She cries out in unrelenting agony, and I…I can only watch.
I had known, we all had known, that Berserker’s days were counted. Ilya could only give her so much prana before she died. But how could we have possibly imagined that Berserker had been pushing herself this far?
She…she should have disappeared days ago!
“Guh!” She stumbles, as the blade tip of Assassin’s whip strikes her left cheek once more. That whip, it is a weapon of submission, not a murderer’s tool. Assassin is taking her time to wear Berserker down—her Noble Phantasm does not work on her, after all. But the very fact that Assassin can engage in this kind of attrition battle with Berserker in the first place shows clearly the extent of Ilya’s Servant’s weakness.
She has no prana left. What keeps her standing? What keeps her in this world? How can she still struggle, second after second, for the sole purpose of remaining in this world?
I know…I know…of course I know…! How could I possibly not know!?
“I can’t…” She wheezes out even as she should be saving her breaths. “I absolutely can’t, to you…!”
Assassin’s figure wisps into existence and delivers a powerful kick to Berserker’s midsection. Of course, a girl so light is sent flying, and the Servant in black pounces after the fallen Servant, in her hands a curved dagger.
“Berser…!”
“Ugh-uwaaaaaagh!”
Assassin’s curved dager bites into Berserker’s unprotected back. The bigger woman digs viciously, burying the blade deeper and twisting Berserker’s insides. But Berserker does not scream in pain—no, it’s frustration, disappointment and humiliation that mar her face with tears.
“I-Ilya…I promised…I promised Ilya…!”
I know…I know my eyes are blurred by unshed tears as well…!
She is the most loyal Servant! Even after Ilya was killed, Berserker has clung to the last promise they made to each other…!
That’s why, at least…! Even if I have no longer have legs to walk, at least let me crawl to her side!
Assassin leaps away from a desperate fling of an arm. She is in no hurry; Berserker is already dead. It is a corpse, a vestige of a being which stands once more.
“This person…with her last words, Ilya begged me to protect this person…!”
I know. For my sake, you have done your best, Berserker. Even as your existence walked towards its end, you did your best to help me and Tohsaka. You even warned us about Sakura and her grandfather, we just did not listen…!
You just should rest now! You have truly done more than enough! Ilya…I’m sure Ilya believes that as well!
“This person…the Grail granted me my wish…by allowing me to meet this person…!”
You described your Magecraft to me. You sincerely believed I could become a magus like you. Nobody else in this world could have helped me understand my skills the way you did. While Tohsaka pulled her hairs off in frustration at my ineptitude, you knew I was just trying to walk the wrong path. Just like Tohsaka, you are a teacher I respect!
How am I supposed, then, to just lie on the floor while you are being killed before my eyes!?
The whip dances, drawing harmful lines on her brown skin. Berserker cannot even Project the simplest blade anymore. She is just a standing target. She moans and crosses her arms in front of her face only after the whip licked her left eye.
Shinji, you said your Servant was a person like you, but that’s not right! Your Servant…Assassin is truly, irredeemably hopeless after all! She could end it with a decisive strike; she could just wait in the shadows until Berserker fades away!
This…humiliation…why should Ilya’s brave Servant meet her end like this!?
Assassin appears once more, standing across the yard some five meters away from Berserker. This is it, the ability Assassin shares with Saber whom I lost. Prana blazes off the soles of her feet as she becomes like living lightning, crossing space in a blazing stream of rampaging magical energy to deliver the most straightforward frontal attack an instant later.
It is not an Assassin’s technique, and it is not something Assassin would normally do. The extreme speed she is grant by her Prana Burst cannot be controlled, and she can only move in a straight line. It is a warrior’s charge, and thus far she had only used it to safely get away from faster and stronger Servants.
The fact she can use it like this right now…just how far is she looking down on Berserker…!?
She did it because she knew it would work. Berserker looks feeble, her legs barely able to bear her weight, and she could not possibly bear the brunt of that powerful charge. She flies, and my eyes are filled with the view of her incoming body. She falls on me, and it’s painful for the two of us, but I cannot find it in myself to care.
She is back by my side.
“Berserker…”
I call her for her, unsure of the reason. What do I want to say to her? A last exchange of words?
Have I already given up on this person?
“I…guh…Ilya…!”
Her face is honest. I can clearly see how much she is suffering, not just from Assassin’s blows, but from the effort to remain in this world. Ilya, you are truly loved by your Servant. You had no idea. This person, her loyalty…I will remember for the rest of my days.
“Berserker…”
Even as she grunts, she finds it in herself to smile. It’s a weak, crooked thing, flickering between grin and grimace in the space of a heartbeat, but it is for my sake.
“Not…yet, Shirou. Can’t let her…can’t let her take you just yet…!”
Her trembling legs move hesitatingly, as if testing the solid ground of my warehouse—our ‘Workshop’—befre standing back up.
“You hopeless student…should at least get…the Conceptualization step right…before I leave…!”
Stop it, Berserker. I will seriously fall for you at this rate.
But thanks to those words, I know what I have to do.
She has no prana left, so she cannot make a weapon. I will give her a weapon, so that she can fight to the end with pride.
Assassin…cannot be seen. She…as I thought, she probably has orders not to harm me. She cannot risk attacking while Berserker is pretty much sprawled over me.
“Berserker…wait for a moment.”
Trace. On.
“Tch, told ya I hate that aria…guh!”
Our voices harmonize in resonant pain. My Magic Circuits set my body on fire, but…something else is happening as well…!
I can vaguely notice the circle engraved on the stone under our bodies glowing, but that means nothing compared to the stinging pain in…my right hand!
“Shirou…!”
Berserker is looking at me—no, at my hand, and the marks which adorn them. They had never left, but I had stopped looking at them after I lost Saber and my legs.
A Master without a Servant. A Servant who’s lost her Master.
Are a teacher and a student allowed to have this kind of relationship—wait, what am I even thinking at a moment like this!? The words…the words Tohsaka insisted on making me memorize, they were for this moment! That devil, did she knew something like this could happen!?
“Berserker…! Your self…your self is under me! My fate is in your sword!”
Her eyes widen. Her pupils narrow. Her head lulls awkwardly, as if her neck could not bear its weight anymore.
“In accordance with the resort of the Holy Grail, if you abide by this feeling, this reason, then answer!”
Her head bobs back and forth until she is nodding most eagerly.
“Yes…yes…! I do…!”
She took my words seriously, this overly honest girl.
“Here is my oath…! I…I am the one who becomes all of the good of this world! I am the one who becomes all of the evil of this world!”
The pain spreads from my hand upwards, filling my arms as if the Command Spells and my awakened Magic Circuits were one single entity. Warmth like boiling blood fills the entirety of my body. For the first time, Berserker’s skin feels cold to my touch.
“You, you are the heavens clad in three words of power! Arrive from the ring of deterrence, O Keeper of the balance—!”
Berserker explodes in a blinding surge of light and rampaging prana. My Circuits complain and I bite my tongue in pain as more and more energy is pumped out of my weakening self. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts amazingly, but as long as she is restored…! As long as a connection is forged, then, even if I can only give her a little…!
“Yes!”
But…it does not feel like a little. It does not feel like the weak connection I had with Saber. It feels steady; the calm flow of a healthy stream.
It feels right.
“Yes,” she repeats. “After all, you and I have the highest compatibility.”
A monster.
It s a monster than stands over me. It cannot be called “human”. It does not deserve such a title.
I understand: this is not her “true” appearance. This is not her true, adult self, but the appearance humanity has given her. This is how she was “recorded” in that Throne of Legendary Souls. Monster and crafter, demon and goddess, barbarian and sage, ravager and teacher; this otherworldly, unnatural appearance is the amalgamation of everything mankind made of her existence.
Hair red like blazing flame and long like a growing forest fire.
Demonic horns and angelic wings haphazardly growing out of her scalp.
Two pairs of cat-like eyes only partially hidden by locks of fiery hair.
Ears not like a human’s, but closer to a bovine’s or a wild hog’s.
Six strong arms, rippling with muscle and veins glowing with prana.
A bare chest with modest breasts marred by scars and aberrant vein-like outgrowths crawling under her skin.
Her lower body, those inhuman legs, not belonging to any human or animal: thick skin like bark, powerful tendons seemingly made of metal fibers, bulging blood vessels perhaps forged with primordial bronze.
Inhuman. Monstrous. Aberrant. Otherworldly. Pitiful. Magnificent. Powerful beyond compare.
Monster of monster. Goddess of goddesses. Warrior of warriors and maker of great weapons.
“I am Chi You, summoned by your feelings as Servant Berserker.”
Her voice knows no weakness and lacks all hesitation.
Power.
This monster, this beautiful monster, is the living embodiment of power itself!
“I shall bring you victory in this Holy Grail War, Master.”
I watch; I can do nothing but watch—even if I still had legs, they would refuse to work in the presence of this being. I can only watch her bare back—a confident back—as she steps out of the roughened shed.
“I still lack sufficient prana to create a weapon to overcome your Presence Concealment,” she confesses. “But!”
She raises her topmost left arm, clenching her fist as if she could crush Heaven with it alone. My body heats up, and it is not mere anticipation. She is asking for more prana, just a little more, and my burning body eagerly feeds her. My soul wishes for this, even if my whole body burns.
“Bīngqì zhī shén.”
The Infinite Blazing Soul Forge.
This, is the name of Chi You’s true Noble Phantasm.
This power, is the reason Ilyasviel was made to summon Chi You instead of Herakles.
Chi You has filled the sky with weapons.
Sabers, spears, hammers, axes, clubs, daggers, arrows, rapiers, halberds; they have all manifested, decorating the sky with the gentle gleam of forged metal under the moonlight. Countless weapons stand unmoving, mocking gravity with their presence, like an audience of worshippers celebrating their goddess and mother.
There are not Noble Phantasms, but they are not mundane weapons, either. They are masterworks, pieces of art and dangerous tools of death. Each of the finest quality—there is no warrior in any era that would reject any of these weapons were it offered to him. Beautiful weapons born solely from Berserker’s brilliant mind.
Each of these weapons is a legend waiting to be written.
As Noble Phantasms, they would be of the lowest rank, but that is beyond the issue. All these weapons have the potential to become Noble Phantasms, if given to one with the potential to become a hero.
“I will just strike everywhere with these until I hit you, Assassin!” Berserker roars. “Against a desert worm like you, these plain designs are more than enough!”
Hundreds of weapons, each magnificent in its own right, and she calls them “plain”.
“Tch! You are coming with me!” A hissing, irritated and very alarmed voice speaks behind me.
It’s Assassin! She never left the Workshop in the first place—!
Instantaneous.
The creation is instantaneous! In a moment, the warehouse is cramped with weapons as well, all of them pointing at the masked woman in black!
Berserker’s many eyes glow in unbridled fury. Truly, those are the eyes of a mad beast that knows no mercy.
“You will not lay hands on him, scoundrel of Alamut!”
Assassin glows with a blaze of accumulated prana. Rather than a mere leap upwards, she is like a rocket taking up, her ascension followed by a stream of radiant energy both beautiful and dangerous. I grunt as the skin of back is burnt by the rising surge of released prana, at the same time Assassin breaks through the roof of my warehouse to make her escape. She succumbed to weakness and toyed with Berserker, and now she no longer stands a chance of achieving her mission.
“Your life is forfeit, Servant Assassin!” Berserker howls. A pair of her hands holds a bow, while a second pair pulls the string while holding her chosen arrow.
I only need to look at it, just like she taught me. Because it is a ‘sword’, just like me, I can understand it with a single glance; the power of that ‘sword’, that is now also an ‘arrow’!
A powerful bow that needs four arms to be used properly released a powerful arrow like a missile. I wince and my ears threaten to burst as they take the brunt of the sword-arrow’s sonic boom. However, Assassin’s acceleration is even faster. Her Prana Burst, unleashed from a single foot, shoots her to the side just in time to avoid impalement and instantaneous death.
“Disappear!”
It is not enough. Even as dozens, hundreds, of weapons fall upon Assassin like a rain of metal, her short bursts of extreme speed allow her to weave her way through the maelstrom. That, that is Assassin’s finest virtue: that awareness of danger that borders on precognition, just like Saber. This is, perhaps, the skill which allowed her to survive and thrive as an assassin in the dangerous times in which she lived.
They come from every direction, but she just changes the vector of her movement with minute applications of her Prana Burst. My Servant, perhaps, could have compensated for that, were she not in the Berserker class. I can see her frustration; I believe she cannot fully control the movement of her weapons. She is frustrated…but she has not surrendered.
She is a master of all armaments. With weapon in hand, there is no way she can lose!
The countless weapons stop in midair. Assassin does not ponder on the change and flees, faster than my eyes can follow. Instead, I see how the bow my Servant holds splits at the grip and changes into familiar shapes.
Chinese broadswords, just like that Archer’s favored weapons. I cannot help but remember: the first time I saw her; she was fighting Tohsaka’s Servant just like that, was she not? She had Projected copies of Archer’s swords and using them to match him in close combat. She had done it to figure out the technique behind Archer’s own Projection…
With an animalistic roar, Berserker throws the blades, but not in the direction of Assassin.
They are bouncing…!
Bouncing once, twice, a dozen times off the static weapons that fill the sky, the twin dao close the distance to Assassin in an split moment. Can Assassin avoid such an unpredictable attack—?
She can! The sounds of metal clashing against metal abruptly come to an end and the black Servant contorts her body just in time for the swords to cut the air where her head and torso were just a moment before.
But Berserker’s not done. She has a second pair of broadswords in her hands, but these are different. I can tell: the special ability of these swords is…!
She flies. Berserker flies in a straight line, like an arrow, just as fast as Assassin before. Naturally, for she has “invented” swords that reproduce the effect of Prana Burst. This is the difference between Berserker’s and Archer’s powers: Chi You is an inventor, a true Creator. If a sword does not yet exist in this world, she can just craft it herself.
Assassin does not stand a chance. She is still regaining her posture after dodging the first pair of dao when she is split at the waist by Berserker’s aerial charge.
It ends just like that. And just like that, it begins.
Our path towards saving Tohsaka and Shinji and Sakura.
To put an end to this messed up Grail War.
Ilya, you truly summoned the strongest Servant!
Originally Posted by Daneel Rush
