Miracle of Zero: Kingdom of the Forsaken
By: James D. Fawkes
Chapter XI: Shining Sword of Salvation
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
They arrived just outside Tarbes without fanfare around midday of the third day of travel, almost exactly seventy-two hours after leaving the Academy. They were all sweaty and dirty, and the only reason they didn't offend everyone within ten feet with their odor was because of the liberal use of "Freshening Charms," which was apparently a spell every Noble learned from the moment they could walk.
In a world without cars that could turn a three day ride into a three hour one, Shirou could certainly understand why they would need them.
Down the gentle slope in front of them stretched out the village of Tarbes, a sleepy little town with a population, Shirou estimated, of about three thousand or so. The roads were comprised entirely of well-worn dirt pathways, and the houses, consisting mostly of collections of buildings spread out in tight little clusters, were a creamy white with slanted tan roofs, resembling, more than anything, the 18th century structures Shirou had seen in London while he'd been staying at the Clock Tower with Rin. Leafy green trees, in full summer bloom, sprouted up between houses and out towards the edges of the town, and a small white fence, about waist height, circled the village in its entirety.
To the left of the village, there were large swathes of land that had been smoothed down and plowed so that food could be grown, and in the center of town, three narrow towers jutted upwards from what Shirou imagined was probably the local church. Way back, in the distance, a forest sprawled out towards the horizon, and three large mountains loomed like fortress walls over the little town.
Compared to the Academy, which was incredibly remote and sat by itself, Mott's mansion, which had been situated as far from the nearby city as humanly possible, and the overly crowded capital that hosted the Princess and the royal palace, Shirou found Tarbes to be surprisingly homely and welcoming.
"Welcome to Tarbes," Siesta said brightly. "It might not be very large or terribly important, but it's home."
"…It's a farming village," Louise was the first to say, brow furrowed.
"O-oh, yes, it is. Um, i-is there something wrong with that?"
Louise, who didn't seem to have heard her, lifted a finger and pointed at the mountains in the distance.
"And those would be the Pyrenees Mountains," she said, almost to herself. "Which means…"
Her arm swung around to point vaguely northward. "…Aquitaine would be in that direction."
"And Germania's that way," Kirche jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "What's with the geography lesson, Vallière?"
Louise shook her head. "Nothing," she said, again, mostly to herself, "I guess I just didn't realize how close to home we were."
"Home?" Shirou asked.
"The de La Vallières rule the Duchy of Aquitaine," Guiche answered. He pointed towards a mountain to the far left, which, though much farther away, seemed the same size, meaning it must've have been the tallest peak. "That's Aneto…So Aquitaine would be about forty miles north of here. And then La Rochelle…"
He pointed to another spot, which, Shirou realized as he scrutinized it more closely, was actually familiar. In fact, he could swear he recognized it, but where exactly…
…Hang on a minute, now.
"Not you, too, Guiche!" Kirche huffed. "I thought we were here for an artifact, not a geography lesson!"
Guiche shook his head.
"It's not that," he said. "It's just…that's the path we took to La Rochelle about two weeks ago. Sir Wardes insisted on going through the mountain pass because it was more expedient, so how…"
"How did we miss an entire village on our way there?" Shirou finished.
Siesta gasped. "Oh my! You went through the forest?"
"Sir Wardes insisted," Guiche confirmed. "He, um, wanted to make up time for stopping to set up camp at night."
Siesta let out a squeak, and a look of amazed horror stretched across her face.
"You slept in the forest?"
"Well, yes —"
"And you survived?!"
Guiche looked at her bewilderedly, Kirche had an eyebrow raised, and across from Shirou, as his own lips pulled into a frown, he could see a similar look begin to tug Louise's mouth down, too.
"Is there something wrong with the forest?" he asked.
"Something wrong?!" Siesta turned to him, hysterical. "Mister Shirou, no one who enters the forest ever comes back again! That's where the Fair Folk are!"
A wave of surprise washed over the rest of the group, and various reactions from shock to outright panic instantly followed.
"You mean Fairies?" Kirche asked incredulously. "I thought those were just stories!"
"Oh my god." Guiche, pale as milk, leaned backwards against his horse, shaking. He looked like a man who had just barely escaped death. "Oh my god."
"By the Founder," Louise muttered, wide-eyed. "You — you're sure?"
Siesta nodded her head.
"The treeline marks the edge of their territory," she explained. "But they can come out, if they want. That's why we requested a priest put up the fence —" she gestured towards the white fence that encircled the town — "so that they couldn't come in at night and steal away the children."
"Steal away the children?" Shirou wondered aloud. That didn't sound much like what he knew of the Fae.
"And replace them with changelings!" Siesta confirmed.
"Changelings?" Shirou repeated skeptically.
Siesta looked at him incredulously. "You've never heard of Fairies, Mister Shirou?"
"I've met a few —" a certain snobbish Queen of Avalon came to mind — "but they're nothing like what you're describing."
The others gaped open-mouthed at him, doing passable imitations of goldfish — even Tabitha was staring at him with widened eyes and raised eyebrows. All except for Louise, who didn't seem the least bit surprised by the news.
"M-met a Fairy?" Guiche squeaked.
"And came back alive?" Kirche finished for him.
"M-Mister Shirou…"
It was Louise who interjected with logic.
"Different world, remember?"
Realization dawned on Kirche and Guiche's faces, and Tabitha's eyebrows settled back down into place as she turned her eyes back to her book. It was only Siesta who still looked bewildered.
"Different world?"
Louise and Guiche grimaced and glanced at one another, and Shirou opened his mouth to explain, but before he could get the first word out, Kirche reached over and gave Siesta a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"I'll explain later."
"O-oh. Thank you, Miss Kirche."
Shirou cleared his throat. "So what are fairies like here, then?"
If he had to face one, the better idea would be being prepared.
Siesta opened her mouth to start telling him, but it was Louise this time who reached over (and up) and grasped Siesta's shoulder.
"I'll tell him," she said simply. "You lead us where we're going."
"Oh, yes! Um, we'll need to head to my house, first, so I can let my parents know I'm in town and to make dinner for more people."
"It's fine," said Louise.
"Right!" Siesta said. "Follow me, please, everyone."
She turned back down the road and started towards the sleepy town of Tarbes. After glancing once at one another, the others fell into step behind her, with Shirou and Louise at the back, Kirche, Tabitha, and Guiche in the middle, and Sylphid lumbering with surprising grace at the tail end.
"So," Shirou said as they walked, "fairies?"
"Right," Louise nodded. She adopted a painfully familiar lecture pose that had Shirou's heart skipping a beat. "Well, the first thing to understand is that fairies are generally regarded as nothing more than myth. Some parents tell bedtime stories about the dangers of wandering into the forest at night, but since no one has ever actually laid eyes on a fairy — at least, not in over three hundred years — most people think they're nothing more than folklore."
"Maybe they were killed off," Shirou muttered to himself. After all, that was what had happened to the Elementals back home — those that hadn't retreated to the untouchable places inside the World had been overrun as mankind grew and expanded uncontrollably.
"Who's to say?" Louise answered. "Anyway, most of what we know about fairies comes from folk stories. Supposedly, they look a lot like people, but have pointed ears and can sprout wings and fly at any moment, and their magic is said to be completely different than that of humans. According to the myths, they're burned by wrought iron and incapable of entering a place marked by holy symbols, which is why —"
As they passed through the gate, she gestured to the fence, which was marked with strange ovular symbols with one pointed end and a line jutting out on either side. They looked to have been painted on there with blood.
"— the fence here is set up this way. As long as the fence remains closed, it's like a protective barrier that keeps them away."
Shirou's eyes narrowed on the symbol. "Sacraments…" he muttered.
"Exactly," Louise nodded. "They're also known to kidnap children in the middle of the night and leave behind shapeshifters called "changelings" that will pretend to be human for a while, and then go back to the Fairies later. In some stories, they don't even leave a changeling behind; they just kidnap the baby and disappear."
Shirou hummed.
He'd never heard anything like that before, except in the legend of Sir Lancelot, who, only an infant at the time, had been taken in by the Lady of the Lake as his human father lay dying. Of course, that wasn't saying much, because everything else he knew about Fairies came from personal experience, and he hadn't ever bothered to sit down and read up on English folklore or go through the Clock Tower records.
In either case…
"Siesta." Siesta looked back at him over her shoulder.
"Yes, Mister Shirou?"
"Are you still having problems with these Fairies?"
She blinked at him.
"Oh, no!" she said. "Well, I mean, sometimes some livestock or crop goes missing, and anyone who doesn't believe in the stories and enters the forest anyway isn't heard from again, but things have been fine ever since the fence got put up."
"How long ago was that?"
"It must've been…" She put a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "Shortly after my great-grandfather settled down here. That was almost eighty years ago."
"Your great-grandfather?" Louise asked.
Siesta nodded.
"Yes," she said. "He came to Tarbes about eighty years ago, claiming to be from a distant country in the East and that he had no way home, because his flying machine had crashed. People were wary of him — he was quite strange looking, and his story was too unbelievable — but eventually, because he was polite and worked hard, they welcomed him here and he settled down with a local farm girl. My family has been here ever since."
She smiled a fond little smile. "Or that's how the stories go."
Something in the back of Shirou's head niggled at him. "Flying machine?"
Siesta nodded again. "Oh yes! He called it something different, though. What was it again? A fighting get? A flying pet? A —"
"Fighter jet?" Shirou finished incredulously.
If something like that was here in Halkeginia, then that meant this wasn't the first time someone like him had been pulled into this world, and if Siesta's great-grandfather hadn't been Gandalfr, hadn't been summoned as a familiar, then that meant that there was a method of traveling back and forth.
There might yet be a way for him to get home.
"That was it! What a strange name for a flying machine."
Guiche looked back at him. "You've heard of this flying machine before, Sir Shirou?"
"Something like that. But I never would have expected to find one here of all places. Siesta, what happened to it?"
"It crashed, the story says," was her answer. "It'd be at the bottom of Arrêt Darré Lake."
And probably rusted beyond repair after 80 years in the water. Well, there went that idea.
"Was this 'fighter jet' another thing from your world, Darling?" Kirche asked.
"It probably was," Shirou confirmed. "Depending upon when it got here, it might've been anything from a Mitsubishi F-2 to something like an old World War Two-era Zero Fighter."
"I don't understand. What's the difference?"
Well, aside from age and speed, Shirou wasn't exactly sure.
"Armaments, probably. A Mitsubishi F-2 would be much faster and have more powerful, more accurate weapons. Against any modern aircraft, a Zero Fighter would lose — horribly."
"Like the difference between a human and a Heroic Spirit," Louise mumbled thoughtfully.
"Maybe not to that extreme, but basically, yeah."
"U-um, Mister Shirou, I don't understand. What's a heroic spirit?"
Shirou blinked and looked back to Siesta, and he realized that no, he hadn't ever explained any of those things to her. Kirche, Guiche, and Tabitha had been there when he'd had to explain it all to Wales, and Louise had heard it all much earlier than that, but there'd never been any need to tell Siesta.
Luckily, Kirche saved him from having to launch into it again by promising, "I'll explain that later, too."
"Oh. Thank you, Miss Kirche."
"So what happened next, then? With your great-grandfather, that is."
"He walked here, to the nearest village, and eventually settled down. He had to get help, though, to go and bring his other artifact back to the village. They even had to hire a few mages to bring it all the way back here, because great-grandfather didn't know how to make it work."
"Was it really that big?" Louise asked.
"Oh yes," Siesta nodded. "It was so big, the temple that houses it now had to be built around it, because it wouldn't fit anywhere else. One of the mages put a protective spell on it to keep it from rusting or anything, but other than that, it's just been sitting there ever since they brought it back."
"So it's sort of like a landmark or a…monument?" Shirou guessed.
And she wanted to hand this over to him? Something that valuable with that much history?
She shrugged. "Not really. There're always some tourists who want to get a look at it, but it's not really special and no one will miss it. I think most of the townsfolk have gotten tired of being asked about it, actually, and — oh, we're here."
Siesta stopped and looked up at the house to the left, which was large and wide and appeared to have been expanded outwards several times. Like the other houses in town, it was built in a strangely familiar style similar to the Renaissance-era architecture Shirou had seen in Italy during one of his co-ops with the Church.
But even though the warm beige brickwork and slanted orange-red roof were basically identical to all of the other buildings in town, there was something about this house, about Siesta's house, that seemed friendlier, more inviting. Something, Shirou wasn't sure what, made it feel more like coming home, like he was being welcomed back after a long time away.
It even had that terribly cliché white picket fence, the kind you only really saw on postcards.
"It's not much," Siesta said fondly as she opened the gate, "but it's home."
They followed her in, Shirou brushing his fingertips along the chipped white paint, and up the lawn to the front door.
"It's bigger than I expected," Guiche mumbled.
Siesta gave a little shake of her head. "My family has always been a large one. When Great-grandfather settled down here, this house was much smaller, but as my family grew bigger and bigger, we needed more room, so…"
She left it hanging, but no more needed to be said — the sheer number of expansions and additions, so large that the fence had to be moved at least twice (based upon noticeable differences in the white paint), said everything she didn't.
"How many siblings do you have?" Louise asked in a strange sort of voice.
"Seven," was Siesta's answer, "and I'm the oldest."
It was said with the tinge of exasperated fondness that only an eldest sibling, having to deal with all of the troubles and problems associated with being the oldest and most responsible, could understand.
Naturally, after years of having put up with Fuji-nee and later Ilya, Shirou was intimately familiar with it.
"That's why I got a job at the Academy," she explained, "to help pay the bills so my parents had enough money to feed my brothers and sisters."
"Oh," was Louise's awkward reply.
When they reached the front door, Siesta twisted the knob and opened it — with a faint creak — then turned back around to face the rest of them.
"Please wait here," she said. "I have to go and tell my parents I've brought all of you back with me."
Then, she turned back around and disappeared into the house, leaving the rest of the group to stand all huddled together on the front porch.
For a long, awkward moment, they just stood there in silence. Even the usually vibrant Kirche didn't have anything to say, and Guiche, who was shifting from foot to foot every second or two, looked somewhat uncomfortable. Tabitha continued to read as though nothing was the matter. Next to Shirou, Louise's foot began to tap, tap, tap rhythmically against the cobblestone steps, and he thought he could make out something resembling the famous Frere Jacques lullaby from his world's France.
Then, from within the house, an exuberant cry of "Siesta!" reached them at the front door.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
"I'm sorry about that," Siesta apologized for the third time.
"It's fine," Louise ground out.
"I really am."
"It's fine."
"Maybe if I'd been more specific —"
"It's fine."
"Don't be too hard on the poor woman, Vallière," Kirche said smugly. "Obviously, she can recognize quality when she sees it. It's only natural —" she thrust out her chest to illustrate her point — "we Germanians are simply built better."
Siesta flushed and turned nervously to Louise again. "I'm really, really sor —"
"It's. Fine."
Shirou let out a sigh through his nose.
After they'd been let into the house and Siesta had started to introduce them to her parents, Siesta's mother had been absolutely ecstatic to meet the "beautiful, wonderful, red-haired Louise Vallière" that had "saved her darling daughter, Siesta." Siesta had "told her so much" about "how kind" and "how generous" she was, and how she had rescued her from "that dirty old Count Mott." For all that her mother talked about it, Siesta had sung Louise's praises to the high heavens during the week or so she'd been recovering from the whole ordeal.
It would have been a perfect moment to help build Louise's self-esteem and make her feel she had accomplished something with value and meaning…if only Siesta's mother hadn't mistaken Kirche for Louise.
It wasn't a terribly impossible mistake to make — if one had only the hair color as a descriptor, then simply saying that "Louise de La Vallière is a redhead" would only narrow it down to about one-hundred-million people (on Shirou's Earth, anyway), and if two redheaded girls were presented to you, your natural reaction after hearing about a kind, generous, well-adjusted person would be to pick the older, more mature-looking girl.
In this case, Kirche.
It had happened to Shirou, too; whenever he met someone who had heard of "Shirou Emiya," who had saved so many lives and toughed out numerous battlefields, the first thing he often heard after introducing himself was something like, "I thought you'd look a lot tougher," or "I expected you to be taller." With his patchwork hair and his smooth, youthful features, Shirou didn't really look like a hardened veteran, and his height — 178 centimeters, or about seventy inches — was only slightly above average.
But the fact that it wasn't a difficult mistake to make didn't improve Louise's mood in the slightest. On the contrary — it only made her mood worse.
Shirou cleared his throat a little.
"Siesta," he began, "where is this temple you were talking about?"
Louise shot him something of a glare for the obviousness of his tactic, but Siesta seemed relieved to finally talk about something else.
"It's on the outskirts of the village, past the church. Since there was no room on our property, it was agreed that it would be best to put it out of the way, where it wouldn't interfere with our daily lives."
She pointed out in the direction to the left of the church's bell tower. "Just over there. It'll only take about five minutes."
"I can see why, if it attracted tourists and treasure hunters," Guiche mumbled thoughtfully.
"Something like that, yes."
Right, because it'd get really disruptive if something that attracted so many people was situated in the middle of the village square.
"So," Kirche began, "this artifact we're here for —"
"What's with this 'we' you're talking about?" Louise grumbled.
"— what is it, exactly, anyway?"
"Oh," Siesta said. "Yes, um…No one is really sure what it is, actually. My great-grandfather told everyone that it could fly, though."
"Fly?" Guiche parroted incredulously. "You mean, without a Windstone?"
"No one knows for sure how it works," Siesta replied. "Um, it's sort of like a boat, but it has wings and all sorts of strange structures on the inside — no Windstones, though. None of the mages who've come to Tarbes to look at it were able to get it to fly, either."
Shirou glanced over at Siesta, who was still describing this artifact of her family's, and a creeping suspicion was beginning to take form in his head.
Shaped vaguely like a boat, but also having wings; strange structures on the inside — wires and pipes, perhaps, though he'd have to get a look first — this was starting to sound less and less like a magical artifact and more and more like some kind of jet or plane.
But her great-grandfather had himself been a fighter pilot, she'd said. If this artifact was another type of jet or plane, it shouldn't have been difficult to get it flying, too. In that case, if it wasn't a jet or a plane from his world…
What could it be, then?
"None of them?" Kirche repeated. "I mean, Tristain is stuck up and prudish and a bit backwards, but when it comes to magical studies, this is the best country on the continent! There's a reason why every Noble who can sends their heirs to the Magic Academy here, after all!"
Siesta shook her head. "Mages from all over have come to check it out at one point or another; there was one from Germania, a rather nice nobleman from Albion, a couple of Gallian scholars, an inquisitor from Romalia — most of them before I was born — oh! Now that I think of it, there was this rather pushy blonde woman from the Oriz Academy who came here a year ago to examine it, but she didn't get anywhere, either."
At the mention of the last one, Louise let out a low groan and mumbled something that sounded like "Belly snore."
"I mean no offense, Miss Siesta," Guiche said politely, "but are you sure it can actually fly and your great-grandfather wasn't just looking for attention?"
Siesta shook her head.
"No one has actually seen it fly, and my great-grandfather admitted that he had no idea how it worked, either, so most of the people around here think it was just a hoax. But my great-grandfather insisted it could fly, until the day he died, so everyone in the village has heard of his great flying machine, his "Dragon's Raiment," by now."
Kirche stumbled.
"Dragon's Raiment?" she parroted. "Wait, that's the artifact you're going to give to Darling and Louise?"
Siesta blinked at her. "Um…yes?"
Kirche sagged and let out a groan, and Guiche sighed.
"There goes our treasure," he muttered.
"But we had a map and everything!" Kirche lamented, pulling a piece of parchment from out of her cleavage and waving it around.
"I'm…sorry?" Siesta said uncertainly.
Without looking up from her book, Tabitha shook her head. "Not your fault."
Kirche, too, waved it off. "It's fine, it's fine. We just got our hopes up, is all." She smiled, crumpled up the map, and threw it away. "Well, it's not a total loss. Even if we don't get to have it, at least we'll get to see what the fuss is about."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The temple containing the Dragon's Raiment was situated a little bit farther than Siesta's original description had implied, but was still close enough that Shirou would describe it as being on the outskirts of the village. Past the last building, what was probably the local priest's house, there was a small field about fifty meters across, cut in half by a beaten pathway and dotted at the far end with a handful of maple trees. Framed by the trees was the temple, looking somewhat rundown and covered with vines and ivy.
In other words, it was just out of the way enough and just camouflaged enough that the eye would automatically pass over it under a casual scrutiny.
Siesta led them up the beaten pathway, walking at the head of the group, and as they made for the temple, she started explaining the history of it again.
"After they brought it here, the mages set a protective spell on the Dragon's Raiment to keep it from rusting or falling apart, and then they constructed the temple around it to fit Great-grandfather's specifications. They were really generous — all they asked for was a month to study it."
"And they still couldn't discover anything about it?" Guiche asked politely.
Siesta shook her head.
"Even after having spent the month here to study it, they left empty-handed," she explained. "The way I heard the story, they told Great-grandfather that the enchantments and spells placed upon the Dragon's Raiment were so complex and so powerful, no modern mage could ever hope to unravel them and learn their secrets. They were almost convinced it was a divine instrument sent down by God."
As they came closer to the temple, she pointed up at a golden plaque, which was, much unlike the rest of the wood surrounding it, completely free of vines, moss, or ivy. It didn't even have so much as a scuff mark.
"The inquisitor who visited shortly after Great-grandfather's death almost took it to Romalia as a holy artifact, but when he heard about this plaque and Great-grandfather's last wishes, combined with the fact that no one could make it work, he eventually decided to leave it here."
Written in strange letters on the plaque above the doors was the solemn will, "To those who read this inscription, only you may take this treasure from its resting place. Navy Ensign Sasaki Takeo."
"What does the plaque say?"
"No one knows. Grandfather says that Great-grandfather instructed that only someone who could read it was allowed to take the Dragon's Raiment, but no one has ever deciphered it. It's written in a strange language that no one in Halkeginia seems to speak."
But Shirou could read it. As clear as day, he knew what those letters said, what those symbols were.
The writing on the plaque was Japanese.
"Siesta," Shirou began, "your Great-grandfather, did he have a name that sounded really strange and foreign?"
She blinked bewilderedly at him. "How did you know?"
Shirou didn't answer. He had suspected it before, when she'd talked about how her great-grandfather had come from a country far to the east, that maybe Siesta's black hair and dark eyes hinted at an Asian ancestry, but now, he was almost certain of it. If this plaque was right — and it was written in Japanese, so it must be — then her great-grandfather could've been transported here around the time of the Fourth Grail War, or perhaps even sooner.
"And when he married, did he take his wife's name instead of her taking his?"
Siesta's mouth made a surprised little 'o.' "U-um, yes, actually…"
"And have you been told that your hair and eyes are really similar to his?"
"Y…Yes…" Siesta said slowly. "But how did you…"
Even Guiche and Kirche were giving him strange, slightly disturbed looks.
"Sir Shirou," Guiche asked, "exactly how is it that you know all of this?"
Shirou gestured to the plaque.
"That language there is Japanese, native to a land far to the east called Japan." He hummed. "In Japanese, that's Nihongo, native to Nihon and spoken by Nipponjin."
"Like you," Louise added.
Shirou nodded without giving it any thought. "Like me."
Siesta blinked owlishly at him — she seemed to do that a lot, when she was surprised.
"So…you and Great-grandfather…are from the same place?"
Shirou looked back up at the plaque.
"Kono mei wo yomu hitobito ni totte, anata dake wa kono ji'in kara kono takara wo totemo yoi. Kaigun Shōi Sasaki Takeo yori," he recited. "Or, 'To those who read this inscription, only you may take this treasure from this temple. Navy Ensign Sasaki Takeo.'"
Everyone turned at once to look at Siesta.
"Is that what the plaque says?" Kirche asked.
But Siesta only shook her head. "I don't know. The only one who could ever speak or read that language was Great-grandfather, and he's…"
She didn't need to say anything more. In this world, considering the level of medical advances, Shirou very much doubted that anyone except really skilled Water Mages lived, on average, to be older than eighty or so. Even the Noble mages didn't seem very interested in extending their lifespans.
"But," she added, "it does match with Great-grandfather's final wishes, so maybe…"
Shirou was a little surprised, but mostly thankful, that no one accused him of making it up.
"Alright, then," Kirche said. "So, is there some sort of key or something we need to open the door, or can we just go right in?"
Siesta shook her head. "No key, no, but, um," she smiled sheepishly, "the door hinges…might be a little rusted."
"Might be, as in…?"
"They haven't been oiled in over twenty years."
Immediately, Guiche offered to help out. "I could use my Valkyries —"
"No need," Shirou interrupted.
He stepped up to the double doors, grasped the rings that passed for handles, braced his legs and feet against the wooden porch, and pulled.
With a great, low groan, the doors began to open, inching outwards at a torturously slow pace. The hinges ground together and cried out with every millimeter, wailing in protest as Shirou grunted and used all his strength, as well as all his restraint, to open the doors without tearing them out of the frame or the knobs off the doors.
Briefly, he wondered how that mage had managed to get inside and study this Dragon's Raiment without the help of someone like him to open the doors, but he chocked it up to magic. The mages here seemed to use that for everything, even menial labor, when they could get away with it.
Shirou took a step back, and then another step back, as the doors slowly but steadily came outwards, dropping a layer of dust to the floor and his boots along the way. The hinges continued their chorus even louder, screeching shrilly with every movement, no matter how microscopic, until —
SNAP!
Something finally gave, and with the sudden lack of resistance, Shirou stumbled backwards, tripped on his heel, and landed ass-first on the ground.
"Mister Shirou!"
"Sir Shirou!"
"Darling, are you alright?"
For a moment, Shirou only blinked up at the vast blue sky — the thing which stung most was his pride — and then, slowly, he sat back up and looked at the group; all of them were staring at him worriedly. Louise, the only one who seemed unconcerned, gave him a small smirk that reminded painfully of Rin.
"Thought you'd take a break?" she asked.
Shirou gave her a smirk back.
"Well," he drawled, then held up the pair of rings that had once been attached to the doors, "something decided to break, at least."
The concern melted away into various expressions of surprise and bemusement, except for Louise, who was biting a lip to keep from laughing, and Siesta, who was (once again) blinking bewilderedly at him.
"Sometimes," Guiche mumbled lowly, "I forget exactly how strong Sir Shirou is."
Shirou rolled forward and back up to his feet.
"Ready to try again?" Louise asked.
"Sure."
"Without breaking anything, this time."
He offered her a grin. "No promises."
Shirou stepped up past the rest of the group and back to the doors, which were opened just barely wide enough for someone like Louise to slip through, and absently tossed the metal rings to the side. They crashed to the wooden porch with a thunderous clang and a resounding thud that vibrated through the boards.
"By the Founder!" someone whispered. "Those must weigh sixty kilos each!"
Shirou didn't remark upon it; he just took one more step forward, braced his legs again, reached out with both of his hands, and grasped both doors. The heavy, old wood groaned beneath his fingers.
Then, he pulled. He could feel the muscles in his shoulders tense and bunch up and his biceps compress, and then, slowly and steadily, the crack between the two doors began to widen again.
He pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and beneath his fingertips, the wooden boards moaned and shrieked under the stress. Inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, the doors came apart and opened up. More dust swept down from the tops and disappeared from Shirou's clothes as quickly as it settled.
With a grunt and a final push, Shirou extended his arms all the way and threw the doors wide. The hinges gave a shriek, the wood groaned and creaked, and their sheer weight and mass swept the wind aside on the way, but at last, the doors opened all the way to admit their little group.
"Oh my," Siesta said from behind him. "I'd heard the rumors and everything, but…Mister Shirou certainly is strong."
"Just be thankful you weren't awake to see what happened to Mott," Louise muttered under her breath. Even Shirou just barely heard her.
"Alright, then!" Kirche chirped. "Let's get a look at this Dragon's Raiment!"
She stepped up on the porch and then passed Shirou, who moved aside, and Louise, sighing, fell into step behind her. Then came Tabitha, whose nose was still buried in her book, and Guiche, and Siesta brought up the rear. Once they'd all gotten through the doors, Shirou followed them inside and squinted into the darkness.
The temple had no windows, which Shirou might have been able to see earlier if the walls outside weren't covered in vines and ivy, so the only light was the single broad shaft that came through the doors and speared across the floor. In the gloom, if he squinted a little, he could make out a strange shape cloaked in the shadows.
"Where is it?"
"I can't see anything."
"Um, there should be some candles around here somewhere."
"Hang on, I've got it."
There was a flash of light, and then Kirche was holding a ball of flames in the palm of her hand. In her other hand, she held a long, wooden stick — her wand — which she twirled around in circles while she muttered another incantation. The ball of flames split into four, each a quarter the size of the original, and then danced off and into the air like the will-o'-the-wisps from folklore. Kirche conducted them across the temple with long, sweeping motions of her wand until each one reached a corner, landed perfectly on the wick of a candle, and started to burn.
Immediately, likely set up in response to the lighting of the candles, four paper lanterns (and wasn't that nostalgic?) hanging from the ceiling ignited, banishing the shadows and illuminating the room, from the dusty boards beneath their feet to the dull planks that formed the walls…
And, at the same time, revealing the treasure seated at its center.
Whatever Shirou had been expecting to find secreted away inside the temple, what he actually saw was something that had never crossed his mind. The moment his eyes landed upon the object that had apparently attracted so many tourists and curious mages alike, the legendary artifact that had drawn scholars from all across the continent here in pilgrimage, Shirou felt his breath leave him like he'd been kicked in the stomach.
"This is it? The Dragon's Raiment?"
"Yes. This is, um…This is Great-grandfather's treasure."
"It doesn't look like much."
The others didn't seem quite so impressed.
"There's no way this thing could fly," Kirche said, sounding somewhere between disappointed and frustrated.
"It's like some kind of boat, isn't it?" Guiche asked skeptically. It seemed like he agreed with her. "Look — the wings can't even move up and down, and the material isn't sturdy enough to support something of that size. And there — there's a hole in the side. It certainly looks impressive, but there's no way this thing could actually fly. Dragon's Raiment, indeed."
Kirche sighed and shrugged helplessly. "And here I was getting my hopes up. What was the point in coming here if it was all just a hoax? Right, Darling?"
But Shirou didn't agree.
Certainly, if it were anything else sitting before them, Kirche and Guiche might have a point about it. Shaped almost like a boat, wings that weren't fit properly for flight, damage to the structure… But it wasn't anything else.
Shirou had been expecting something fairly impressive from all the hype that had surrounded the Dragon's Raiment, but he'd never expected something like that.
"…Darling?"
"Shirou, are you alright?" Louise asked.
"Mister Shirou," Siesta said nervously, "if…if it's not good enough…"
But as the surprise faded, Shirou simply grinned.
"Master," he said to Louise, "I've thought before that your world and mine must have had something in common in order for me to appear before you…but now I'm certain."
"Shirou?"
"I'll need a few days," Shirou changed the subject abruptly. "Maybe a week. But by then, I'll have this thing ready to fly."
"A week?"
Kirche made an annoyed sound. "What are we supposed to do for a week, then, while you fix this thing?"
"I hate to agree with Zerbst," Louise added, "but she does have a point. We were only supposed to be out here for a day or two."
Shirou shrugged. "Vacation? Back when I was your age, most of my classmates would've given their left arm for a vacation from school."
"Vacation? Wha — but, that's…!"
"We'll be scolded by the headmaster for sure," Guiche mumbled miserably.
"I could do with a vacation," Kirche said, smiling like a cat who'd cornered a canary.
"Siesta, would it be too much for your family to host us for a while?"
"Not at all!" Siesta said brightly. "In fact, I'm sure my parents would be delighted!"
Louise gave Shirou an imploring look. "Can't we just take it back with us? You could fix it at the Academy, right?"
"I could, but…" Well, there were several reasons not to. Aside from a lack of space and privacy, both of which would make it hard to work get any work done during the day, there was something very simple to account for. "It'd be easier to do it here."
As long as she was here, she didn't have to put up with the rumors and the classmates who just wouldn't leave her alone. She could relax away from the pressures and constant annoyances that had been plaguing her since they'd returned after the incident with Mott. And who knew? If she was gone for a week, maybe they'd start to lose interest, so by the time she got back, everything would have returned to normal.
"Besides, this could give you the chance to practice without having to worry about the stress of classes."
Louise's eyebrow twitched, and even though she scowled, Shirou knew he'd won her over.
"Fine," she grumbled. "We'll stay for a week."
"Thank you, Master."
Then, Shirou ushered them out of the temple so he could get to fixing the Dragon's Raiment and asked Siesta to take the others back to her house so they could settle in. It would be boring to watch him work, he'd told them, so they might as well go and relax instead of sitting there on the old, dusty floor.
Indirectly, he'd also told Louise that she should practice her Reinforcement instead of just enjoying their impromptu vacation, but made sure that she understood not to push herself too hard. She seemed to catch on, so he wasn't too worried about that.
When the others had left and Shirou wasn't able to see their backs anymore, he turned around and inspected his prize — and it was a prize, there was no mistake about that. Siesta, the townsfolk, all of those scholars who had come to examine it, and even Kirche and Guiche, they might not have thought much of it, but just looking at it, Shirou could already tell its value exceeded his original expectations.
This wasn't just a treasure, this was an artifact befitting something like a king or a god.
Thinking about it then, he really shouldn't have been as surprised as he'd been when he first laid eyes on it. After all, hadn't Fouquet stolen the Compliant Rod from the Academy's vault? If something like that was lying around here, then would couldn't something like this have been here, too?
Yes, this was definitely a prize, and as much as he appreciated it, Shirou couldn't help feeling a little bit bad, as well. All he'd done was save her life — what had come as naturally to him as breathing — and she was going to hand over something like this in exchange?
This was worth way more than some jewel-encrusted necklace.
But…he wasn't going to let this pass him up. Against an enemy like Francis Drake, Shirou was at an overwhelming disadvantage — even if he could hit Drake from afar with a Broken Phantasm, it required time to Trace the bow and the sword he intended to use, and then more time to take aim. During those critical moments, Drake had proven capable of bombarding him with cannon fire and preventing him from doing anything except dodging.
And now, with this, the playing field was level again.
Shirou stepped forward and inspected the damage, his eyes roving over the hole in the hull, then turned his gaze at the places where the armaments had originally been. His original estimate of a week might have been too generous — fixing the damage wouldn't take too long, perhaps, but replacing the weapons that had once been affixed to the craft based solely upon his reading of its history might be much harder.
Briefly, he wondered how a fighter pilot from modern Japan had managed to find something like this, whether or not Sasaki Takeo had already had it when he came through whatever had brought him to this world, and what exactly had dragged a Navy Ensign from his native Earth to this strange, backwards world ruled by mages. But Shirou would also be the first to admit that he didn't know thing one about True Magic, with the exception of a fraction of what the Second and Third could accomplish.
"Hey, Partner," Derf spoke up for the first time, "can this thing really fly?"
"If I can get it working again, then yeah. The tricky part will be recreating the weapons that used to be on here."
And he wasn't even going to touch that one thing. If that was what he suspected it was, there was no way he would risk fiddling with it.
"Really? No offense, Partner, but that's a mighty big hole, there. I think remakin' da weapons'll be the least o' yer worries."
Shirou nodded.
"You're right," he acknowledged. "It's not something that can be done by a mage using only the materials on hand. Any fix I could do would be temporary. For that matter, I'm not sure I could successfully replicate the component materials that make up the hull."
Even the Blade Works had limits on what it could recreate, and anything Projected was, in the end, a transient object. Recreating the material that way was doomed to failure, a band-aid for a gaping wound, and as for using any of his other skills, well…
To begin with, completely restoring damage like that wasn't within the abilities of Emiya Shirou. Of course not — Shirou wasn't anywhere near skilled enough to perform restoration magecraft of that level. He understood the corresponding principle, and he could apply it to swords and other melee weapons, but fixing an advanced vehicle like this, which bore only a passing resemblance to a modern fighter jet, was beyond him.
"Derf, I want you to promise me that you'll keep what you're about to see to yourself."
"Eh? Well, sure, Partner, but why…?"
"You'll understand in a moment," Shirou said cryptically. "Just keep your mouth shut."
"Alrighty, then. If you say so."
Yes, fixing such an advanced vehicle was beyond the abilities of Emiya Shirou.
That was why…
"Hey, you lazy freeloader, wake up."
…the one who would repair this thing wasn't Emiya Shirou.
"I've got a job for you."
In the back of his head, sharing his body and his soul, something large and overwhelming roused. Like a primordial god, stirred from sleep, it rumbled and unfolded, and its presence, a light radiating out like a second sun, filled up all the empty spaces inside of him.
Shirou pressed a hand against the hull of the ship. "Just this once, I'll give it to you. Fix this thing."
The giant light shook and answered, not with words, but with a vague sense of eagerness. The overwhelming radiance swelled and pushed, then ebbed back and pushed again.
"Guess that's as close to a deal as I'm gonna get."
He let out a breath and closed his eyes, and when the light pushed again, he pulled, up and out, and relaxed the walls he'd built around it.
Apeiron breathed.
"How disrespectful."
He regressed. His Magic Circuits, beyond the nature of a human's Magic Circuits, churned and circulated. Immense magical energy, enough to match even a Servant like Saber, ran through and was gathered.
"But I'll forgive it, this once. This chance is one even I wouldn't pass up."
Shirou's lips curled into an arrogant smirk, and his eyes, now Apeiron's eyes, the color of gold, seemed to glow.
"After all, this makes two Noble Phantasms you've gathered since arriving here."
Vimana's hull, perfectly preserved for nearly eighty years, gleamed and shone.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
"Are you gonna lay there and laze about all day?"
Shirou blinked his eyes open blearily and looked up at Louise, who stood over him with her hands on her hips. He blinked again and was overcome by a sudden, powerful nostalgia that coiled loosely in his belly.
"You almost had me worried, you know," Louise said. "But then I remembered, 'ah, right, Shirou's a bit of an idiot, so he probably fell asleep in the shed again.'"
For a moment, Shirou wondered if maybe he was dreaming, because that sounded remarkably like something Rin would've said when they were younger and she'd caught him sleeping in his shed after a night of working on his magecraft. But the warmth of the sun and the uncomfortable ache in his back that came from sleeping on the hard floor dispelled that idea immediately.
Still…
"Are you alright, Louise? You're acting a bit strange."
She flushed and turned away, huffing. "I-I'm fine! A-And anyway, aren't you done fixing that thing, yet? It's been almost a week!"
Shirou gave a grunt as he sat up and looked over at Vimana, which hadn't been moved since he'd started working on it.
"Not yet," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "I haven't finished reconstructing and calibrating the weapons systems. It can fly now, yeah, but that's all it can do. If I tried to take this thing into a fight, I'd have to rely on my magecraft to attack or counterattack."
Whatever Louise had been about to say was lost, and her mouth closed before she got so much as a word out. Instead, a curious expression crossed her features, and she walked up to stand beside him, one hand holding her left elbow and the other curled thoughtfully around her mouth.
"It has weapons systems?" she murmured. "I figured a fighter jet would have those musket-like things, but I didn't think something like this…"
Shirou nodded. "Yeah. It might not look it, but this thing is an advanced piece of hardware that could outfly even the most modern of fighter jets, and the weapons it had before were some of the most powerful I've even heard of."
Shirou had dabbled in guns, in his younger years. On some of the assignments he'd taken with the Church and the Association's Enforcers, it'd been easier, more efficient, and simply drew less attention to use firearms to defeat the target. Even though Shirou had gotten very comfortable as a frontline, close quarters fighter, his natural skills had still been more inclined towards archery and long distance.
But even the best guns he'd ever come across paled in comparison to the weapons that had once been attached to Vimana. It was a pity Gilgamesh had taken them all off before it had passed from his hands and into the Indians', because even recreating them from the history he'd been able to read had resulted in something that couldn't compare. Even as something that was more like a shade of the originals, they still outperformed modern firearms by an order of magnitude.
All things considered, Vimana was a Noble Phantasm that had been equipped with other Noble Phantasms. As far as utility went, there was no other mount or vehicle that could match it, and only something like a Divine-class dragon or Excalibur had the sort of firepower to put it to shame.
"That amazing, huh? I guess I should've expected as much from a Noble Phantasm treasured by Gilgamesh, of all heroes."
"Yeah. I —"
"Hey!" Kirche's voice called from outside. "Louise, is he done, yet?"
Next to Shirou, Louise groaned. "She followed me out here."
Shirou made a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat.
"Next time we go somewhere, we should tie her down to her bed."
A grin cracked Louise's face. "N-no," she said, holding back a giggle, "we'd get in trouble with the headmaster."
"Ah, right. Yeah, that'd be bad," Shirou nodded. He hummed and playfully adopted a thoughtful look. "A sleeping potion, then? We could spike her food at dinner one night. By the time she wakes up, we'll be long gone."
This time, Louise did laugh. "B-but, w-where would we g-get the ingredients? I — ha! — I only get s-so much for my allowance, you know!"
"Well, I do know how to juggle …"
Louise snorted and slapped a hand over her mouth to suppress her giggling, and even Shirou couldn't help but smile at his joke.
"Louise, Darling!" Kirche appeared in the doorway. "You're missing the party!"
"Party?" Louise and Shirou parroted.
Kirche jerked her thumb behind her. "The Tristainian fleet is about to fire off the ceremonial salute to greet the Albion delegation."
"Albion delegation?"
Shirou hadn't heard anything about that, and neither, it seemed, had Louise.
Kirche blinked at the two of them and sighed.
"Ah, man!" she said. "Don't tell me the two of you haven't heard about that, yet? It's been all over the Academy grapevine since we got back from that Mott fiasco!"
"Spit it out, already!" Louise grumbled.
"Alright, hold your horses!" Kirche sighed again. "Albion sued for peace shortly after we got back from rescuing Prince — er, King Wales. They sent a delegation over to write up the treaty, probably to prevent Tristain from declaring war."
BOOM!
The sound of cannon fire rocked the temple and sent the floorboards beneath their feet aquiver.
"And that would be the traditional seventeen-gun salute," Kirche added. "Next is —"
But a second, much louder bang cut her off, and a series of thunder-like cracks rent the air — definitely not cannon fire. In fact, that sounded more like —
Kirche spun around. "That's not part of the salute!" she said unnecessarily.
A loud rumble, like an avalanche roaring down the mountainside, shook the floor beneath their feet and vibrated through their eardrums. Something large and heavy had just crashed to the ground.
Shirou was the first of them to make it out the door and into the field, but Louise and Kirche were hot on his heels, skidding to a halt behind him.
In the distance, a great ship bearing what had to be Reconquista's colors had fallen and smashed into the forest. Its vast white sails were ablaze, and red-orange flames crackled and ate at the polished wood frame. In its side, the portion that hadn't buckled under the force of crashing into the Earth, were several large holes that looked, at first glance, to have been caused by cannonballs.
"Ambush?!" Kirche gasped. "But why would Tristain —"
"They wouldn't!" Louise snapped. "Ignoring that we don't have the manpower for a sustained conflict, it's beyond dishonorable to engage an enemy who entreats peace!"
"Then how —"
"Hey!" Guiche and Tabitha came running towards them — Tabitha, for once, didn't have her omnipresent book. "Did you see what happened? That ship just blew up for no reason!"
"It wasn't Tristain?"
Guiche shook his head.
"Our fleet was too far away to even hit that ship! It just exploded out of the blue!"
"Then —"
The crack of more cannon fire rent the air, sharp like fireworks, and flames erupted now on the other side, on the Tristain ships. Cannonballs, black specks that Shirou couldn't even see, rained down from above, and the rapidfire boom-boom-boom of the cannons rolled across the sky. The Tristain ships, sensing the disadvantage, started to pull away and out of range, even as one, two, three of them collapsed and started to fall.
And then, descending from the clouds above, three-hundred more ships joined the Albion side, cannons flashing. With their reinforcements behind them, the Albion ships gave chase, pelting the remnants of the Tristain fleet and whittling their numbers down with each shot.
It was over in less than a minute. Outgunned, outnumbered, overwhelmed, and caught off guard, the last Tristain ship broke apart and sank down, out of the sky.
"N-no way!" Kirche gasped. "That's the Albion Grand Fleet!"
"A-a five-hundred ship armada," Guiche whimpered, "most powerful aerial navy in Halkeginia. Oh, we're doomed. We are so completely doomed."
"What are they doing here?" Louise demanded. "This is well within Tristain territory!"
"Isn't it obvious?" Shirou asked. "Henrietta already told us this would happen."
He'd hoped she was wrong, that if it did come, the wait would be longer while Reconquista consolidated their power.
But even though he'd hoped for it, he'd known that it would come sooner than later anyway.
"Wha-war?" Louise stammered. "But it's too soon! I thought we'd have another couple of weeks! A month! More time, at the very least! I'm not ready, yet!"
"War never waits until you're ready." Shirou took a few steps forward and frowned. There was something…strange, here.
Ignoring the mystery of the ship that blew up without being fired upon, there was something that didn't sit right with the entire situation.
"Still!"
"W-we have to get out of here!" Guiche cried. "We have to run!"
Shirou ignored him and scrutinized the gigantic fleet. Something seemed…off, but he wasn't quite sure what. He needed a closer look.
"Trace, on."
In a single instant, he reinforced his eyes, and his vision increased to the point where he could track a supersonic missile at four kilometers. With his enhanced sight, he examined each of the large, imposing ships, cataloguing as much as he could about their weapons and designs, and based upon his meagre knowledge, the original grouping of ships that had fired upon the Tristain ships were all uniformly shaped and built, and it was only the reinforcements that…
Ah. That was it.
"What?! Shirou, you don't actually intend to try and fight them all, do you?"
"Darling, that's insane!"
"Forgive me for saying so, Sir Shirou, but destroying a single ship is one thing, destroying an entire fleet is another!"
"It's not the Albion Grand Fleet," Shirou announced.
"It…isn't?"
"Take a look, Louise." Shirou pointed up at them. "You might not be able to see it too well, but only about half of those ships is built according to Halkeginian ship designs — see? They're the only ones with sails on the sides."
"Huh?" Louise squinted up at the massive fleet, which had bombarded the remains of the Tristain fleet, likely to kill the survivors, and was starting to head towards Tarbes itself. "You're…you're right! But how…!"
"I…don't understand, Sir Shirou," Guiche said. "What does that mean?"
"Can you think of no one, Guiche, who flew upon a ship in the sky, but did not need sails to drive it?"
Shirou didn't need to look to know the expressions of comprehension dawning on their faces.
"But she said you destroyed it!" Louise protested. "Didn't she? When we met Prince Wales, you blew her ship out of the sky with that Broken Phantasm thing! I remember, because she was really upset about it!"
"That's right," Kirche agreed. "Darling, I thought you'd already beaten her special weapon with one of your own?"
"Apparently not," Shirou answered sardonically. "In hindsight, I probably should have expected something more impressive than a single ship from a pirate who managed to become a Heroic Spirit."
It didn't take long for what that meant to sink in.
"What?!" Louise screeched. "That whole fleet is her Noble Phantasm?!"
"So it seems."
"Doesn't that just make them more dangerous?!" Guiche asked, somewhat hysterically. "A whole fleet that can function without a crew, with enough power to turn an entire army into ash — that doesn't sound like something we want to be in the way of!"
"Guiche…Guiche is right," Kirche said. "Darling, I know you're strong, but we really can't stay! If we get on Sylphid and leave now, we might be able to make it!"
"Tactical retreat," Tabitha added.
"And abandon all of Tarbes to be destroyed!" Louise argued hotly.
"Look, Louise, it's a tragedy, but that fleet just destroyed your Tristainian fleet without even flinching! There's no time to evacuate the town, so the best idea is to cut our losses and go tell someone who can actually do something about it!"
"Albion's always had the best fleet," Guiche murmured in the background.
"That doesn't make it right! And…and there must be something we could do, right?! Can't we?!"
"Vallière, if you've been holding back on us and can cast a spell that can destroy an entire fleet, then I'm all for it!"
"That's not…!" Louise turned in Shirou's direction. "Shirou, you can do something! Can't you?"
For a moment, Shirou said nothing. He just scrutinized the ever-advancing fleet, eyes sharp.
There were a number of Noble Phantasms he could use, a number of weapons in his arsenal that might be strong enough to defeat that fleet. Caladbolg, perhaps, used as it had been in the legend, or Excalibur Galatine, if he could get it close enough to its full power, or maybe Brionac, Lugh's spear, or Siegfried's Balmung. Any Noble Phantasm would do, as long as it had the range and power to take down at least enough ships to force Drake to retreat. For that matter, if he could just pinpoint Drake's location (and if the angle had been better, he probably could have), he could take her out with Hrunting in an instant.
But defeating the fleet wasn't what Louise was asking for, was it?
"Can't you?!"
What she wanted was for him to save these people. What she was begging him to do was save Tarbes from Drake's fleet.
And there was only one Noble Phantasm that was suited for that task.
Perhaps, Shirou thought, that was why he had been summoned in the first place.
"Louise," he began, "when you summoned me, what did you call out for?"
She flushed. "I don't —!"
"No, you don't need to answer," Shirou cut her off, "I can guess."
Shirou took a few steps forward and unsheathed his sword.
He'd thought, before, that maybe it was because no other hero could compete with the other Heroic Spirits they'd met so far, that no other hero could conjure whatever weapon was necessary to face down Perseus, Drake, Not-Lancelot, and whatever else might still be waiting in the wings. Because all of these other Heroic Spirits were stacked against her, the spell had called him, someone who could strike at their weaknesses with whatever Noble Phantasm was needed.
But that was just conceit. No, to begin with, there were other heroes who could have fulfilled his role, maybe even better than he could — the hero Emiya that had been summoned in his Grail War, Gilgamesh with his endless array of Noble Phantasms, or even Lancelot himself. What chance did the enemy have against the King of Heroes, who could strike all their weaknesses, or the Knight of the Lake, who could turn their own Noble Phantasms against them?
It had to be simpler than that.
"The words you said, the prayer you uttered when you cried out for me…"
The Magic Circuits burned. The magical energy churned and circulated, nearly too much for his only-human Circuits to handle. In his hand, his sword, the Last Phantasm that had been passed to him by the Lady of the Lake, began to glow.
But it wasn't as simple as the fact that he was alive. What separated him from other heroes, like Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot, like Alexander the Great, like Gilgamesh or Perseus or Heracles, what made him different from all of them was not simply the fact that he was alive. It couldn't be that simple, because he'd already come face to face with Heroic Spirits in this world who seemed as alive as he was.
"It called to me because I hold that prayer in my hands."
What had brought him here, then, what had selected him to be Louise's familiar, it wasn't just luck or chance. Louise had used a catalyst, of sorts, even if she hadn't realized it at the time. He was almost certain of it, now.
Shirou thrust his left foot forward and his right foot back, turning his body as he grasped his sword with both hands and brought it up towards his shoulder, tilted behind him. It was a stance reminiscent of a baseball player, a batting stance that optimized the length of the swing and allowed for the arc sword to cover the maximum range.
The light of his blade blazed like the sun, blindingly intense and hot against his cheek. The crystallized prayer, Salvation, shone, bright and luminous.
"Th-that light, it's…"
"…Beautiful."
"In your heart, you cried out for salvation. You wished with everything you were for a miracle to deliver you from despair."
This was what Louise had called out for when she summoned him. She'd asked not for a familiar, but for a savior, and whatever power existed behind the summoning ritual had chosen not a King of Knights or a King of Conquerors, but a King of the Forsaken, of all those who had been left to their fates and cried out to be saved.
And so he had come.
"And the name of that miracle is…"
Shirou swung, twisting his torso around, stepping forward with his right foot, and cutting through the air.
Shining Sword of Salvation —
"— GAVILAIN!"
The wind was blown back. A beam of light like a ray, a golden radiance compressed into an arc — with a blunt roar, a resounding boom from the sound barrier being broken, a heavy whoosh as the air sizzled and was carved away, it soared from the edge of his blade like a rainbow and expanded rapidly, until its magnificent glow lit up the sky and eclipsed the sun in brilliance.
In an instant, moving so swiftly that it resembled lightning, the arc crossed the distance, and before the grand fleet, Reconquista's stolen ships and the Noble Phantasm of the Heroic Spirit Francis Drake, could turn away, it consumed all five hundred ships and passed on, cleaving through the clouds in the distance and disappearing into the sky.
What remained in its wake was nothing. Everything that had been touched by the golden light had simply been incinerated and erased from existence — not even ashes were left of that grand fleet.
The sword wielded by Emiya Shirou was Gavilain, the Shining Sword of Salvation, sister to Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory, and Arondight, the Unfading Light of the Lake. Similar to Excalibur, it took the input prana and multiplied it, condensing it into a golden light, a radiance to destroy the enemy.
Different from Excalibur, however, and resembling more closely Sir Gawain's Galatine and the Irish Noble Phantasm, Caladbolg, Gavilain's attack was a broad beam, a wave-like blade of light that extended from the swing of the sword. On the other hand, whereas the solar Noble Phantasm, Galatine, incinerated the enemy by scorching and burning them away with flame, Gavilain's attack was more condensed, more focused, and it seared the enemy away so that everything touched by the light was simply annihilated.
Galatine cleansed with flame. Gavilain destroyed with light.
In that case, it was only natural that what remained of the annihilated fleet was nothing.
"N-no way…" Guiche whispered from behind Shirou. "The entire fleet…gone…"
"D-Darling, that was…!"
"S-Shirou…"
"Louise," Shirou said without turning around, "when you summoned me, the wish you prayed for, it was to be saved, wasn't it?"
He let his arms fall, and the blade of his sword, still glowing, cast a pale golden light on the grass around him. Starting five feet in front of him, the great clearing that had stood outside of Tarbes just beyond Vimana's temple had been scorched black and turned into a rippling field of glass. Behind him, the village of Tarbes remained untouched.
In the distance, a great swathe of trees had withered from the heat and been reduced to skeletal husks.
"Then, look closely. This is your prayer made real. This is your salvation."
First Arc: Saving Prayer
END
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Gavilain [Noble Phantasm]
Shining Sword of Salvation
The radiant sword of light possessed by Emiya Shirou. A holy sword forged from the human prayer "salvation," crystallized within the Earth. It's a Last Phantasm on the same level as Excalibur that sees excellent performance as both a sword and a Noble Phantasm. Originally held by the fairies, it passed into Shirou's hands from the Lady of the Lake as a sign of their contract.
Like Excalibur, Gavilain converts the user's Prana into light, and as it is swung, the light is released from the edge of the blade and annihilates everything in its path. In form, Gavilain resembles Excalibur, but in action, it more closely resembles Noble Phantasms like Excalibur Galatine and Caladbolg. Like a precision scalpel, Gavilain does not burn, but simply sears away everything it touches.
Though it is of the same scale as Excalibur, however, Gavilain's strength lies not in its attack power, but in its speed and ease of use. Requiring a small charge time and less than a third the amount of energy of its sister, its most deadly attribute is the fact that a modern magus is capable of utilizing its full power.
With such an incredible advantage, it's easy to see why Francis Drake's fleet was wiped out so effortlessly.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
CONTINUE?
[YES/NO]
Tousaka-sensei's Lecture Corner #9
"Hooo-me RUN!" Ilya cried. Dressed in her usual sweatshirt-bloomer combo and a ball cap, she mimed swinging a baseball bat. "And Emiya knocks it right out of the park! The crowd goes wild!"
Silence.
Ilya pouted. "I said, the crowd goes wild!"
More silence.
"The crowd goes wild, damn it!"
More silence. A sigh. Waver Velvet, Lord El Melloi II, Lord and respected lecturer of the Clock Tower, pressed the button on the remote control in his hand, and the sound of a roaring crowd cheering in a baseball stadium played over the speakers.
"And the opposing team is annihilated!" Ilya called over the cheering. "Emiya wins the game! Emiya wins the game!"
"I'm not getting paid enough for this," Waver mumbled under his breath.
Ilya spun around towards him and jabbed a finger in his direction. "You're not getting paid anything! This is a dictatorship, not a democracy, so shut up and let me cheer on Onii-chan!"
Waver just sighed again, but Ilya ignored him and turned back to the camera.
"Ahem!" she cleared her throat. "Today's Lecture Corner is a bit of a special, because Onii-chan used his Noble Phantasm for the first time — wasn't that exciting!"
"Overkill is more like it," Waver murmured.
"In case you missed it last time, it's been retconned," Ilya went on. "The author finally decided that he was just plain tired of that Anti-World monstrosity he cooked up ages ago, so this new one was invented and took its place. Please note the difference!"
She pointed to the blackboard, which had "Gavilain IS NOT Escalvatine with a new name!"
"For those of you who can see where the inspiration for Gavilain's description came from, good for you! Don't tell anyone. Let everyone else figure it out on their own."
She cleared her throat again. "Anyway, in celebration of this momentous occasion, we brought our guest back from last chapter! Please welcome back Iskandar-san!"
The camera panned over to the tall, hulking, red-haired behemoth, Iskandar, who was cupping his chin and…did not react at all.
"Iskandar-san?"
"…How indescribably sad."
Ilya blinked. "Eh?"
"Having seen that sword, all I can think is how indescribably sad it is."
He gestured to the TV screen, normally hidden from the main camera, where the recording of Shirou unleashing his sword was paused mid-swing.
"He took upon his shoulders the curse of this world," Iskandar said, "and he defied fate to pursue an impossible dream, forsaking everything else in the pursuit of a lonely ideal. Throwing away things like love, companionship, and ambition, discarding his sense of self, casting off everything in order to chase a dream that can never come true…it's such an agonizing tragedy. What kind of world must it have been to place such a terrible burden on the shoulders of a young boy?"
"Um…"
"That is why…in the face of that light which shines so brightly, I can only look away."
He offered a sad chuckle. "Truly, those two were made for each other."
A notification popped up onscreen: "Iskandar is now an Avalon Shipper!"
"O…kay…" Ilya hedged. "That was weird and somewhat off-topic."
Waver grunted and lit up a cigar. "Didn't you watch Fate/Zero, Einzbern?"
"Of course!" Ilya huffed. "I was in it, too! So were you, although you were much cuter and shorter back then."
Waver's fingers twitched and he almost dropped his cigar. "Don't you remember what he said after Caster's monster was obliterated?"
"Of course I — oh. Yeah, I remember, now. I guess the author must've really liked that scene."
"Who didn't? It was one of the best scenes in Fate/Zero."
"And then Gilgamesh decided to ruin it by being a creepy old man."
Waver grunted. "I never understood those kinds of shippers. I mean, in the first place, Saber and Gilgamesh are simply incompatible, and the minute Saber gave in and became his bride, he'd just lose interest in her. The only reason Gilgamesh was so fascinated with her was because she told him to sod off when he said, 'Be my wife, woman.'"
"I know, right? A healthy relationship would've been impossible! The only way they could get together is if you radically changed their personalities, and when you do that, what's the point of writing about them anymore?"
"Wish fulfilment. That, and maybe some super vicarious autoeroticism having to do with supreme male domination of a strong female figure."
"…Huh?"
Waver took a puff on his cigar. "It's a primal sexual thing having to do with power and domination. I'd explain it, but I'm pretty sure you're too young."
"Hey!" Ilya squawked. "I'm over eighteen, you know, even though I don't look like it!"
"And yet, somehow, I think I'd get arrested if I tried to walk down the street with you."
Ilya huffed. "Well, anyway, most of his behavior in Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night is just Gilgamesh tsun-tsuning really hard. Maybe that's the attraction — tsundere are very popular, for some reason."
Waver almost choked on his cigar. "What?!"
"You didn't know? Gilgamesh is Tsundere for humanity. Haven't you been keeping up with Fate/EXTRA CCC, Professor Velvet?"
"Yes, but where the hell did you get that Gilgamesh was a tsundere out of that?"
"It's called subtext, or reading between the lines. It's not really that hard —"
Iskandar cleared his throat pointedly.
"I might just be a guest on this little show," he began, "but isn't it a bit counterproductive to turn the whole segment into a gossip corner?"
Ilya gasped.
"Oh no!" she cried. "We got distracted! We're supposed to be talking about Onii-chan's sword!"
Waver snorted.
Ilya's cheeks puffed up in a scowl and she pointed at Waver. "Pervert! That's not what I meant!"
Waver just coughed into his hand. "Anyway, this awesome sword?"
Ilya shot him a dirty look, but turned back to the camera. "Right. Well, we're running out of our allotted space, so I'll have to hurry up! Since it's a retcon, it's especially important to talk about Gavilain, so pay attention, everyone!"
She snapped her fingers, and a large, scaled-up poster of Gavilain appeared, pasted to the blackboard.
"A revised picture will be posted later, so don't worry about that now. The important thing is the change to attack power and type — it's now an A++ Anti-Army Noble Phantasm. Check back on Shirou's profile on the bottom of Chapter Three: Forebodings for a more precise list of its stats, as well as Shirou's revised parameters!"
She slapped a thin wooden pointer — which had appeared from nowhere — on the poster. "It's no longer Anti-World, and it no longer has Chaos to fight Ea's Truth! That's important! Also, in a competition between Excalibur and Gavilain, reference Heaven's Feel Route, Day 16: Burst Out/Oath, Saber's Black Excalibur versus Shirou's half-baked Rho Aias and Rider's Bellerophon! It's more like a double-knockout than that fight, but the sentiment is there!"
She cleared her throat. "And that's…it, I think? Did we cover everything important, Professor Velvet?"
"Yeah, that was everything. Can we go, now? Tousaka will be back next time, so let's finish up, already."
"Now, wait a minute!" Iskandar interrupted. "We still haven't covered the issue of my appearance in the story! I really think —"
In unison, Waver and Ilya turned to him and shouted, "FOR THE LAST TIME, NO MEANS NO!"
Tousaka-sensei's Lecture Corner #9: End
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
To be continued
"OH NO, JAMES, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"
Original work, real life, and a little, very distracting game called, "Destiny." This chapter also fought me a little — the bulk of the chapter was written fairly quickly and easily, but the connecting scenes that bridge it all together were a pain.
Still have no idea what SSS stands for?
Obvious worldbuilding is obvious. It's not important for now, but you may want to remember it.
Shirou using his sword against Drake felt kinda cheap and easy, but I don't see how else he could've done that part without spamming Caladbolg or something, which would have had essentially the same result anyway. There was no way for him to fight that battle at any other range, and no single Noble Phantasm fired from his bow would have been powerful enough to wipe out the fleet the way his sword did. Incidentally, the charge time in that scene is deceptive — it didn't take nearly as long as it probably seemed to.
I thought about having an aerial dogfight similar to Fate/Zero's Gilgamesh v Berserkalot over the Mion River, but it just didn't make sense to do something like that when it wasn't a one-on-one battle where the combatants would be entirely focused on only each other. Shirou would never have done it because it would put both Louise and the townsfolk at risk.
Interesting fact: in real life, Tarbes would be considered part of Aquitaine, at least it was in 1180 AD, which is the period map I used for reference for Tristain's geography. Also, the mountains Shirou and the others saw, along with Tarbes itself, should probably be a couple hundred miles South/Southwest of where they are in MoZ (and the anime), but that sort of thinking goes out the window when you realize: oops, there's a lake right there that shouldn't exist, either. Way to go, Yamaguchi.
Before I get people telling me about the rate of rust and oxidization and how it varies depending upon salt or freshwater, let me head you off: I already know. Also, my Japanese is rusty, so forgive me if I made any mistakes.
As a last bit, don't get too offended by anything in TLC. It wasn't supposed to be seriously offensive, I'm just poking fun at all of the SaberxGilgamesh stories that seem to be popping up out of nowhere in the FSN section. I just couldn't resist throwing some psychobabble into Waver's explanation. No offense was intended against anyone.
As always, read, review, enjoy.