nearly bifurcated and burning from the silver, his charge lost all momentum.
He fell down, clawing in vain against my ivory skin, not even scratching me. His left hand suddenly gripped my arm, and I felt a pulse of energy.
"
Eglon~Judgement of the Left Blade," the Wendigo rasped. My ivory flesh was all encompassing, transforming my internal organs as well. But even my armor was split when something materialized inside me, displacing my body parts with a loud crack. I felt no pain, but it was jarring nonetheless, like all my joints had been dislocated at once. I sliced through his forearm and staggered back, but the left hand held on long enough for him to invoke Assassin’s Noble Phantasm a second time. This time, however, the object inside me expanded, filling in the space between the splintering ivory. Two spikes of ice erupted out from me; one out of my right shoulder blade, and one out of my left hip. The ice continued growing, branching out into the shape of misshapen trees- no, more like antlers. The bottom icicle reached the ground and spread out, anchoring me in place while the top one pushed me upward. I was wide open now.
But I still had a grip on my sword. I would not die here, killed and devoured or worse by this abomination. He was standing five feet from me but out of my reach, bleeding far more than his size would suggest. He was reaching for his severed left hand, evidently the only effective weapon he had. I gripped my sword in both hands, tracing my fingers over the wedding rings on the hilt.
The rings expanded and surrounded me. They were normally intangible like this, but the silver lining of the blade had also been conjured as plating on the outside of the rings. Their sudden appearance knocked Berserker back and he fell prone, but I had to follow through and make sure Assassin was dead. I called out my husband’s name and invoked my Noble Phantasm.
“Pygmalion~Xiphos Amoris.”
This was the second reason Caster had given me the silver. The only way to truly kill a Wendigo was to destroy its heart of ice, which, in its undead state, would normally be immune to my sword’s rending of the heart. The Wendigo had no chance to dodge the point-blank shot, and went limp as his chest collapsed in on itself and steamed away, like ice suddenly surrounded by intense flame. The ice impaling me also fell apart, and out of the cylinder of the puncture wound clattered a sword identical to the one on Assassin’s hip.
The damage to my body would take too long to repair, if it could be done at all. I kept the exit wounds encased in ivory; keeping them as flesh would only serve to kill me, and changing entirely to ivory would make my body too brittle, causing the fractures to spread.
I had spent a grand total of one minute fighting. I couldn’t retreat; there was no telling how long Archer would be incapacitated and unable to cover us. I moved north, to where Rider had been moving parallel to me. Small chunks of ice continued to fall out of the hole in my torso, but I wasn’t slowed down.
After travelling two blocks I saw the young girl. Pretty, with tanned skin and Asian features, she rode a massive stallion, the most excellent specimen I had ever seen.
Rider had clearly carved through the weaker wendigos. She sat atop her horse, unharmed, but something was wrong. As I came into view she looked at me with the fiery eyes of combat I had since become familiar with. She wasn’t bleeding. With horror I realized why she was slumped over in her saddle, her spear held loosely in one hand, a blue tint forming in her fiery bloodshot eyes. She wasn’t reeling from the pain of a wound.
It was hunger pangs.
Originally Posted by PBlades
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