The first words Gilgamesh said to his fool of a master in this second holy grail war was a simple statement of fact, "Mongrel, that I have agreed to your summons is only on the condition that my wife has traveled on before me. Should you stand in way of that or dare to presume yourself my master instead of a lowly source of mana, then I shall cast you down and crush you underneath my heel like the miserable worm you undoubtedly are."
And that was the simple, unignorable, truth of the matter.
Gilgamesh no longer sought out entertainment on the mortal plane, he had seen it for all that it was worth and had carved his own corner into it once again. He found it at times confounding and distasteful, overrun by dogs who dared to call themselves men, but he had contented himself to let it lie for at least a few decades.
Similarly, he had seen the holy grail for all it was worth and had determined, swiftly enough, that whatever it might be it did not belong in his treasury. It was at its heart a corrupted, broken, thing that spewed forth the curse of mankind. Gilgamesh had no use for it.
No, only that Lily had disappeared weeks before he had, vanished into thin air with only an alarmed look on her face and the stilted words, "I'll be back," tumbling from her lips had piqued his interest enough to not only answer the call but subjugate himself to yet another unworthy mongrel for a master.
The memories of Tokiomi Tosaka still chafed, and yet Lily was worth enough that he had still come for her. He had once jumped into the black waters of hell for that woman, a grail war, surely, was worth nothing more than that.
Rottweil Berzinsky, mercenary magus for hire by the Clock Tower association and a member of this so-called red team that Gilgamesh had been summoned into in the role of Archer once again, was fool enough to disregard Gilgamesh's warning.
Then again, the man appeared to be a fool in many regards. First, in that he had not expected Gilgamesh but instead some lesser archer by the name of Atalanta, but that he would gleefully trade this unsummoned servant for Gilgamesh's own glory. Second, that in the spirit of team-work and strength in numbers, he had sought to meet their director and master of Assassin.
A priest by the name of Shirou Kotomine.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, since that first meeting in the Romanian church Kotomine called his base of operations, where they had face to face met the priest as well as his presumptuous pretender-woman-king servant, Gilgamesh had seen neither hide nor hair of the man. Gilgamesh would suspect his fool of a master had died if not for the mana still binding the king of heroes to this plane of reality.
His orders now came direct from Kotomine himself, an oddly nostalgic and ironic turn of events, as the last mongrel Gilgamesh had known by the name of Kotomine had dutifully played the role of the servant, taking orders just as Gilgamesh himself had. At least, until it had no longer suited him to.
The man looked nothing like his namesake. Other than the tanned skin there was not a hint of Kirei Kotomine within Shirou Kotomine. This second was too boyish looking, eyes too wide and filled with faith rather than the mockery that had existed within Kirei, his white wild hair did nothing to help matters either. More, there was not the same air of repression that had existed in Kirei, that denial and twisting of a soul to hide his monstrous form from sight. This was a man who knew what he wanted, believed in what he wanted, and would do nothing less than enter a holy grail war to get it.
However, this doppelganger of his old acquaintance from wars past was hardly enough to hold Gilgamesh's interest or distract from his new… comrades. Naturally, aggravatingly, it seemed that Lily was not among them and had either been summoned onto this black team they opposed or else was on some other plane entirely.
Which left Gilgamesh in the mongrel pit that proved more aggravating, more insulting, than even the last grail war.
The king of conquerors and king of knights had both proved themselves worthy of his regard in time, hardly worthy of kingship, but certainly worthy of something. Similarly, the previous war had featured his camaraderie with Lily and their rather quick nuptials. Even his brother-in-law, the mage Lily insisted upon calling Lenin, had not been so awful a master as he easily could have been.
This war, thus far, featured yet another woman who would be king. However, where the king of knights, Arthur Pendragon, had held herself high and proud under the crushing burden of human ideals and hope, this Semiramis did anything but. She was the snake-eyed, sneaking, thief of a king who gained and maintained her power through boorish deceit and cunning. Worse yet, where Arthur Pendragon and Alexander of Macedonia had claimed lands outside of his own, this woman had the gall to take Assyria and Babylon from him as if he did not still hold dominion even thousands of years after his death.
Rider, a man by the name of Achilles, was perhaps just as aggravating even without bearing the title of king. His unfounded arrogance made Gilgamesh grit his teeth every time he entered the room, more, the man was not quite human and beloved of the gods. You could almost smell it on him, the divinity of half of his soul, and the way that the light caressed his olive skin in such a fond and loving manner. Gilgamesh had never been particularly beloved of the gods, one third mortal that he was, and they had fickly both blessed and damned him with Enkidu paying the price. To see the unwitting arrogance of this man, this half-god…
Lancer, though thankfully quiet, himself also bore the taint of divinity and paid the world so little mind that it did not even appear to cross his mind to pay Gilgamesh the respect he deserved. Though not quite so aggravating as the first two, he was, combined with them yet another mongrel to act as sandpaper against Gilgamesh's skin.
Caster, a man by the name of William Shakespeare whose works Giglaemesh's wife seemed inordinately fond of, would have been refreshing, were he not an utter idiot who constantly felt the need to spout senseless drivel. And the few times he didn't spout drivel he seemed inclined to provoke his conversation partner as one might bait a dragon.
His first true words to Gilgamesh had been regarding the death of Enkidu and the thief of a snake who had stolen Gilgamesh's reclaimed youth. And were the man not so unworthy that Gilgamesh could not even bring himself to sully one of his swords with his blood then he would not have been long for this world.
As it was, Gilgamesh found that the man aggravated the woman-king even more than he did Gilgamesh and was thus allowed to live, for now.
He held out little hope for the last, the swordsman, whose master had at last arrived in Kotomine's borrowed chapel while Gilgamesh watched with a glass of wine from the shadows of the balcony overlooking the pews.
The master was a stocky, older man dressed in the modern wear that mages in this era typically despised. For a jacket he wore a faded leather to match the leather of his boots, his eyes and scars hidden behind a dark pair of sunglasses, and his hair styled in a manner that Lily would say screamed insolence and rebellion of the 1980's.
He stood with that deliberate casualness that Lily herself was rather fond of, something that would fit a younger man, but looked oddly worn and resigned on his older body. His hands and mana wreaked of graveyards and things best left buried, a necromancer.
His was the persona of a man who had never wanted to be a mage but had, after too many years and too many trials, reconciled himself with his fate and lineage.
"I had an appointment arranged here," he said, knocking on the wooden pews as he surveyed Kotomine's curved back in prayer, "Are you the person I'm supposed to be talking to?"
Kotomine stood and turned to face the man with that far too pleasant smile he always wore, "This is correct. I'm sure you've guessed, but I am the director. My name is Shirou Kotomine."
"And I'm Kairi Sisigou," the man responded, unmoving from his position in the back of the church, "Mind if we just skip the pleasantries?"
However, as he had been with Gilgamesh's master and Gilgamesh himself, Kotomine was unperturbed and merely walked forward with a smile and agreed, "No, I don't mind at all. And your servant there?"
A sudden flash of blue light and the materialization of the red saber. There was… an odd air of familiarity about the figure. He could hardly say why, he didn't know the armor, only knew that it was ostentatious and lacking in taste and efficiency. It was too bulky for the swordsman's small frame, as if aiming to add size for intimidation rather than protection, stripes of crimson in the steel along with a pair of devil's horns sticking from the helmet only added to the tasteless aesthetics.
Certainly, this was not the armored dress of Arthur Pendragon of the last grail war, and was not a look he recognized from the days when he had roamed the earth as a living man.
And yet, as the devil-knight held up his hand, a woman's voice rang out that again sparked some distant chord of recognition in him, "Something isn't right, allow me to stay, Master."
Introductions continued, Assassin revealing herself with the knight and opposing master saying nothing in turn. Meanwhile, Gilgamesh's mind and memory focused in on the woman-knight even as he sipped on the subpar wine Kotomine had offered him as tribute. Perhaps, simply because it was a woman's voice in that kind of armor, he felt the inclination to compare her to Saber of the last war, Arthur Pendragon.
There was a similarity in the tone, in the assertive stubborn pride of it. They were also of eerily similar height, as beneath that armor Gilgamesh more than believed the woman was of the same stature of the king of knights.
Still, the king of knights had had far more… taste than this, far too much pride and righteousness to go around dressed as the devil himself.
More importantly though, he thought to himself, it was not Lily beneath that armor.
Soon enough they relocated themselves to the pews, discussing this mongrel servant and that mongrel servant, leaving Gilgamesh to sigh and wish that he could trade one Kotomine for another, because at the very least Kirei Kotomine had never been boring. A fool, certainly, a mongrel, undoubtedly, but hardly dull.
He supposed the one benefit of this little arrangement of his was that Kirei Kotomine, without the command seals to Gilgamesh's soul, had little to no power over him. Oh, he presumed to instruct Gilgamesh, had commanded him to accompany the little Greek demigod to scout the perimeter of Yggdmillennia territory. However, they both knew that, should the king of heroes desire instead to run through Kotomine's alcohol stores, then there was nothing he could do to stop it save summon Gilgamesh's mongrel master from whatever coma the she-devil king had put him under.
And so here, spying upon these little meetings in the balcony, Gilgamesh stubbornly remained until he deigned to do otherwise.
Kotomine's voice cut through Gilgamesh's thoughts, "Also, the summoning of a Ruler class has recently been confirmed."
Now that, was news.
Gilgamesh straightened, glanced over the balcony towards the masters and their servants, an odd juxtaposition as always of the modern age and times passed by. Saber's master, Sisigou, inclined his head as he put together his thoughts, "So there's a fifteenth servant out there, huh?"
"Ruler is the class that organizes a holy grail war," Kotomine calmly explained, "Naturally, one would be summoned for this great holy grail war."
At his movement he saw Saber look up, slits for eyes landing on him in the balcony. He offered her a smirk, a slight wave, and watched as she stiffened just as the king of knights would have. Interesting.
Soon after, Sisigou left, the only master wise and paranoid enough to rebuff Kotomine's invitation. He walked out of the church with his knight, leaving Gilgamesh to contemplate this new information and his director to contemplate the loss of Saber.
So, Lily could be either a servant of black or else a Ruler and organizer of the grail war itself. A class that had, oddly enough, not been present for the war in Fuyuki.
"King of heroes, must you loiter up there like some oversized bird of prey?" the Assyrian she-king asked, turning her yellow snake eyes to glare up at him, "You've scared off our Saber."
"Mongrel," Gilgamesh said, leaning over the balcony to look down at Assassin and her smiling idiot of a master with all the fond contempt he could muster, "Do not blame me for your own distastefulness and failings. That you have failed to seduce the pair means that they are only slightly less of fools than the rest."
The woman let out a displeased hum, crossing her arms beneath her pale breasts, "And yet one of those fools you mock is your own master."
He laughed, a darkly amused thing, drank from his wine and thought oddly enough of all those politicians in Babylon so many years ago and how they would scurry and vie for his favor and, failing that, lay blame at his feet as if a king was a thing who could be blamed, "I am well aware of that, hag. That you would presume I am not makes you even more of a worthless, presumptuous, thief and braggart than I had assumed you already were."
"And we couldn't learn Saber's true name either," Kotomine said still sitting hunched in the pew, deep in thought, interrupting Gilgamesh and Assassin's trading of barbed insults, "A noble phantasm may have protected it…"
"Now what?" Semiramis asked, quick enough to move on from blame to the practicalities of the situation, "They should be dealt with quickly, you know."
Yes, Gilgamesh imagined that was how the women had maintained her stolen title as king, by dealing with problems efficiently and quickly.
However, Kotomine was unmoved, oddly bright-eyed and cheerful given his failure to recruit the swordsman, "Those two also seek the holy grail, which means they are allies, for the moment."
"Have you not heard, maggots, that there can only be one lord of the rings?" Gilgamesh asked, golden eyebrows raising as he looked down on the entirely too presumptuous pair. Honestly, Gilgamesh enjoyed intrigue as much as the next, but there was a point when betrayal and backstabbing stopped being clever and merely became tedious.
One only had to see the dealings of his brother-in-law to find that out.
Assassin sighed and glared back up at him, distracted from her own infatuation with the priest to remember Gilgamesh's existence, "Oh, and I suppose that would be you?"
What an unworthy woman, he thought to himself. Were he not already here with his own mission and goal he would strike her down and defile the walls of this church with her ungrateful blood. As it was, as soon as he found Lily and whatever mongrel had stapled command seals to her soul, he might still spare a moment or to for retribution among these hacks who called themselves the red team.
"If the grail was mine it would be in my treasury already," Gilgamesh instead scoffed, swirling his wine, "I, naturally, have no interest in such worthless prizes."
The woman opened her mouth, likely to spout some useless misunderstanding drivel about the worth of the grail or Gilgamesh's own goals, but was interrupted by worthless drivel of a different kind as the doors to the church slammed open, "Please, a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"
Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare, Gilgamesh thought with a sigh. Which meant that, of course, Shakespeare in the flesh was walking through with grandiose dramatic gestures as always.
Lily would be so disappointed that a man whose works she so admired turned out to be himself little more than one of her automatons, capable of little more than quoting his own best works. Though, perhaps it would do her some good, as she could do with some reminding that all but a select few of the world's population were unworthy mongrels.
Still, his appearance might as well be Gilgamesh's cue to leave. Whatever information or entertainment to be gathered here was done. It was time that Gilgmaesh started tracking down his wife or else sacking the audacious cities which hid her from view.
Gilgamesh stood and dematerialized into golden light, drawing upon his absent master's mana to move himself out of the church and out towards the city of Trifas where the black faction and likely Ruler awaited his presence.
Early morning and a few hours to adjust had not made things any easier. He supposed on the plus side he'd managed to find Frankenstein's monster, or, well Berserker, eventually. Granted, that in and of itself had taken almost the whole night searching every crook and cranny the Yggdmillennia castle, and just when he was about to give up he found her right back where they'd started in the throne room with her lounging in Lancer's makeshift throne.
He'd always thought Berserkers were supposed to be, well, anything but subtle. They weren't supposed to hide, weren't supposed to have any kind of forward thinking or ability to plan. The trouble and great difficulty of the Berserker servant was in restraining their inherent recklessness and stopping them from bleeding your mana dry.
With homunculi bred and used as magical batteries in the castle, theoretically Caules didn't have to worry about that second one, but he was supposed to…
Well, he didn't know, it turned out that reading about grail wars was one thing and actually participating in them was a whole different game altogether. He hadn't thought that it'd be this difficult in the first few hours.
"Not that I have anything better to do, mind you," her voice, cool, and clear rang out behind him, "But you seem to be taking your sweet time and I just wanted to know how long this was going to take."
He sighed, his breath coming out in a white mist and matching the early morning mist on the castle grounds. He supposed there was nothing for it but to just call the golem preparation good and get right down to it.
They were set up, each inactive and hulking, in a vaguely zigzagging line. Even stationary their beady, yellow eyes glowed from behind steel masks that served as their faces. They would have that same empty expression while in motion, no hint of change, when their rocky fists slammed down on you. Golems had always unnerved him, far more than summoned spirits that Caules typically dealt with, and he supposed he was glad in that Roche at least had always had an interest in them.
"Calm down," he said, exasperation leaking into his words as he stood from his crouching position and turned back towards his servant, "It's all set up."
She stood on a slight hill, on higher ground than him, staring down at him with that chronic unimpressed look that she'd had since he'd summoned her. Her arms were crossed, straining the sleeves of her dark mage's robes outside her school uniform, and once again there wasn't a single noble phantasm in sight.
"Fran," he commanded, she gave no response, only raised her red eyebrows fractionally as if she couldn't decide whether she was amused or annoyed. Caules withered with a sigh, trying again, "Frankenstein?"
At another, higher eyebrow raise he finally relented, "Lily?"
The girl smiled, a bright, beaming, cheerful thing that seemed like it should belong on Rider's face rather than hers and asked, "Was that so hard now?"
It… Kind of was. He supposed the name was easy enough to remember but… Something about the idea of calling his servant something other than what he'd been prepared to unnerved him. Again, reinforcing that fear that something had gone wrong, that he really had messed it up somehow, and that he'd summoned someone who, well, wasn't Frankenstein.
"Look, it's…" he started only to stop and sigh again, "Do you not like Frankenstein?"
"It's a little insulting," she said with a somewhat nonplussed expression as if she wasn't quite sure what to make of the question, "But mostly just inaccurate."
Inaccurate? He felt that leaden suspicion in his stomach sink further. Except, no, the actual summoning process for the grail war was rather simple. Even mages who weren't mages at all could manage it if they had a relic. The trick was to just make sure that you had the right relic matched to your own abilities, mana levels, and if you were really lucky your personality. In other words, it wasn't the summoning where you'd screw up, but the grail war itself.
If it was that easy to summon the wrong person, then everyone and their brother would be using whatever relic to try and summon a far more powerful servant.
So, she was Frankenstein or else closely related to Frankenstein enough to be summoned by Caules' relic. Which made her either Frankenstein's monster, Doctor Victor Frankenstein, or maybe even some hapless girl sacrificed as Frankenstein's bride.
And he was willing to go out on a limb that it wasn't that last one.
He still just sighed, "Well, alright then, I guess I can call you whatever you think is best."
"You're a few lightbulbs short of a fully functioning chandelier, aren't you?" she, Lily, asked. Caules stiffened and tried to brush off the sudden well of hurt that his own servant was so… judgmental. No one else's servant was acting like this, not Rider who was taken straight to the dungeons by Celenike to do God only knew what, or Saber who had to put up with Uncle Gordes' overinflated ego and insecurity.
Couldn't she see that he was trying to be accommodating? Did she forget where her mana came from on this plane and that it was only with his help that anybody would be getting the grail at all?
He turned from her, sighing again, and focused back on the golems, "Now, listen up, Lily, unleash your noble phantasm!"
Nothing happened, he turned, looked back over his shoulder at her as she stared across at the golems with an almost confused look on her face.
Caules was going to go mad, he swore, he was going to lose his mind just trying to get Frankenstein to do anything, "Did you hear me, Lily?! Use your noble phantasm!"
"Oh, right," she stopped, paused, glanced at him and asked, "Sorry, but, why are we doing this again? It just seems like a waste of resources."
He let out a muffled, frustrated, cry and adjusted his glasses for what had to be the umpteenth time that morning, "I told you earlier, we have to see just what you're able to do and what your limits are. It'll help with our strategy when the red team finally all gets to Romania and starts doing something."
She blinked once, almost like an owl, then said without any kind of doubt or hesitation, "I have no limits."
"Everyone has limits," he retorted, "Berserkers, especially, and don't argue with me you know it too."
"I'm not berserkers," she parroted, lips twisting into a rather wry and amused smile that while oddly charming in its own way, he did not appreciate being used in this context.
"Yes, you are," he said, crossing his arms and deciding to just come out with the truth no matter how tactless and insulting it was, "You're not even the strongest of them, you only have a D-rank noble phantasm!"
She laughed, a pure, amused, laugh that she couldn't even seem to contain as she threw her head back, "They have ranks now?"
Then, looking back at him and smiling, placing her hands on her hips she said, "Alright then, with that winning argument I suppose I have no choice."
She looked out at the golems again, this time with a cold determination in her eyes that reeked of something beyond mage craft and even humanity. Then, with her just staring at them, with no noble phantasm revealed and no hand movements at all each golem crumbled into a pile of dust.
He felt his jaw open then close…
That was a D-rank noble phantasm? It was… It felt too anticlimactic, like she'd just been humoring him and had far more up her sleeve. Looking at her she didn't even seem slightly winded. Like destroying Roche's golems had been nothing to her.
Except, according to Doctor Frankenstein's blueprints, an attack like that was about the most his monster would ever be able to accomplish. More, if she kept using attacks at maximum strength, her body would all too quickly fall apart.
He moved towards the ruble, sticking his hand into the remains and sifting through the course pebbles and sand. That would… Well, it'd certainly destroy most servants if they met it head on, whatever that was, if she could last long enough in the war.
He stood, brushing off his hands, "Lily, don't ever use that at full power again, alright? You'll just destroy yourself."
She considered him, green eyes shuddered and unreadable, and noted, "I can't tell if you're being philosophic or simply ignorant."
"I'm serious—" he started, but once again she didn't even let him finish, simply shoved her hands into her pockets and stared out past him into the rolling hills and forests surrounding the castle.
"I am a destroyer of worlds, Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia," she said, and it was with a quiet intensity that had a shiver crawling up his spine, "If I am going to destroy myself, then a few golems here and there don't make a difference. The path to damnation is littered with far more than the corpses of golems."
He took a breath, in and out, trying to tell himself that he could do this and connect with her and be a competent master. More, that he wouldn't… That he wouldn't let her destroy herself, even if she seemed to insist on it or see it as inevitable, "Actually, I forbid you from using it at full power, understand?"
Her eyes drifted to his hand, to the command seals printed on the back of them, and he rushed to cover them almost guiltily. Still, she had a silent point, he wasn't going to waste a command seal on something like this. All he could really do was ask and hope…
However, she just smiled, a strange almost nostalgic thing, "You know, if my last master had said that, then things might not have gone so poorly."
"Your last master?" his eyes widened as he remembered what she'd offhandedly said the night before, "You were in a grail war before, weren't you?"
"Well, not here," she said, rubbing the back of her head and rambling off an explanation, "At least I don't think, given that no one's been shouting my name from the rooftops, even when they all knew exactly who I was in Japan, and the next grail war wasn't supposed to be until, well…"
He… Supposed it was possible, that a servant could be summoned in one grail war then another. It was rare though, it meant that not only was their relic still around and in use among mages decades later, it also meant that the servant themselves still answered the call of the grail. Even after everything that had happened to her, after she'd undoubtedly failed last time, she still had some great overpowering wish that drove her back into another grail war.
Suddenly, he thought, her jadedness and distrust made an eerie amount of sense. Most masters… Most grail wars didn't go well, for master or servant, in obtaining the greater grail in the last war Darnic had been very unusual, and even then Caules had never closely inquired after the fate of his servant during that war.
That, and the use of the grail necessitated the sacrifice of all the servants, which meant that either she had been killed in battle, her master had perished, or her master had reached that last stage of the war and…
Caules swallowed, sealed hand twitching, and suddenly all too aware of how much more powerful a servant was than their master, "I… What exactly is it that you want from the grail, Lily?"
What would bring someone back into a war, into a war where they knew their master was eventually going to betray them?
She turned from him, grinning once again as if she didn't have a care in the world, "Now, now, Caules, that's for me to know and you to figure out for yourself."
Then she was off, darting back up the hill and towards the castle, leaving Caules staring after her, utterly unsure of what to make of his own servant as well as her own mysterious wish.
"Oh, wow, these clothes feel amazing!" Mordred grinned down at himself and his newly purchased modern wear, "Thank you, master!"
His master, Kairi Sisigou, said nothing to this and didn't even look at him, but Mordred had figured out in the day they'd been together that this was just the way he was. Just as his gruff, "Don't worry about it, it was a necessary expense," was probably the best Mordred was going to get out of the man.
Mordred just grinned, looking down at the blue jean shorts, the red jacket, and the white cropped tunic with delight. He felt, God he didn't even know, like he'd been born in the wrong place and the wrong time.
Of course, he'd always felt like that, but in this modern world he had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't have seemed so out of place or at least felt it all the damn time. Here, for one, he didn't have to dress in a manner that his father approved of, didn't have to wear bulky layers for anything other than battle.
Or maybe it was the sneaking suspicion that Mordred had gotten damn lucky with this summoning thing. Now, Mordred wasn't one to take things as they were, to just assume everything based on how it first looked, but so far it was looking pretty good. The man had only once mentioned Mordred's father, only once dared to call Mordred a woman, had seemed perfectly respectful of Mordred's position and goal, had proved himself to not be a complete idiot in the church, and without any fuss had bought Mordred some new threads.
Sure, he was a necromancer and a mage, something which chafed at Mordred and remined him all too much of his mother or else that bastard Merlin, but he supposed that when you were in a grail war, mages were unavoidable. Even though Sisigou reeked of death and insisted on camping in a crypt, the guy wasn't too bad and at least didn't seem hopelessly evil.
Now, if the son of a bitch decided to stab Mordred in the back then Mordred was goddamn ready. Mordred had rebelled against his own father, a far worthier man and master than Sisigou could ever hope to be, but until then Mordred was willing to believe that this would all work out.
Mordred then sighed, folded his hands behind his head, continued to look about the darkened empty streets of Trifas, and was about to note that it was about damn time for the enemy to attack them when movement caught his eye from a nearby alleyway.
It was a man, ordinary looking enough Mordred supposed, except for the fact that he might be the prettiest man Mordred had ever seen. He was unusually tall, dark haired, pale, with striking light blue eyes, dressed in a nondescript dark suit from this modern age. Still, he looked like he could just be some ordinary guy out for a night on the town.
Except, no, there was something more than that catching Mordred's eye, something insisting he take a second look and really see this man for what he was. The man, in turn, stopped dead in his tracks to look at Mordred, eyes widening in what looked like recognition.
Mordred felt his eyes narrow, eyes racing through the names and faces of everyone he knew, everyone who could recognize him dressed like this and without Clarent Blood Arthur in hand. He was too dark, too scrawny, and too pretty to be Lancelot. He wasn't Percival, Gallahad, or any other of his father's lackies, and as far as Mordred could tell he wasn't any of Mordred's own lackies either.
He… might be Merlin disguised, except Merlin had always been cleverer and subtler than this, would have made himself plainer to deflect attention, and Mordred's mother he would know anywhere by smell alone.
The man started walking again, face blank and that spark of recognition gone with Mordred's inaction, and stepped out of the alleyway and turned left to walk in the opposite direction of Mordred and his master.
"Hey!" Mordred shouted, turning to face the man, but he just kept walking, "Hey, you, where do you think you're going, asshole?!"
The man stopped, turned, and looking at Mordred and Sisigou let out a long-suffering sigh before asking, entirely too politely, "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
"I don't know," Mordred asked, glaring and not willing to put up with that nonrecognition bullshit, "Do you?"
The man opened his mouth to say something but then an odd smile touched his lips and he instead pointed over Mordred's shoulders, "Well, if I was you, I'd be more concerned with that."
Mordred wheeled around to see a row of homunculi in white flanked by stone golems. He cursed, running a hand through his hair, "Motherfucker."
You spend all day complaining about the lack of enemies and fighting and then they take the worst opportunity to get their asses in gear and show up. Sure enough, glancing briefly behind her soldier mysterious asshole in black had already made his cowardly exit, leaving the black faction goons to Mordred and his master.
His master who must have been using himself as a decoy this whole damn time and clearly had balls of steel. Mordred slapped him on the back in appreciation even as he loaded his gun, "Okay, I get it now, I thought I was a decoy, but you were one too! Master, you might just be insane, I like it."
"You take the golems, I'll focus on getting rid of the homunculi," his master said, business as goddamn usual, and then it was off to the races with Mordred's zapping over his clothing, the sword in hand, and the golems getting pulverized one by one into pebbles.
And, sure enough, Sisigou's homunculi opponents started dropping like flies until there wasn't one left standing. Which, another point to him, not only was Mordred's master not an idiot but he was damn good at what he did.
Then it was done, and Mordred was about to brag and remark as much about their mighty fine teamwork when he was interrupted by slow clapping.
"Oh, you've got to be goddamn kidding me," Mordred spat, because up there on the roof of the closest building, long dark coat flapping in the wind was Mr. Pretty standing there dramatically and smiling down at them with an, "I am so pleased and you have passed my secret test" expression.
"Hey, you a black servant?" Mordred asked, as he was getting a pretty good idea that the guy was some kind of servant, even if he oddly enough wasn't screaming it like you could normally expect.
The man just continued to smile, "Not as such."
Sisigou quietly cocked his gun and pointed it at the man while Mordred just scoffed, "Well, that's a bullshit answer."
Still, Mordred was willing to buy it, if only because there was asshole and then there was an asshole who wasted his own resources in a fight he'd been present for the whole time. Either he was a lazy coward and hardly fitting the title of hero, which meant it'd probably be difficult to get him to join a grail war, he had some agenda that didn't align with his masters, or some other third convoluted option that Mordred couldn't care less about.
"I'm assuming you're Saber of red," he said instead.
"What gave that away?" Mordred asked, hand still clenching the sword and preparing for battle at any moment, except she doubted this was prelude to attack. He'd had too many opportunities while the pair was separated and fighting, striking them like this would be suicide.
For a moment he said nothing, just looked down at Mordred with a weirdly assessing look, not the kind of look of trying to figure out who Mordred was or what class he was but instead like he knew Mordred already or something about him and was trying to figure out something deeper. Mordred didn't like it.
"Are you going to get to the point sometime today?!" Mordred asked and just as he did the man tossed down a single piece of paper, a photograph. Mordred picked it up, blinked, and found himself looking at the photograph of a young girl.
She was beautiful, Mordred thought, if you tilted your head at the right angle. It wasn't Guinevere's type of beauty but closer to the beauty of Excalibur or what Mordred had always imagined the Lady of the Lake looked like. Something raw and alien and filled with ancient fairy magic that had departed this modern world.
Her hair was a bright, vibrant, red that you saw in sunrises or early sunsets, thick and curling about her face and shoulders. Her skin the same pale pallor of the man himself, that kind of enviable pale that many noblewomen in Camelot had sought. Her green eyes, Mordred thought with a growing sense of something, looked like Mordred's, like his father's.
"I'm looking for a girl," the man explained as Mordred looked back up, "She's undoubtedly a servant, it would be nice to know if she was red."
"Huh?" Mordred asked as that… Honestly, hadn't been what he was expecting. He supposed it didn't really matter, Mordred had no clue, Sisigou and he had split before he had a chance to see any of them besides that Semiramis lady. Still, there was a more important question to ask, "Why do you expect me to tell you?"
For a moment the man considered Mordred again, assessed him rather, and seemed to read whatever answer he needed from Mordred. Mordred stiffened as the man smiled, summoned the photograph back into his head (likely a mage then, now that Mordred thought about it the guy reeked of magic), "You look like your father."
And then with a great crack he was gone, vanished, just before Mordred brought down his sword overhead and demolished the building where the guy had standing. Mordred breathed heavily, eyes wide and distant as images of his father flashed before his eyes.
Sisigou's voice, calm and cool, interrupted the montage of wretched memories, "Well, I'm going to go on a limb and say he's someone's servant."
"Yeah," Mordred agreed bitterly, pulling his sword out of the cobblestones, "It's too bad I let him talk so damn much before he could run off, coward."
It had almost been weird, he thought, in retrospect. Maybe it was a part of the guy's noble phantasm, that Mordred had had to sit there and listen and wait for him to finish or something…
"No," Sisigou mused as he turned back from where they came, picking up some purple stone that had come from the golem, "He would have just run sooner then, I think we got something out of him."
"We did?" Mordred asked, somewhat stunned as he began to walk with Sisigou back the way they came and out of the city.
"Well," Sisigou said with a shrug, "He knew your father."
"Yeah," Mordred agreed, now thinking hard, thinking about names and faces from so long ago, "He knew my father."
Except he had handed that to them, that was free information, which meant that it would get them nowhere. Whoever this was, Mordred was almost certain that he hadn't been in Arthur's court or round table. No, he was from somewhere else, somewhere even Mordred couldn't easily guess…
Mordred put it out of his head, instead grinning and looking up at Sisigou, ready to ask about what he thought of the knight's skill with the blade and the fact that Mordred, out of every knight in the round table, had been the only one to ever surpass his father.
And on the back of a truck, cloaked in the body of an ordinary high-school girl, Jeanne d'Arc, saint and Ruler of this holy grail war, rode to Trifas with the certain knowledge that some poison had seeped into the very roots of the war before it could truly begin.
Author's Notes: And so we continue on our journey with more of the characters revealing themselves. As is AlleyKat2014's commission which breathes life into this rather large piece.
Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Zero, or Harry Potter