Author's Intro
Hello, everyone.
A thousand followers. Just wow. Back when I first started writing this, a friend of mine (who introduced me to Fate/Stay Night) was really surprised it got any sort of traction. This is my first story on , and the fact that it got this kind of a response while not even being in one of the more popular fandoms means a lot to me. Thank you all, and I will try to entertain you with the remainder of Eye of the Sword and with whatever I write next (more about that in the end of chapter notes).
Here is the final chapter, I hope you enjoy it. There will be an epilogue in a couple weeks, maybe a month, but this is the last chapter where there is action.
Fonts used:
"Speech."
Thoughts.
"Arias and other Mysteries."
"Higher beings speaking, overpowered Mysteries."
Full notes at the end of the chapter. Let's hop in.
Realizations and Resolutions
"Tsubame—"
Assassin lowered himself into a stance that had no business being used in real life. His feet were more than twice his shoulders' length apart, and he held his oversized katana parallel to the ground over his head. As he said the activation word both he and katana blurred.
Saber's instincts were borne of a thousand battles, and she could tell where her opponents' strikes would land from watching their blade, feet, or torso—it didn't matter. And right now her instincts told her that Assassin was about to cut her across her neck. And from her left shoulder to her right thigh. And from her right shoulder to her left thigh.
She understood something then: this man who was so inappropriately summoned as the Assassin was simply the better swordsman. Had he been a Knight class like her, Saber would have lost in a straight swordsmanship duel. Keeping her eyes on the tip of the katana that seemed frozen in time, she wondered if that was what her Master felt when going up against impossible odds. No, of course that wasn't what Shirou felt. Her Master would simply do everything in his power to win and then die with a serene expression on his face if he didn't succeed.
A certain hill in England flashed before her eyes. The place where her body bled out even now, locked in a futile deal with a corrupted artefact. She would return there the moment she died, never to see her Master or his friends again. "—Gaeshi!" finished Assassin, finally taking a step forward. She thought she heard a swallow's cry.
"I'm not going back!" Saber answered.
Three katana strikes headed for her at the same time. The impossibility of what she saw made her head hurt. There was one arm, one katana, and one moment in time, and yet the arm holding the katana was in three places, and Koujirou himself was in three stances. Saber had barely a foot between herself and the wall behind her, and the fact that she had less reach than her opponent meant that she was within his range and couldn't backpedal. So she did what Archer would do.
Just as the strikes were coming toward her, Saber let go of her sword. She could see Assassin's eyes widen in surprise when all of his slashes reached her armor and started carving into it, before an explosion of air threw them both to opposite walls, blowing out the windows and shattering the furniture into kindling.
Saber's front plate clattered to the floor, and she winced. The blade had passed through her magical armor as if it had been made of wood and not of the strongest metals the smiths of Camelot could find. It also made three short shallow cuts on her skin: on her collarbones and through most of the bandages she had used to squish her breasts to her body to minimize that additional vulnerability of her gender. She was glad Shirou didn't see with bandages hanging loosely from her bloody front.
As the sounds of metal clashing with metal raged in the hall next door accompanied by a cannonade of explosions, Saber stood up and picked up her now golden sword. She walked to the prone form of Sasaki Koujirou who was only now beginning to stir.
She was happy with how the results of her trick—calling it a technique would have been too generous. Invisible Air worked by wrapping high-speed wind around the blade in a way that refracted light, making the sword invisible. It contained an enormous amount of energy, and she could release all of that in a pinch by blasting the wind at her opponent. The move took time, though—something she hadn't had in this fight. But the technique relied on her Mana to keep itself stable; by letting go of the hilt and consciously cutting the flow of energy to the technique, Invisible Air turned into an unstable sheath of super-sonic winds condensed into a very small space, which resulted in an explosion.
Saber thought Shirou would be proud of her, even as she felt a hint of disgust at herself for the way she had won. Having stepped around the debris that now littered the entire room, she walked up to Koujirou and pressed her sword to his neck.
"You may have the technique, but you don't have Knight's strength or durability. Yield."
Koujirou opened blood-red eyes and looked up at her, a pained smile spreading on his lips.
"I thought you were a knight, Saber. Guess I was wrong," he said, closing his eyes again. "Also, fix your armor."
"Sorry?"
"You look like a whore from my time."
Saber looked down. Sure enough, the bandages hung in loose arcs, and her straight posture was the only reason she wasn't more exposed. She felt heat rising up her neck.
"Yield," she repeated.
Assassin made an effort to raise his hands, but all it accomplished was a small twitch.
"I yield. I think I have most of my ribs broken."
Saber nodded, bent down, and started to unwrap the belt—obi—that tied Assassin's kimono together.
"Saber?"
Saber ignored him, opened the kimono, and took a look at Assassin's body. Black-blue bruises blossomed all over his chest where he had taken the attack, two ribs looked like they had completely snapped, and there was swelling all over the place indicating multiple fractures. She closed the kimono, walked up to Assassin's katana and threw it out the castle window.
As Saber headed toward the sounds of battle, she said, "Shirou would probably also break your legs and arms to make sure you didn't rejoin the battle. I hope you don't betray my trust."
Assassin chuckled drily and closed his eyes, a faint smile on his lips. It had been a good battle: Assassin's technique was deadly. If it completed properly, she wouldn't be worrying about her modesty, because Tsubame Gaeshi was designed to simultaneously decapitate and disembowel a stationary target.
Saber shook her head, picked up her front plate, put it against her armor, and fixed the cuts with Mana. She then exited the room into the hall and froze.
###
While Saber had been busy turning around her fight against Sasaki Koujirou, Shirou found himself barely holding up against Gilgamesh. Rider launched her Noble Phantasm at the ancient hero. Bellerophon was one of the more powerful Phantasms in existence, but its true power lay in its speed, penetrating momentum, and the ability to hone in on its target. Once it was fired, nothing short of straight up overpowering it with another Phantasm would work.
Which was why what he was staring at now should have been impossible.
Pegasus was suspended in the air, held by a golden net. The majestic beast's neck had been broken by the high-speed impact with the chains Gilgamesh had thrown at it. They looked so fragile, and yet they didn't even budge when the flying horse slammed into it at supersonic speed. Something clicked in Shirou's mind.
"Enkidu," he whispered, yet the word carried over the entire hall.
"You have no right to say that name, Faker," Gilgamesh said, a murderous fire burning in his eyes. He summoned ten swords and hurled them one after another at the corpse of Pegasus while Rider watched. "Ignorant dogs! Not only do you dare to fight against me yourselves despite not being worthy to lick the dirt of my boots, but you also send your pets after me. I won't be degraded to fighting a mongrel's mongrel!"
After every few words another sword would be hurled, staining what little white fur still remained on Pegasus with a splash of red.
"Stop it!" cried Rider, launching herself at Gilgamesh, but he simply gestured, and the chains caught her during her reckless assault.
"Do you see how futile your resistance is?" he said, looking at Rider with eyes full of debased hunger. "I think I might keep you, woman. Yes, you look sturdy enough. Oh, how I will enjoy breaking you… And then we can eat stakes made of your pathetic horse."
"Stop, stop, stop!" Rider kept repeating the word, now staring at the floor.
"Oh? Was the Beast something more to you? Were you his mare?" Gilgamesh asked with a polite, curious smile that didn't do anything to soften the rictus of insanity he now wore on his face.
During this entire exchange, Shirou didn't pay much attention. If he failed, he would make sure to kill Rider—she deserved at least that much. Gilgamesh's idea of how women should be treated made death seductive by comparison. No, what he needed was to come up with a plan. Tohsaka, Sakura, and Illya were starting to tire out Kotomine, and he had little doubt they could eventually win if no one interfered. Saber was still tied up in the adjacent room, as evidenced by ear-splitting explosion that echoed through the hall, but he didn't doubt she could handle Assassin. None of it mattered, because as soon as Gilgamesh finished describing to Rider his plans for her (that for some reason involved wild animals, dead people, and objects with spikes), he would flatten them one after another. Without Shirou, Saber's Avalon Projection would vanish, and she wouldn't stand a chance. Everyone would die.
He had no choice.
"Trace On."
Shirou reached deep into his subconscious, grasping the entirety of his Reality Marble, reaching for one being that didn't belong. It didn't take long to find him, and Shirou flooded all of his Circuits with Od, praying to the deities he didn't believe in for Rider to occupy Gilgamesh's attention for just a few seconds more.
"What the hell are you doing, kid?"
Archer's voice sounded more panicked than irritated in his mind, but Shirou shut it out. He needed his entire focus for he was about to do.
"Judging the concept of creation."
Normally, all the steps of his variation of Gradation Air happened almost simultaneously and didn't require a verbal Mantra, but this was no normal Tracing. He saw an ocean of fire that burned right through the body and into his soul. He could smell ash that covered all of Archer's emotions and blackened them until only metal was left.
"Hypothesizing the basic structure."
He could see the endless hours of training and battle that had turned Archer into the man he now was. Blood flooded his vision joining the fire. Shirou heard Tohsaka cry somewhere in the distance and realized that blood vessels in his nose started rupturing, but he couldn't stop now. If he did, he had no idea what would happen, but he had no doubt it would be very bad.
"Replicating the composition materials."
This time, it wasn't in his mind. Shirou felt Archer's Circuits manifest and burn into his own body, and it was only then that he realized fully what he was doing. The world faded as his heartbeat became audible to him. He didn't hear Gilgamesh anymore, so he had to hurry.
"Imitating the skill of its making."
Archer was a weapon. Shirou was a weapon. Their bodies were made of swords. It was simply a matter of projecting somebody else's blades inside him instead of his own. They weren't real blades, of course, just muscle and tendons and blood. The transformation wasn't complete but that was also okay. Something burst in his left eye and he knew he wouldn't be able to see with it for a while. He didn't care as long as everyone else would be safe.
Shirou took a deep breath and finished in one go.
"Sympathizing with the experience of its growth. Reproducing accumulated years. Excelling at—"
He blacked out at those words, but he did so with a smile.
###
Archer was beating at the walls of his prison inside Shirou's mind when he felt the idiot boy start to draw him out. Shirou could never hope to complete the process, he wasn't strong enough.
"You fool, stop this! It's not too late to go back!"
And then he started to see through the boy's right eye and had barely three seconds to try and reach his alternative self before the boy did something monumentally stupid. He didn't make it in time.
Archer stood in a half-destroyed hall of the Einzbern castle. To his right side Tohsaka, Sakura, and Illya had backed Kotomine into a corner and were frantically pelting him with curses and crystal constructs. Tohsaka looked angry, Sakura was crying, and Illya simply looked determined.
In front of him the net of Enkidu held Rider, and behind it Gilgamesh stared at him in shock.
His body was a mess. He bled from every orifice externally and there was a lot of internal damage. Breathing hurt, and he could see with only his right eye. He didn't even want to imagine what fighting would feel like. But the idiot boy had done it. He had somehow managed to summon Archer into himself, using his own body as a template.
"Suicidal idiot," Archer said and then sighed. "Well, nothing else to do, I suppose."
With a flick of his wrist he summoned three dozen demonic swords and hurled them at the chains holding Rider together. His Projections shattered upon impact, but it did make Enkidu loosen up a bit. Rider wasn't a goddess, just somebody cursed by the gods, so the bonds' power against her was limited. She growled, twisted her body in a display of acrobatics that would have made a snake jealous and wrenched herself free, both her shoulders dislocated by her escape.
Archer winced just from looking at it. That was going to hurt like hell in the morning, but it wasn't his problem.
"I am the bone of my sword."
"You dare!"
Gilgamesh began opening the Gate of Babylon wider and hurling tons of what was probably junk to him at Archer. A lot of the objects weren't weapons at all—the tactic the King of Heroes had learned while fighting Shirou. What his enemy couldn't have known was that Archer's armory, unlike Shirou's, was inexhaustible. And he had seen most of what Gilgamesh had while fighting him before, during the times he came back to the War.
I should thank Tohsaka for performing the ritual perfectly. I remember everything.
His favorite twin blades materialized in his hands and he batted away a spear that he didn't manage to deflect with one of his blades in time. Kanshou rematerialized even before it fully broke.
"Steel is my body and fire is my blood."
Almost as an afterthought, Archer sent an explosive supersonic sword to where Kotomine had hunkered up desperately trying to defend himself with Black Keys.
"Double Accel," said Shirou somewhere at the back of his mind.
The boy's voice was faint, but it was enough. The Magic Crest Archer had never had flared on his back and the blade sped up, impacting the wall near Kotomine and blossoming into a whirlpool of violet flame. Archer didn't give it a second glance—he had his own fight. The Gate of Babylon now covered almost the entire span between the walls and he could barely step away and duck under the avalanche of Golden King's projectiles. Rider had taken a nail in her mouth, and now whirled beside him, deflecting and redirecting what little she could. Archer hurled his swords at an axe headed for her head and summoned a new pair almost instantly while crouching under a spinning flamberge. Gilgamesh was overwhelming him.
But Gilgamesh was at his limit of how much he could bring to bear in an enclosed space, and Archer was far from being done.
"I have created over a thousand blades."
He could feel the echo of the boy's exultation at the words. Archer mentally chuckled. This, at least, they had in common—the joy of making weapons. His Tracing sped up.
"Unknown to Death."
Didn't the boy know what he had done? What kind of damage he wrought upon himself? Even now ARcher could feel his Chakra burning through the boy's Circuits, felt the muscles tear themselves over and over again as he moved at speeds that this body couldn't handle. He knocked away five spears at once with Kanshou and Bakuya.
"Nor known to Life."
Archer couldn't risk utilizing Kaze no Nagare. He wasn't used to that weapon.
"I have withstood pain to create many weapons."
They were about even with Gilgamesh now. His own weapons were not so much Traced as brought directly from his Reality Marble, the Tracing delay having decayed to almost nothing. The sound of shattering swords was such that it was impossible to hear anything anymore, and he could see fear in Gilgamesh's eyes as the King of Heroes took an involuntary step back.
"We are winning!" said Rider, batting aside an enormous obsidian scythe.
And apparently that had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Really, why people felt the need to jinx everything was beyond him. Archer groaned internally as he saw resolve harden in the demigod's eyes, as the king gestured to the side, his fingers fanned out.
No, no, no! We still aren't in my Marble!
"Yet, these hands will never hold anything."
He knew he wouldn't make it but he had to try. A portal opened at Gilgamesh's fingertips and brilliant red poured out of it, nearly blinding Archer which he was thankful for. He had to move so as to put Rider between himself and Gilgamesh. He knew that if he saw the damn sword it would all be over.
"Tremble before the might of Ea, the Earth Splitter!"
"Get away from my Master!"
Saber's voice cut through Gilgamesh's threat just when red started to fill the entire hall. There was a thunderous crack, and a roaring golden beam flew at the King of Heroes. It wasn't particularly fast, not like his own arrows, but it broke through the blades in the air without slowing down, and its warm light killed the Ea's angry red wherever they touched. Archer took the chance.
"So as I pray, Unlimited Bladeworks!"
Everything clicked into place, the world dimmed for a moment, and the next moment they were in his domain. Giant gears turned in the sky, sand the colour of rust creaked under his boots, and the ground was littered with blades.
"How dare you—"
Archer didn't wait for Gilgamesh to finish. The red was still battling with the golden light, and he didn't plan on letting them finish their fight, so he threw everything. With Shirou's Circuits and his own experience, the power he could bring to bear was beyond anything he had felt during the hundreds of years he had served as Counter Guardian. He reached out with his Od and felt the ground beneath his feet start to vibrate as the swords embedded into the ground over the entire rusty plain began to quiver in anticipation. A hundred legendary blades dislodged themselves from the earth, but the vibration under his feet only intensified, now turning into a small tremor. He heard it now: the low rumble of earth that emanated from every sword for miles around as they struggled against the soil. With a burning pain in his chest, he wrenched all of them free and fired.
By the time Archer was done, there was a fifty-foot crater where Gilgamesh had stood. He couldn't smell even a whiff of the Golden King's prana as his barrage had obliterated everything.
Archer said. "That's what you get, you golden prick. I swear, like a record stuck on repeat: 'you dare, you dare'. Might have been a bit of an overkill though," he said, collapsing to his knees and ejecting them all out of the Marble and back into now thoroughly destroyed hall.
A moment later he felt cold lips on his mouth.
"Thank you," Rider breathed out into him.
"What for?" he said. Getting kissed was nothing few, although he didn't recall Rider ever doing that.
"For saving me from that—" She shuddered. "I don't know what to call him. Definitely not an animal, it would be an insult to animals everywhere."
"Hey, hands off Shirou, you tramp!"
Rider stood up with obvious reluctance before schooling her features into her normal impassive expression.
"This isn't Shirou, Tohsaka-san," she said, shaking her head. "Can't you feel it?"
At this point Archer collapsed onto his back, Shirou's body finally giving out under the pressure of maintaining the Servant's abilities. To be honest with himself, he was surprised the boy had lasted that long. He must have trained hard during much of his life to be able to hold out against Archer's full power even for a few minutes.
"What do you mean 'it's not Shirou'?" Tohsaka knelt next to him, and he couldn't help but laugh.
The sound came out dry and broken. "I missed this," Archer said. "Knowing that when I do something stupid I will invariably see your face."
Rin blanched, and Sakura gasped nearby.
"Archer?" Tohsaka asked, rubbing a Command Spell on her hand. "I thought that didn't look like how Shirou described his Marble. How are you here?"
Now that he was lying completely still, the rate at which his Mana damaged the body he was in had slowed down, so he could at least speak without imminent death looming over him. It was still looming, just not so imminently.
"That idiot lover of yours tried to Trace me, but quickly found he didn't have what it took to fully manifest me. So he had somehow managed to Project me, another person and a Servant to boot, on top of his own body."
He thought that is Tohsaka went any paler, she risked breaking the color palette and suddenly flipping to black.
"How are you—how is he—how is the body you are in even alive?"
Archer was about to shrug, but thought better. Rin had moved his head into her lap, and it felt good.
"I'm taking a guess here, but I think it's because we are close to being the same person. At the very least, same genetics, and his Circuits are healthier than mine ever were—the only reason they were able to handle it for a while." He made an effort to raise his head a little and looked at Tohsaka with all the gravity he could master. "But he doesn't have long." His tone turned soft. "You know what you need to do, Rin."
The girl who would grow up into the woman he had loved shook her head vehemently, and tears started to well up in her eyes. "No. You look too much like him. Twisted, hopeless, snarky, selfless, useless…" Each word was punctuated by a light thump of her fist on his chest. "I can't, I simply can't—"
"Rin. He will die. The boy you love will die, and so will I. There is no scenario where the both of us come out of this alive. He has no more than ten minutes left and every moment risks permanent damage. Even Avalon isn't all-powerful when it comes to Circuits, otherwise mine wouldn't have ever ended up all banged up."
Putting all his heart and a considerable amount of will into the movement, he reached for the fist still thumping on his chest and took it into his hand. Archer was dimly aware they had an audience, but he simply couldn't bring himself to care.
"Do it, Rin."
She nodded with a jerk of her head, blushed scarlet, bent down, and gave him a quick peck on the lips. Even in his state, Archer managed a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk.
"What was that for?"
"I am sorry, Archer. I do love him."
He chuckled, coughing up a bit of blood this time. "No reason to apologize for being the second beautiful woman to kiss me in one day."
She nodded, and a tear fell onto his face. And then the vulnerable girl was gone, and the heir to the Tohsaka name was all that was left.
"By the power of the Command Spell, vanish!"
He felt part of his power dissipate, but it wasn't enough. A sign disappeared from the back of Tohsaka's hand. She gritted her teeth but continued.
"I said, by the power of the Command Spell, vanish!"
Archer had expected to feel power siphon into the distance or go to one of the Lesser Grails present.
Instead he found peace.
###
They were climbing the side of the mountain on donkeys when the phone rang.
How they had ended up in here wasn't anything new; they've been on a tour, visiting Aoko's friends. Even after knowing the girl for years, Dietrich still wasn't able to separate people into those she held real affection for and those she just liked to unnerve for giggles. The woman living in the temple they were climbing toward was famous for her advances in electricity-based Magecraft, which is why she had picked a place to live where there were no electronics of any kind. Judging by the fact that the donkey they had for baggage also had a microwave and a battery strapped to it, Yui Ling wasn't a real friend.
"I feel like my ass is about to revolt and secede from my body from riding an ass all day," Aoko said.
Dietrich rolled his eyes. He was glad she was in a good enough mood to make terrible puns, but he didn't share it. He picked up the satellite phone. "Dietrich speaking."
"It's Waver. Shirou is in trouble."
Waver's voice was a whisper wrapped in static. Gladstone pulled on the bridle, and the donkey stopped without any change to the melancholy look in its eyes. Really, the three animals they had rented were like depressed robots. He pushed the phone closer to his ear and covered with his other hand to shield it from the wind.
"I'm listening."
"I don't have much time. We are already in Singapore, and I was able to lose them for a moment by going to a bathroom, but there is only so much time a man can spend peeing. Barthomeloi finally figured everything out. She has sent me and a clean-up crew of Enforcers."
The German Magus rubbed the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "What are her orders?" he asked.
"Destroy the Grail and bring everyone involved to the Clock Tower for examination and, if necessary, Sealing."
"Shit."
"Why have we stopped?" asked Aoko.
"Barthomeloi has sent a pack of her dogs to Fuyuki," he told her. "She wants to dismantle the Grail and get everyone into custody."
"Who are you with?" asked Waver. "Can they help?"
"Maybe. Look, I appreciate you calling, but I'm in Tibet now, so I don't know how fast I can get to Fuyuki."
Aoko was listening intently now, and she had that manic gleam in her eye that promised a speedy and painful resolution to all of Dietrich's problems. He knew why he liked her far more than was good for him, but even he had to admit she was one crazy Mage. Although it might have come with the territory: a normal person couldn't just wake up and discover another True Magic.
Dietrich said, "Although I might make it in time. Go back to your team. If you get to Fuyuki, and I'm not there, stall."
"Wait! How will you get—"
Dietrich cut the connection and turned his head fully to Aoko.
"I'm sorry, but I need to go. Let's get to the next plateau. There should be something in my baggage for controlled falling—"
"And what will you do against a team of Enforcers?"
"Kill them," Dietrich said, without hesitation. "Wait a second."
He fished his phone out again and types a message to Shirou, Tohsaka, and Sakura.
Kids, you alive?
Yes, Gladstone-san, answered Sakura. Shirou injured. Regrouping.
Enemy Masters?
Dead, except Kotomine. He is treating Shirou.
Dietrich raised an eyebrow at that but didn't comment. Good. Clock Tower is coming for the Grail. Team of Enforcers. Stall until I get there unless you can secure a victory. Waver is with them.
A minute passed before the answer came.
This is Tohsaka. Understood. Picking up what we need and going to the caves under the Ryuudou temple. Get back ASAP.
Dietrich stowed his phone away.
He said, "Everyone is still alive somehow, but I need to get there, or next time they'll throw the entire Clock Tower at the kids."
Aoko shook her head, frowning. "I've met Lorelei, you know," she said. "What I mean is, she really hates anything corrupted, and she hates losing people even more. If your kids are forced to kill the Enforcers, she won't stop until they are dead."
"What do you suggest?"
The change should have been almost imperceptible: Aoko's spine straightened somewhat, and her eyes gained a sharper edge.
"I think it's time we gave the Association a reason to stay away," said the Blue. "I am interested in the boy and his abilities. It would be a shame for him to die." She smiled, and the Mage turned back into the girl. "Besides, I've been itching to try this technique I've developed."
They were moving again by that point and a widening of the ledge appeared in sight. Enough space for them to get off.
"Aoko, you are only slightly above average at complex Mysteries, and teleportation isn't under the purview of the Fifth Magic, not that I'd ask you to use that." A faint buzzing started to fill the air, and he shuddered. "And why are you firing up your Circuits? We are halfway up a mountain. Blowing things up would be a very, very bad idea."
"Don't be silly, I'm not going to blow things up. Just a bit of Reinforcement."
She walked up to Dietrich and placed a hand on his chest. He would have liked to think the following shiver was because of her feeding Mana into his system and directing it to various part of his body where Dietrich took over and Reinforced everything to the best of his ability. It was the skill he had picked up from his adopted son and something he was immensely grateful for. Aoko stood up on her tiptoes and brought her lips to his ear, which was unnecessary—there wasn't anyone around.
"I'll save your son and even stay and help train him, but I have one condition." She traced a fingernail just behind his ear, making him freeze up. "We date."
She jumped back at that, having finished with the Reinforcement and looked Dietrich up and down with a mischievous smile. He was sure all the blood in his body went to his face.
"Aoko, I— you are ten years younger than me," he said, shaking his head.
She rolled her eyes and said, "Yes, yes. And were I twelve, that would have been a problem in many countries, I'm sure. But I'm not twelve, am I?" She gestured to her body without any hint of shame. "And I figured that if I left everything to you, you would still be spouting that 'I'm too old for you, and we are only friends' crap until I'm ninety."
She stepped forward, suddenly looking less sure and avoiding meeting his eyes.
"So how about it?"
Dietrich shook his head, more in exasperation than in denial. They had met back when she really had been a wide-eyed daredevil of a girl to him. Somewhere along the way things had changed, and here they were now.
"No?" she asked, stepping back, her expression falling.
"No! I mean, yes! Damn, why doesn't this get easier with age?" His hands went through his hair, and he groaned. "Let's just go."
She smiled at that, and it was one of those rare smiles he treasured that held no irony or mischievousness. Skipping, Aoko went to the baggage donkey, picked up the bags, and dragged them back to him. She then pulled out climbing ropes, stepped behind him, and started fastening them to each other with experience that belied her years.
"Aoko, what are you doing?" he asked, proud at how calm she sounded, considering her entire body was now pressing into his.
"Would you rather I be in front of you? I don't think we are that close yet. Are we?"
He groaned and facepalmed wondering how exactly he had ended up in this situation, dozens of miles away from civilization being literally tied to an insane person.
"You might want to hold on to me," she said.
"What?"
"You heard me. My hands will be busy steering and I'm not sure the ropes will hold. They are supposed to, you know, but they were made in China, so—"
He suddenly had a premonition of being hurled to his death from great height.
"Aoko?"
"Yes, Dietrich?"
"How the hell do you plan to get us to Fuyuki? Serious, this time. And what about the donkeys?"
"Maybe I picked the wrong man…" she said, trailing off. "Look, we are on a mountain facing East. Japan is in the East. Obviously, I'm going to fly us there. And fuck the donkeys, my butt still hurts. Ready? One, two—"
Dietrich grabbed her and held on for dear life, all inappropriate thoughts gone from his head.
###
Sometime during their fight against Gilgamesh Illya started to believe them. Shirou, Tohsaka, and Sakura simply told her they intended to stop the half-Homunculus ageing, assigned her duties in their little circus, and expected her to fulfill them. All the women (including Rider and Saber) had given her wary looks before Gilgamesh attacked them, but those were gone now.
All of this was why Illya was comfortable standing her ground in front of Bazett alongside other Masters while Saber faced Lancer. Well, as comfortable as she could be after the power of Heracles going into her. Good for her she hadn't been the closest to Gilgamesh when he had died. Not so good for Sakura.
"Please, Bazett-san! He will die!" said Sakura.
"I. Don't. Care." The Irish Enforcer forced the words out of herself in large bites. "Did you see what that sick fuck had done to the children in the basement of the church? Did you?"
"Well, no—"
"But you did see what he did to me, right? Spread on the wall naked, like some sex doll. Painted all over with fucking blood! Mana, siphoned out of me to give him a bit of an edge against you. The only thing keeping me from using a Command Spell for Lancer to murder that sack of loose stool water is because I respect you people. Stand aside."
Kotomine stood up from where he had been kneeling by Shirou's prone form. The middle-aged priest was a mess: his entire left arm had been blown off by Archer's exploding sword, and half his face was badly burned. Yet Kirei still managed to exude that calm arrogance that defined his being.
"I did what I could here." He looked at Tohsaka with a crooked smile. "What will you do now, children? Are you ready to fall to the level of simple beasts? Tohsaka, I have—"
Tohsaka spat on the floor and stepped to the side, letting Bazett through. The Enforcer had recovered her clothes at some point, and the Mystic arrays engraved on those flared into life when she dashed forward and hit Kotomine's chin with a rune-powered uppercut. A nonplussed look was all Tohsaka's former guardian could manage before a glowing metal band on Bazett's glove impacted his jaw, and then his head was gone in a spray of gore that impacted the church wall.
"Remind me to never piss her off," Illya said.
"Shut it, pipsqueak," Bazett said. "Gilgamesh, at least, acknowledged my usefulness as a woman. This pile of human refuse was worse."
Rider raised an eyebrow, and Bazett shrugged.
"Well, Gilgamesh admittedly did it in a way that made me want to feed him his own balls, but Kotomine… The bastard treated me as a thing, the same as those poor kids in the basement that I don't think will ever be able to recover even with the help of the best shrinks in the world. And everyone was the same inanimate shit to him: me, you, Gilgamesh, even himself."
"Good riddance, Master," said Lancer with a grim expression on his face. "Saber, you can relax. I have no reason to force myself past your resistance—" His own words caught up with him, and he thumped the side of his right fist against his forehead. "Damn that golden bastard. I won't be able to rid myself of allusions to rape for months now. Where to now?"
"Ryuudou Temple," answered Tohsaka. "If we want to survive this, we need the Servants. If we want to keep the Servants, we need the Grail. The Association are probably bringing curse-breakers and heavy hitters."
Lancer nodded, his expression blank. "They are only human Magi. We can defeat them," he said.
Tohsaka shook her head. "And then what? Will we fight the entire Association? The Church?" she said, frowning. "Plus, there might be something really bad for Spirits in their arsenal. We need to be careful, we need to avoid killing, and we need to stall, until Dietrich rides in and saves the day." She paused and shook her head. "I really hope he wasn't simply trying to raise our spirits."
Sakura, who had been standing silent up to this point, shook her head and said, "I think sensei can't help us, sister. We should run."
Tohsaka nodded without looking at Sakura. "Your opinion is noted and discarded. This is Shirou's plan. We all agreed to keeping Illya alive, and we can't do so without Saber. And she can't stay without the Grail or us pumping her full of energy manually which will leave us defenseless. End of discussion."
Illya looked at Tohsaka and Sakura in turn and then asked them, "Why me?"
"Shirou," said the sisters in a disturbingly synchronous manner.
###
Shirou woke up in the caves beneath Ryuudou Temple. At least that was what he assumed judging by the stench of corrupted Prana permeating the air and stalactites glistening in the dim light. Sakura's face moved into view as she knelt next to him.
"Senpai, you are awake."
"I told you—" He coughed. "—call me Shirou. What happened?"
Tohsaka and Illya joined Sakura, and suddenly there wasn't enough space above him.
"I thought I would die," he said looking up at the stalactites. Somewhere up their invisible drops of water were growing the stone spike bit by bit. "I knew I couldn't handle Archer's power for long. How am I still alive?"
Suddenly Tohsaka collapsed on top of him and buried her face into his chest. She was crushing his battered body, and violent sobs wrecked her frame. He didn't have the heart to tell her to stop. He looked to Sakura for help.
"Nee-san ordered Archer to vanish in order to bring you back, senpai," she said with a sad smile. "He is gone. And can I say something?" She didn't wait for his answer. "You are an idiot, senpai, for pulling what you did. But I still love you."
Shirou frowned prodding at his own emotions, trying to determine how he felt about the news. Eventually, he nodded, and put a hesitant hand around Tohsaka's shoulders. "Don't cry, Rin. I don't think he went back to the Root. I think this whole mess pulled him out of the system for good."
He had no way to prove it, but Shirou hoped it was so.
"And that is okay?" asked Tohsaka, raising her head and looking at him with wet eyes. "Him dying, just like that?"
Shirou shook his head and said, "You don't understand. I talked to him, been him. Despite his snark and between the few moments when he could lose himself in our company, life was torture for him. His ideals crushed him long ago."
Tohsaka's indignant expression showed that she didn't agree, but she decided to put her head back on his chest and cry quietly. Compared to her state moments ago, it was an improvement, but Shirou still didn't like seeing her sad. He turned his attention to Sakura and Illya. "Are you two okay? Did everyone else make it alive?"
The Einzbern heiress seemed to have abandoned her capricious mask as she said, "Yes, everyone else made it, nii-san. The Servants are collapsing parts of the cave system as we speak. We hope to funnel the Enforcers here."
Shirou closed his eyes and sighed. Of course, the fighting wouldn't be over simply because the War was. "How are you doing, really, Sakura, Illya? Servants have died near you—"
"Why did you save me?" his sister interrupted him.
Sakura was frowning at Illya, and Tohsaka muttered something unprintable into Shirou's wet shirt. Shirou simply raised an eyebrow.
"Isn't that what family is supposed to do? Help each other out?"
Illya rubbed the bridge of her nose in exasperation. "But we aren't family. I mean, I spent years thinking you were a spoiled brat father picked up simply because rescuing me from the castle was too much trouble."
He looked at his sister with pity. It seemed like she truly didn't understand, and he didn't know how to explain. "You never stopped being family, we just couldn't get to you. I'm sorry it took so long, and that father didn't live to see it."
And then Illya added her weight to Tohsaka, crumbling down completely and making it hard for the Shirou to breathe. The situation wasn't made any better by the fact that he was a teenage boy and not a sumo practitioner. He didn't have enough size for two girls to cry into his chest.
"You two…" Sakura said, her voice so cold Tohsaka and Illya froze. "Stop using senpai's injured body as a pillow! Get off."
She started with Illya who tried to fight back, but it was impossible with her weight. Then Sakura glared at Tohsaka, and her gaze seemed to possess physical power. Rin stood up.
A loud explosion sounded high above them, and Saber ran into the cavern, shortly followed by Lancer.
"We left Rider to delay them, but it won't last long. We'll need to fight soon."
This made everyone regain their composure, and Shirou was able to push himself into a sitting position. Physically, he was utterly broken. Muscles had been pulled and torn, his arms had swelling that indicated at least a few cracks, and he didn't want to even attempt standing. But his Circuits were a different matter. Archer hadn't had Shirou's raw power. His mystical abilities had atrophied after years of disuse, and after he finally started exercising them the way he did it led to damage to his body, manifesting as changes to his hair, skin, and eye color. His Circuits adapted somewhat, increasing their rotational speed and efficiency, but that wasn't what was important. Archer had to learn how to be extremely economical in his Magecraft, how to not waste an ounce of Mana when Reinforcing or Tracing. He had to streamline everything or he wouldn't be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a hero to the extent he had managed. Shirou didn't have this restriction given his Circuits were several times more powerful.
"We can overwhelm them," he said. "When Archer left, some of his skills stayed behind. I can feel it."
He stretched his hands out and summoned Kaze no Nagare with a barest flicker of Prana in the air. His other self had been able to replace shattered blades seamlessly in a fight. He wasn't quite at that level, but he didn't need to be.
"Saber, help me up."
He held a hand out to the knight, and she pulled him to wobbling feet after a moment of hesitation. Meanwhile Rider and Lancer returned. With Kaze no Nagare's speed boost he could move at almost normal speed, although it hurt. He addressed Bazett, who had been standing to the side, staring at the wall.
"Did you receive orders, Fraga-sensei?"
She seemed to snap out of it and shook her head.
He said, "Then I suggest you go into one of the dead end tunnels."
"And do what?" the Irish Master asked, eyeing him warily.
"And wait. I don't want one of your superiors ordering you to fight us."
She seemed to think on it for a while before calling Lancer to her side.
"Promise me you won't hurt them."
"Those are Enforcers. Aren't you worried they might hurt us?" Illya asked, looking at Bazett with disbelief. "They had the entire Clock Tower armory to pick from before coming here, after all."
Their ally shook her head and kept her eyes trained on Shirou. Eventually, he buckled. "I'll try to negotiate, but I can't promise we won't hurt them. We are all tired after all the fighting, and they will be fresh."
They then set up to wait. After a while Rider said, "They are coming. Two minutes."
Shirou nodded.
"I am the bone of my sword."
###
It had taken him days to pull himself back together from shattered soul fragments he had left over the city. It was pure luck something made the Servant's soul-trapping Mysteries dissolve, but now he wouldn't be relying on luck. It was time to wipe the board and start anew. Next time he would have to forge better pawns.
"How much longer?" asked Bert or Bart or Burt—he didn't care about the name.
"It is just around the corner," he said.
The man scrunched his nose, and Zouken was tempted to tell him that If he was this squeamish, he should have chosen another profession. Sure, he hadn't had the time to properly reconstruct his body, and the worms were rolling beneath the half-translucent scrim of some nameless woman's skin. Women were more resilient and thus suited his purposes better. There was, of course, the matter of several hundred crest worms crawling behind them that might have caused some unease among the Enforcers. He didn't care.
They walked into the cavern.
The boy stood supported by a stalagmite and the sheathed katana he used as a cane. Next to him were his rebellious granddaughter, her sister, and the Einzbern failure, all glaring at Zouken as if it wasn't them that had forced him into this state.
"Magi," said the Enforcer leader. "Surrender. Order your Servants to stand down and submit for questioning and examination as to whether you should be put under a Sealing Designation." A Magic Crest glowed on the man's right arm. "Or else."
There was a barely perceptible flash of light and a spear pierced the crestworm he had sent toward Sakura to reestablish the connection to the familiars inside her. It seemed that her being filled with the Grail's energies or him almost dying had disrupted his control. The Enforcers twitched but stayed in place.
"Stop this madness, granddaughter," Zouken said. "Isn't it enough that you crippled your brother and took up having sex with your sister? You have no hope against the might of the entire Association, deranged child."
All Zouken needed was to provoke them into using their Servants. He knew that the Enforcers couldn't fight against more than one Heroic Spirit and he knew there were more than one. He had precautions now—a chain of worms to help his soul piggyback out of there in an instant. And then the Association would bring everything they had upon his treacherous heir, and they might get the Church involved too. To his surprise, Sakura smirked. It wasn't a fake smile she sometimes wore, instead the seemingly kind girl's face twisted into something animalistic and hungry. The Tohsaka brat silently laid a hand on her shoulder, and Sakura's face softened.
"You are right, Grandfather. It is enough," She turned to her good-for-nothing boyfriend. "Shirou."
Zouken wasn't afraid of some boy. He could run before any attack reached him.
"So as I pray, Unlimited Bladeworks."
There was no attack, no feeling of movement, just an explosion of Mana that had been barely restrained moments before. Suddenly they stood upon a frozen plain littered with swords all over. Tiny particles of snow peppered Zouken's skin, and he started freezing. Once you ate someone from the inside with crest worms, the thermoregulation of skin went out of the window.
The air was as clear and blue as arctic ice, and there were no clouds in the sky. The snow came in tiny flakes seemingly out of nowhere and the ground looked as if it had been falling this way for centuries.
"Is this my realm, senpai? It is beautiful," Sakura said and then turned to look at Zouken with a grin that lacked any humor. "Do you like it, Grandfather?"
The Matou elder was too busy trying to reach out to the worms outside this frozen hell, but he couldn't find anything. It was as if his soul had been isolated from all his contingencies.
The boy said, "This man is worse than any Dead Apostle. He devours and violates his victims from inside using worms. If you defend him, you will die."
"Who do you think you are, boy?" asked the head Enforcer.
Waver El Melloi walked up to the Emiya brat and answered, "He is a sword. And I order you as a Lord to heed his warning, Brandon."
There was roaring somewhere above them, and Zouken looked up. There they were. Blades, blocking the brilliant winter sky and hurling at him at super-sonic speeds.
The last thought he ever had was that he had miscalculated again.
###
After they fell out of what must have been a Reality Marble, Brandon didn't know how to proceed. Shirou Emiya, the Magus Barthomeloi had warned them about, had proved to be more dangerous than anyone he had met before. He had managed to hold the Marble only for a minute, but during that minute Matou Zouken had been cut up, crushed, burned, frozen, crushed again, and scattered to the winds. Now the Servants had come, and Brandon wasn't sure what they had brought would be enough.
He looked to El Melloi, and the man shook his head. Still, the Enforcer had his duty, and his orders came from Barthomeloi herself. No Lord had the right to override that.
Brandon was reaching inside his jacket when the ceiling exploded, and a storm of dust and shards was launched at them. He had to shield his eyes with an arm that immediately got peppered with pebbles. When the view cleared, he froze. This wasn't good.
A Magus stood between their team and their opponents, although calling her a Magus was like saying a hurricane was a rapidly moving mass of water and airHer trousers and jacket had burned off up to her elbows and knees. Her red glowing hair wrapped around her body protectively, twisting in a dance that had nothing to do with the movement of air.
"Draw," she incanted.
After one word, two dozen magic bullets materialized all in twin circles around her hands, and buzzing in the air intensified. Like a swarm of cicadas waging war on each other with miniature chainsaws. The bullets quivered in place. His newest subordinate, Mary, started reaching for an enchanted dagger for a dagger Mystic Code knife. Just as Brand was about to stop her, one of the bullets went off, flying across the cavern and blowing a ten-foot crater in the wall behind Mary.
"Stand down," he said unnecessarily (the girl just shivered in shock). "May I ask why you are here, Miss Aozaki?"
"A prerequisite for gong on a date with this guy," said the Blue.
She pointed at a man lying behind her, muttering something under his breath, and staring at the hole the two of them had blown in the cavern ceiling. Brandon tried to place the face of the half-crazed male Magus for a few moments before realizing it was Dietrich Gladstone.
Aoi said, "Now I would like you to lay off my apprentices and my latest research project and go back to England. I'll work out the details with Barthomeloi directly."
"But—"
The remaining bullets quivered. Brand sighed and turned around. They had brought weaponry against Spirits, but fighting the Blue would be suicidal. There was nothing that could contain or defeat that monster without weeks of preparation and a lot of luck. Even then, he wouldn't volunteer for that mission after seeing her produce twenty projectiles, each with the power of a rocket, with just one word.
"Apprentices?" he heard Shirou ask before he and his team went around a corner.
Chapter end notes
I'd like to thank you for reading this story. It's been an incredible ride, and the feedback has been nothing short of amazing. I hope you've had fun, because I certainly did.
There will be an epilogue in about a month, so don't forget this fic just yet. It is something of a custom nowadays to cut to credits after the protagonist kisses his beloved or after the good guys cave in (in a PG-friendly way) the skulls of the bad guys. I'm not one of the writers who do that, so I'll post a glimpse into Shirou and the gang's happily ever after.
I know some of you would have liked for this to turn into a three-hundred-thousand-word monster, but there was really no reason to create something of that size here. I would recommend 'From Fake Dreams' to you, but you've probably already read it. Moreover, there are many great long fics in the Fate/Stay Night fandom, both standalone and crossover, and I wanted to write something different.
What's next: besides writing the epilogue, I will go through the entire fic with the editor's chainsaw and sanded paper, performing extremely violent surgery and tender polishing. Hopefully, new people coming to read this will have even more fun, and if any of you decide to revisit the story, you will be rewarded. No changes to the plot, though.
I have two ideas for my next primary fic at the moment. The first one is a Star Wars cinematic universe crossover with the Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic games. It's been done before, but most of those stories are either simply bad or about an unbelievably powerful Jedi dropping in at some point during the prequels and completely breaking everything by sneezing too hard. I don't find that interesting, so I want to write a story where I'll focus on balanced combat, imaginative use of Force Powers, conflict between the Jedi Code and romantic feelings, and humor—the good stuff. The prologue is up now, so you can check it out on my profile page if you'd like (the name is 'Into the Maelstrom'). I'm looking for feedback to see whether I should continue it, so I would appreciate any of you popping by and sharing your thoughts. If it lifts off, it will be a fic that will take itself about as seriously as 'Eye of the Sword'.
The second idea is for a Naruto fic with Gamer mechanics. This one won't be a crossover. While I enjoy the Gamer manga, that has crossover been done before and done well. What I want to do instead is to graft elements from various tabletop and computer games I've played onto the Naruto universe. I would keep the story semi-serious, but there will be much more humor and possibly a small harem with insane dynamics. Because, hey, Naruto.
If all else fails I have this great idea for the rogue young adult wizard Harry Potter building a criminal empire on the West Coast with the help of his perverted magical hamster Dumbledore, daughter of a librarian and a mafia crime lord named Hermione and a beat cop named Ronald Weasley. The scene is set in the 1960s, and together these three plus the hamster will change the face of the world by inventing drugs that give you literal magic trips and laying the foundations of the wizarding sex toys industry. It will be glorious. I am fairly certain that writing it will drive me insane, though, so I hope people will like one of my semi-serious ideas.
I'll save the teary confessions about how awesome community is and how much of a help you all have been to me until the epilogue. Otherwise I'd have nothing in the author's notes to make readers uncomfortable, and that simply wouldn't do.
Until next time.
Stay shiny.