Chapter 20:
Blame Your God (Part 1)
Their answer came in the form of a descending sword.
Naked steel fell from the heavens as Karasuba came for them, covering the distance that divided them in an instant with but a single leap. The nodachi followed after her, clearing her scabbard and swinging over her head before cleaving down at them. Her speed was so great that it already passed what most considered human, bordering the realm of the supernatural.
And yet among those she attacked, there was one that had the speed to match her and more.
Instead of soft flesh the edge of her sword only found only unrelenting steel waiting for it, sparks erupting as her blade clashed against another, neither giving way or retreating.
"I'll take that as a 'no' then?" Jeanne chirped merrily, blue eyes sparklingly with joy even as the edge of her opponent's blade stood less than a foot away from her throat, the only thing keeping it from claiming her life the sword she used to block its path. She held the longsword easily in her hands, the blade not shifting in the slightest even as Karasuba dug her feet into the ground and pushed, putting her full weight behind her sword. Yet she might as well been doing nothing at all for all the difference it made.
As if unaware of the attempt on her life the golden-haired girl pouted at the grey-haired girl. "Does this mean that we won't get to be friends, Kara-chan?"
The only answer she received was another attack.
Karasuba took a long step back, giving herself the room needed to manoeuvre her longer weapon, before leaping forward again, swinging her sword in three quick strikes, faster than what many would have believed possible. They were almost simultaneous, the following strike beginning almost as soon the first had ended, flowing into one another with such skill that it was almost beautiful to watch the young girl's deadly instrument.
Jeanne blocked them all.
It was as if she wasn't even trying, as if the rain of steel that came for her, each strike with more than enough force to bring down lesser Devils, did not even pose a threat. Without taking a single step forward or back, Jeanne stood her ground in the face of the onslaught, chipper smile blooming even larger.
The first strike she knocked away with only the smallest of motions, nothing but a tiny twist of her sword, shifting the blow that threatened to cleave her in two a little to the left so it missed her completely, crimson and yellow sparks erupting as their swords met falling in sparkling showers about them. She knocked the second strike aside just as easily, using the tip of her blade to redirect the blow away and to her side. The third strike she met straight on.
In the split second between strikes, the impossibly short instant between the end of the second swing of Karasuba's sword and the beginning of the third, Jeanne moved. With speed and reflexes that should have been beyond the reach of men, mundane or otherwise, Jeanne stepped forward, getting into Karasuba's space and blocking the third strike before it could gain any momentum, locking her blade with Karasuba's. With their faces so close together now Jeanne gave Karasuba a large grin, one that might have been mocking if it weren't for the admiration that burned in her blue eyes.
It was not enough to call her skilled. Jeanne's ability with the sword could not be explained by talent alone. If Karasuba wielded the sword with a skill that was prodigal then Jeanne wielded it with a skill that was divine. This was the blessing given to all that inherited the spirit of the Maiden of Orleans, Joan D'arc.
She was a sword-saint, those blessed with a skill that has transcended the mortal realm and reached the plane of the gods, whose ability with the sword could never be surpassed, only equalled. And to house that holy spirit, she was given a body to contain that strength. Thus she would ever be beyond the reach of those that called themselves swordsmen.
"Wow! You're really good, aren't you?" Blue eyes shining with excitement, Jeanne laughed merrily as she gave Karasuba a beaming smile filled with honest praise. "I mean really, really good."
Humourless grey eyes seemed to bore into her own from barely a handspan away as they locked blades but Jeanne didn't seem to notice as she continued her chipper chatter. "It's a real shame though. If you were fighting someone other than me you might have even had a chance of winnin-"
[Boost!]
The edge of Karasuba's nodachi dug into the blond's longsword, biting into its steel and cutting clear through to the heart of the blade before tearing completely through it. After forged steel, flesh and bone did little to slow it down, even that which held a divine soul.
The tip the nodachi bit into the side of Jeanne's neck, the flesh giving no resistance to the blade's keen edge as it effortlessly cut through her, ripping it's way down to her chest before exiting through her opposite hip.
The top half of Jeanne's blade reached the ground, its sharp tip finding purchase in the hard packed earth, burning itself so that it stood erect from the earth.
Jeanne looked down at her broken sword, brows furrowed in confusion, before she raised her sights to look at Karasuba, blue eyes filled with incomprehension. She tried to speak, opened her mouth to form the words but all that spilled past her lips was blood. In the end all she managed to squeeze out was a startled sound.
"-huh?"
But Karasuba wasn't looking at her any more, she was already walking past her, making her way to the last two living opponents. Jeanne tried to stop her, reaching a hand out as if to clasp her shoulder, but she felt her legs give way beneath her and she fell to the ground like a puppet deprived of its strings.
A heartbeat later Jeanne died.
Karasuba swiped her sword to one side, flicking the blood off the blade, before slowing to a halt no more than six good strides away from the last two members of the Khaos Brigade. She had a benevolent smile on her blood-spattered face as she watched the two men with half-lidded eyes. She held her nodachi down to one side, neither advancing nor retreating, just patiently waiting for them to attack, all but inviting them to.
The abrupt and brutal end to a fight that had been going overwhelmingly in their side's favour had been so unexpected that it caught the two men flat-footed. Neither of them could react as they stared and tried to come to grips with what had happened.
Out of the two, Heracles managed to to shake off his surprise first.
"...So," the giant of a man began, his voice rumbling from his chest as he spoke, sounding unusually solemn. He had an indecipherable expression upon his face as he watched Jeanne's body lie in a pool of her own blood. "That's it then, the little bird is dead. Ah man," The giant looked away, clearly uncomfortable, and he raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, "even for us that was one hell of a pathetic way to go."
Oddly enough, the man show no sign of anger over Karasuba's unprovoked attack, or even Jeanne's death. It didn't even look like he had any intentions of avenging her by taking up Karasuba's blatant offer to attack. If anything, he appeared more concerned over how Jeanne died rather than the fact she was actually dead, as if he was almost embarrassed for her sake.
A moment later Heracles shrugged, his enormous shoulders rising and falling like boulders, and he seemed to shake off his melancholy as he turned to give Karasuba a toothy grin. "Still, I have to hand it to you Dragon, you are much stronger than any of us expected if you could take down Jeanne. Props for that."
"Oh~," Karasuba drew the word out, her eyes cracking open to observe the giant, grey orbs fully on display. After a moment she must have found what she was looking for because she snorted, eyes crinkling shut again as her lips curled up in amusement. "My, my, aren't you the odd one." she crooned, her shoulders shaking slightly in a silent chuckle. "I don't think I've ever been complimented for killing someone's comrade before. I have to admit it is a refreshing change compared to all the screaming and cursing that I usually receive."
"I know right? Hahahaha!" The giant gave a booming laugh, nodding his head in agreement. "It never makes sense to me why they act so panic-stricken whenever one of their comrades dies. Even warriors these days always seem to be so surprised when one of their own gets struck down in a fight. It's as if they never saw it coming. I swear I can never understand those types." Heracles shrugged and crossed his arms, folding his thick limbs across his chest. "If they wanted to live so badly then why would they ever enter the battlefield? Don't they understand there is no going back, that once they step into the hell known as war they are already dead? Yet they always start bitching and whining whenever I start killing one of them. Tch!" Heracles spat to one side. "Annoying pests."
"Oh?" Karasuba arched a single eyebrow, intrigued, "And I take it you're different from them?"
"Of course we are. We're heroes! Hahahaha!" Though the giant laughed at his own declaration, something about the way he spoke told her he was being completely serious. "Heroes don't get to go home. We don't get to die peacefully in bed from old age, surrounded by our loved ones. No, to heroes, the fight will never end. No matter how many victories we achieve or how many monsters we slay, there will always be more. So we will fight, and fight, and fight until we die, cut down by the very monsters we are trying to slay. There is no other way for it to end for our kind. A hero's end will always be a tragic one, nothing but a dog's death on some god-forsaken battlefield. That is the cursed fate of anyone who bears a hero's burden."
"Because that is what true heroes are," Heracles gave Karasuba a grin that was almost feral, "the people who die so others don't have to suffer. We are the willing scarifies so that humanity may go on living for another night without fear of the monsters that lie waiting in the shadows. We in the Hero Faction all know that we are nothing but sacrifies, people meant to die for others, and that not a single one of us will get out of this alive. And still we fight and we will fight 'til the day we die. Which is why not one of us will complain if death comes to us. We choose this path willingly and we never regret our deaths, no matter how tragic they may be. That is the Oath that everyone in Hero Faction lives by. And for all her faults, Jeanne was a true hero."
He laughed again, a rumbling sound that came from deep within his chest. "Which is why I won't bear a grudge against you, Dragon. Jeanne knew the risks and stepped into this hell known as war willingly. Her death was no one's fault but her own for losing. So instead of cursing you, I'll praise you." He gave Karasuba a nod. "Take pride in your victory, little Dragon, for though she was a tiny thing our Jeanne was one hell of a fighter."
Karasuba gave a light laugh at the declaration, daintily raising a hand to her lips. "You know," she began, her eyes half-lidded as she smiled benevolently at the giant, "I think I might have ended up liking you."
"Ha! Would you look at that? I think that's the first time I've ever been praised by a Dragon!" Heracles threw his head back and laughed, his good cheer returning. "Maybe I was wrong, you might be more different than Vali than I first thought you were. Don't you think so, Georg?"
"...Georg?" Heracles's brow furrowed and his expression turned to confusion at the lack of a response. Turning to shoot a questioning glance at his robed companion, he began to repeat the question."I said 'Don't you think she's-' Oh for the love of!" Heracles raised one of his giant hands to palm his face, shaking his head in dismay once he caught sight of his companion. "He's doing it again."
"Fascinating." Georg breathed, speaking more to himself than anything as he locked his sights on Karasuba's left arm. "I've never seen anything like it."
With his well-groomed clothing, polite manners and the sharp eyes, the Asian teen normally gave an impression of sophisticated intelligence, which wouldn't have been too far off the mark. That impression, however, was currently ruined as Georg enthusiastically scrutinised Karasuba's left arm, his wide eyes almost twinkling behind his frames as he wore an expression of delight, like a child who had discovered a new toy.
"The Boosted Gear, one of the thirteen Longinus, has the power to double the user's capabilities and is reported to appear in the form of a red gauntlet on the wielder's left arm. All this is indisputable fact and yet, she has managed to call forth the Boosted Gear's power even though her arm is bare. How?" The spectacled Magician continued to mutter to himself, so lost in his thoughts that he didn't give even the slightest bit of attention to the demise of one of the very comrades he had introduced barely a minute earlier, nor to the conversation between Heracles and Karasuba.
Georg leaned forward slightly from the waist as he examined Karasuba's arm, as if getting that much closer might offer him some insight into the mystery. "Did she manage to find a way to use the Boosted Gear without summoning it? No, that's simply not possible. But then – ah, I see." Georg nodded thoughtfully, straightening and cupping his chin. "It must be a Sub-Species, that would explain things, including the irregularity of how the boost effect extended to include her sword in addition to her body. Still, even if it is a Sub-Species, the Boosted Gear must manifest itself somewhere on her body, but where is it? Her legs perhaps? No, there is no sign of bulging anywhere in the legs of her pants to support that hypothesis. Perhaps she's similar to Siegfried then?"
Heracles was still shaking his head at the teen's behaviour, two finger from a single hand massaging his temples as if to ward off a headache. "I asked Cao Cao for proper warriors to fight alongside, men of honour and valour, and what he does he send me? A woman that tries to make friends with everything, even the things that are trying to kill her, and an egghead that would sooner study monsters than kill them. Bah!"
Heracles sighed before he lowered his hand from his face and looked back to Karasuba, giving her an apologetic shrug. "Don't mind Georg here. He is a good lad, strong too, no doubt about that, but he does have a few screws loose. You know," He emphasised his point by thumping the side of his head, "up here." Heracles shrugged again, his shoulders rising and falling like small mountains. "So yeah, sorry about how he's acting. When he gets like this even I have trouble snapping him out of it."
Karasuba just waved a hand before her airily. "No problem." She was still wearing a smile, eyes crinkling, as if infinitely amused by the unexpected course the conversation had taken.
Only the blood spatter staining her cheeks warned of the danger hidden beneath her smile.
"Hahaha, that's good, that's good. Just because we're trying to kill each other doesn't mean we have to be rude." The giant loosed another of his rumbling laughs, crossing his arms before him. "You never know when an enemy will end up becoming an ally in the future. I cannot begin to tell you how many people in the Khaos Brigade were once enemies that were trying to kill each before they joined up, so it's good never to cause any unnecessary bad blood. Still."
All the good cheer seemed to drain away from Heracles as spoke that word, his once open face undergoing a complete transformation, turning hard and unforgiving. The change that overcame the friendly giant was as sudden as it was startling. Whatever remained of the amiable atmosphere was washed away by the blood-lust that poured out of him.
"Still." He repeated, his eyes gleaming with hidden power as he watched Karasuba. "There is no chance of that happening with you," Heracles began to crack his knuckles, "is there, Dragon?"
"No, there isn't." Karasuba admitted freely with a small shake of her head, ponytail swaying behind her, before she gave the giant a teasing smile. "You were already dead the moment I noticed you following me. It's a shame really, I might have considered letting you live if only you tried meeting me anywhere else. It's just your bad luck that you caught me so close to my house. Nothing you could have said or done would have stopped me killing you after that.
"Close to your home?" Heracles repeated, eyes narrowing as he contemplated her words. A moment later they widened and he glared at the grey-haired teen. "...I see, so that's it then. It's your hoard, isn't it? It's near here."
"Well, aren't you the perceptive one?" Karasuba smiled as she praised him, but the eyes that were watching him were too cold, making a lie of the compliment. "Looks like my decision to kill you was right after all, I really can't let you walk away if you figured out that much."
"I thought it was weird how quick you were to attack us. A Dragon's hoard, huh? If yours really is nearby that would explain everything. Vali was like that too, the little prick always did get antsy whenever anyone got near his." Heracles scowled to himself before spitting to the side. "We really messed up big time for missing that."
"Still." Heracles' scowl was slowly replaced with a smile, though his eyes still promised violence. He began to walk, not directly toward Karasuba but to his right instead, his path curving so he was steadily circling around her. He raised his hands and started cracking his knuckles again."I'm kind of happy we did. If everything had gone according to plan we would have parted ways peacefully, and what a shame that would have been if we didn't get the chance to fight it out." A savage, hungry grin made its way to his face as he cracked his knuckles again. "A Dragon stands before me. What kind of hero would I be if I didn't try to slay it?"
"Not a very good one," Karasuba admitted cheerfully, not at all put out by the promise of violence. Rather her smile grew slightly wider, showing just a hint of teeth, and she took a half-step back, pulling her sword behind her as she gripped it with both hands, ready to bring it back around in an overhead strike.
Heracles matched her grin with one equally vicious as he stopped his circling and hunkered down, bringing his body low to the ground in preparation for the fight. His stance was an unusual one, completely lacking in any form of defence. Instead of holding his fists before him, he had one hand set onto the ground to keep his balance as he leaned forward, the other on his knee, his form looking remarkably like a linesman stance.
The sun choose that moment to briefly peek out from behind the clouds, brightening the world about them for a brief instant before slipping back behind cover. Yet for that brief instant that the sun's rays fell on Heracles, it appeared that his entire form glimmered like gold.
Heracles was about to begin his charge, the giant digging his feet deeper into the ground and tensing his legs, when a voice interrupted his attack.
"Heracles, wait!" Georg commanded, only now finally snapping out of his trance to realise the situation about him. "You can't do this."
"Don't try to stop me, Georg." Heracles hadn't bothered to glance at the robed teen, his attention reserved completely for the opponent before him, not trusting the Dragon to stay her hand if he looked away. "She killed Jeanne, even Cao Cao won't object to me taking her down if it means avenging her."
"That's not what I mean," Georg sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes with exasperation at the other man's short-sightedness. "I'm not trying to stop you from killing her, just from destroying her body. If we want any hope of extracting the Boosted Gear from her corpse then we need to make sure her body remains mostly in one piece." Georg pushed his frames up his nose. "So make sure you don't blow her body up into too many pieces."
Heracles smirked at that. "No promises."
"Now, boya," Karasuba butted into the conversation with a playful tone, a sly grin on her lips "if you're that worried about what happens to my body then why don't you join in the fight. I promise I don't mind taking you both on at once."
"Not going to happen." Heracles hunkered down once again, wisps of golden light converging around his form as he prepared his attack. "You're mine to kill, Dragon. I won't allow anyone else to take your life but me."
"Now, now, there is no need to worry. I promise you, no matter what happens I won't be the one dying tonight." She turned to give the robed teen a benevolent smile. "So what do you say, boya, care to join in?"
"There does not appear to be any bulging in her back, so that rules out the theory that the Boosted Gear manifests itself there." Georg once again began muttering to himself, focusing on examining her body while completely dismissing her words. "So where is it then? Could it be internalized? But what are the odds of another one like that appearing?"
Karasuba blinked, then blinked again, her smile slipping from her face. There was moment of tense silence as Karasuba slowly unlidded her eyes. "Boya," she repeated, her cold grey eyes watching him, "I was talking to you."
Georg, either unaware that he was being spoken to or too engrossed in his examination to care, did not respond to her words other than to cup his chin as he continued to mutter quietly to himself.
Karasuba watched him unblinking for a few more seconds, her grey eyes boring into the teen, before she snorted and shook her head, eyes drifting shut as she regained her benevolent smile again. "...Boya," she began, her tone casual, as if talking about the weather, "...I think I'm going to kill you first."
For the fist time since she struck Jeanne down Karasuba moved, taking a single step towards Georg. And as if that was the signal for the battle to begin, Heracles attacked.
"I told you!" Heracles roared as the earth beneath his feet erupted, pulverized into dust by twin explosions. He flexed his powerful legs, pushing himself off the ground and working with the explosion to propel himself forward towards Karasuba. "Your fight is with me!"
It was like watching a small mountain move as he ripped through the air, catapulting from one side of the lot to the other, startling how fast he could move. In a feat that belied his size the man covered the distance separating him from Karasuba in less than a second, holding his arms wide open before him as if he intended to tackle her.
Karasuba didn't even glance at him as he charged her from her side, her focus completely reserved for the Asian teen who still failed to notice her approach even as she took a second step forward just as a shadow loomed over her.
"Got you!" Heracles was now almost immediately on top of her, not more than a couple of feet away. His arms began to shimmer with a golden hue as he started to bring them together. They moved to clamp around the grey-haired girl, encircling her body.
Karasuba spared only a single quick glance at the giant towering over her before she looked back to her prey, unconcerned even as the arms of shimmering gold surrounded her, inches away form making contact. Instead, she just mouthed a single word-
[Boost!]
-and those golden arms found themselves holding nothing but air as Karasuba blurred.
At the start of the fight, when she had attempted to strike down Jeanne, Karasuba had already been moving at the edge of what was considered the human limit, scratching the surface of the supernatural. But now, now after she had been empowered not once but twice by the Boosted Gear, Karasuba had shattered the wall of the supernatural and bathed in its power.
Even Heracles, a fighter whose senses had been enhanced by magic and sharpened by a decade of combat, could not follow her. She was nothing but a blur, a grey streak to his eyes as she easily avoided his arms, ducking beneath them before they could touch her.
Crouching down, Karasuba flexed her powerful legs and shot forward, ignoring the giant that soared over her head in favour of streaking forward, closing the remaining distance to her prey, who even now remained unaware of the danger he was in as he still continued muttering to himself, still engrossed in his own thoughts.
It was only the flash of steel that snapped Georg out of his thoughts and made him look up just in time to see the sword tip bearing down on him, but by then it was far too late to do anything.
The tip of the nodachi pierced Georg's head, the sharpened steel cleaving through the bone of his skull with ridiculous ease, and the sword was driven almost entirely into his skull, only two inches of steel separating the hilt of the sword from the forehead. The thrust had been spot on, piercing Georg almost right between his eyes, the edge of the blade severing the thin frames he was wearing, splitting them entirely in two.
They hung on his face for a moment, as if they were held in place by mere habit, before gravity took hold of the broken frames and they slipped off the bridge of his nose, tumbling down his face and falling to the ground.
Yet before the broken glasses could reach the ground, a pair of hands reached out and plucked them from the air.
At the same time Karasuba's eyes narrowed, her instincts warning her that something was very wrong with her last strike. She had felt her sword penetrate the Magician's head, sensed the resistance, slight as it was, as it broke through the skull, but after that she sensed nothing, her sword piercing through the rest of his head without even a hint of effort.
A split second was all that she needed to notice what was wrong and her eyes widened with the realization. Her sword, a nodachi with a blade almost a meter in length, was buried almost entirely in the Magician's skull so that its hilt all but rested on his forehead. And yet, that very same blade had somehow failed to pierce through the opposite side of his skull and the back of his head remained whole still, undamaged.
"I wish you hadn't done that." A voice drawled out blandly from right next to her, and Karasuba found herself staring into the dull brown eyes of Georg as he looked up at her from beneath the hilt of the blade. "They were my favourite pair too."
Genuine confusion filled Karasuba's expression, her eyes wide open as she found herself facing the reality of a dead man talking to her.
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a comfortable set of glasses?" Georg scolded, sounding more petulant than angry as he frowned, entirely unconcerned with the three feet of cold steel that currently skewered his brain. "Very. And now you've gone and ruined my favourite pair. It's not like I can just glue them back together, it just wouldn't be the same."
"How the hell are you still alive?" Karasuba asked with wonder, her confusion now replaced with fascination as she observed the dead man, but she had barely managed to get the words out when a movement from the edge of her vision caught her attention. Tearing her eyes away from the robed teen's, she focused her attention instead at his forehead, at the point that her sword pierced his skull.
Whatever it was that she saw there caused her instincts to roar at her to escape and she obeyed immediately. Pulling her blade free from his skull, Karasuba leaped away, feet barely touching the ground as she hopped backwards, moving as fast she could while still keeping an eye on the Magician, only stopping once she reached the other side of the abandoned lot where she skidded to a halt, crouching slightly to absorb the impact.
Only once she was sure she was safe, looking up once to make sure the Magician wasn't following her, his focus instead reserved entirely for the pieces of the broken frames he held in his hands, did Karasuba permit herself to glance down at her sword.
It was ruined, the steel blade of her nodachi almost entirely gone. There were only two measly inches jutting out from the hilt of her sword before the blade ended, cut off so smoothly that it ended in a straight line, the blade now all but worthless in a fight.
Karasuba's eyes cracked open, her grey pupils carefully looking over what remained of her weapon. "You ruined my sword," she finally stated, lips bending slightly into a thin frown.
"And you ruined my glasses," Georg retorted, glancing up from his glasses to give her a pointed look. A tiny stream of blood, pencil-thin, flowed out of the gaping wound on his forehead, nowhere near the amount that would have been expected from the size of the wound he had suffered. It spilled down his face as he spoke, slowly running over one side of his nose and reaching his chin before dripping off. With a sigh Georg pulled a handkerchief from the pockets of his robe and began to wipe his face clean. "I say that makes us more than even."
She snorted, amused, her eyes crinkling shut once again as a lazy smile reappeared on her lips. Straightening up to her feet, Karasuba tossed the now useless weapon away to one side and gave the opponent she had underestimated a once over.
"So, Boya." She began, eyeing the supposedly lethal injury she delivered to the boy. "What the hell are you?"
"Human," Georg responded blandly, his attention once again returning to his glasses. "Like you."
The wound she had given him was still there, sitting on his forehead like the vertical slit of a third eye. She could see the bone white edges of his skull lining the wound from where her blade had broken through, as well as the thin line of red flesh outlining that, but beyond everything was different than she had expected it to be. Instead of the blood, gore and grey matter, all she found within his skull was a void.
It wasn't darkness, not a lack of light, but pure nothingness. It was an emptiness, a lack of something so profound that the like of it should have only existed in the vacuum of space. And yet, despite the inherent formlessness of the void she could somehow perceive its boundaries, appearing to her eyes as a colourless mist where void met the open air.
"You are not the only one with a Sub-Species," Georg answered offhandedly, his focus entirely on his broken glasses. After a few more attempts at trying to piece the broken halves together he gave up and abandoned it as a lost cause. Sighing in disappointment as he slipped the broken pieces into his chest pocket, Georg looked back up at Karasuba and continued with his explanation. "Nor with a Longinus, for that matter."
"Ah, so that's it. You're the Dimension Lost's new wielder. I thought that void looked familiar." Eyes now fully open, Karasuba examined the no longer spectacled boy with interest. "That's actually a part of the Dimensional Gap you have spilling out of your head, isn't it, Boya?"
"While that's not entirely accurate, I suppose that's as good an explanation as any." Georg gave an uncaring shrug of his shoulders. "And not to sound rude, but are you sure you should be paying attention to me?" He pointed at something behind her. "Because you are about to die."
"What-"
Skin shining as if it were adored with armour made from the purest gold, Heracles appeared behind Karasuba in a blur of motion with a speed that belied his size, fist clenched and cocked back, ready to deliver a fatal blow. Eyes widening with surprise, Karasuba tried to turn around but had no time to react before a golden fist slammed into the side of her face.
A wall of air slammed into me the instant I stepped past the border of the Bounded Field. It hit me with all the force of a speeding truck, the shock-wave of air almost solid due to the speed it travelled. The sheer unexpectedness of it was almost enough to push me back out of the Bounded Field, but I managed to brace myself just in time to stop that from happening.
The shock-wave was accompanied by a loud explosion that sent my ears ringing, and billowing clouds of dust filled the air of the empty stretch of land that the Bounded Field covered, blocking my vision of those who stood within it. Luckily a steady breeze was blowing and already the cloud was beginning to clear, so it wasn't long before it was disbursed entirely.
Just when I began to make out the forms of two figures, nothing more than shapeless silhouettes to me, a scream ripped through the air.
"AHHHHH!" It wasn't a roar or a bellow of rage, despite the deep rumbling voice that told me the owner was male, but a high-pitched scream of agony, the panicked sound a rabbit would make when a fox clamped its jaws on its throat.
And mixed in with the screams of torment was the light chiming of laughter, open and carefree, contrasting with the wails of anguish.
Though I had only heard her speak once before, in a dreamscape that contained a crimson Dragon, I recognized her voice immediately. And a moment later my suspicion was confirmed when the smoke cleared completely, revealing her to my eyes.
"Hahaha, what's the matter Heracles?" Karasuba's grey eyes were hidden once again, the wide smile she was sporting caused her eyes to crinkle shut. That smile, it was a benevolent thing, something that wouldn't have looked out of place on a mother's face, yet somehow Karasuba was still able to make the smile feel natural on her lips even as she tortured the man at her feet. "Where did all that bravado of yours go? Weren't you just about to strike me down? Come now, try and kill me again. Make me laugh."
"AHHH! Let go! Let go of me, damn it!" The other figure managed to roar out through the pain, sounding desperate, angry and pleading all at once. "You're crushing my skull!"
Lines of blood dripped down one side of Karasuba's face, dyeing one half of her face crimson. It spilled out from a rough gash near her hairline. Yet despite her injury, Karasuba seemed to pay it no mind. She was smiling, eyes crinkling into thin slits as she watched the person she held firmly in her grip.
The other figure, a giant of a man, would have towered over Karasuba if he hadn't been kneeling on the ground before her, having been brought down to his knees and held there by the single hand latched firmly onto his skull. Bellowing in agony, he tried to pull his head free from Karasuba's grip, but to no avail. Even as he wailed at her, smashing his ham-sized fists into the arm of the hand that held him, grasping onto her fingers and trying to pry them off his head, he couldn't manage to pull himself free. Karasuba's hold on him was too strong.
Without command or thought, the blueprint of Kanshou and Bakuya flashed through my mind and I found my body instantly responding, my legs widening into a deeper stance while my hands were held open by my sides, ready to grip the blades as I prepared to project them and charge in. But I found myself pulling short, freezing in my tracks as I recognized the giant.
Before this day I had never seen the man, not in person at least, but I had no trouble putting a name to his face. I had seen his photographs so many times before in the reports that Serafall made me read that I couldn't have mistaken him for anyone else. This was Heracles, a terrorist who was wanted for multiple counts of murder and was one of the few known members of the covert group known as the Khaos Brigade, and it was that knowledge more than anything that stilled my blades and stopped me from jumping in.
Even the Satans knew very little about the Khaos Brigade. Despite their best efforts, what information they had managed to gather was sparse and inconclusive at best. We knew who led them. Their leader was a figure so renowned that their presence in the group was impossible to hide, and we knew they were made up of hundreds of self-governed factions, but other than that very little was known about them. The Brigade had managed to convince hundreds of different groups, each with their own sets of ideologies and agendas, to set aside their differences and unite under a single banner, and we couldn't even figure out how or why. Their goal and purpose were a complete mystery to us.
And with the exception of only a small handful, we knew almost nothing of the members that made up the Brigade. Heracles, though, was an exception. He was one of the Khaos Brigade's enforcers, and thus was far more conspicuous in his actions than the rest of the group, so we had been able to gather more information on him and the people he worked with than almost anyone else in the organization. And as I stood there watching him scream in agony under Karasuba's ministrations, trying to think if I should jump in and help - and if so, then who - my mind supplied me with all the data I had on him.
Extremely high physical capabilities, almost unnaturally so for a human, Heracles was a talented close-range fighter and was reported to have taken down Middle-Class Devils with his bare hands alone. He was also the wielder of the Sacred Gear known as the Variant Detonation. It granted the ability to generate explosions on anything its wielder touched and, unlike most Sacred Gears, it did not have a physical form. Instead whenever it was about to activate, it covered its user in a golden aura.
Just like Heracles's body was doing right now actually...oh shi-
Boom!
For the second time since I had set foot into the Bounded Field I got to experience how it felt to have an explosion denoting no more than a couple dozen yards away.
The golden aura that covered Heracles expanded, pushing outwards in a sphere of golden light that seemed to grow brighter with every inch it expanded. And just when the light was about to become too bright for me to watch, it exploded.
It was a wave of pure force, crashing over me like an ocean wave. I felt it slamming into my front half, hitting me with enough force to rip a tree from the ground, roots and all. Oddly enough, there wasn't any heat to the blast. I didn't feel any flames trying to scorching my skin or fire burning my hair and clothes. Instead it felt as if the explosion was made up of nothing but pure force, a blast made from a violent release of kinetic energy.
But whatever the explosion lacked in heat it more than made up with sheer brute power and, in the split second before it reached me, I watched how the ground fractured as the ripple of distorted air leading the explosion passed over it, shattering the surface of the earth like glass.
Unlike when I had been caught unaware when I first stepped into the Bounded Field, this time I was ready for the blast and weathered it with ease. With my feet firmly planted on the ground the force failed to shift me back an inch even as it rammed into me head-on, and a moment later I found myself effortlessly shrugging off the attack without a scratch or bruise to show for it.
But I was a Devil, a Queen at that. The magic in my veins had hardened my body beyond what was possible for mundane flesh, strengthened my skin and bones to the point that they could shrug off bullets and sword strikes without breaking.
Karasuba on the other hand was a very much a human and, Boosted Gear or not, she simply lacked anything that could have protected her from such an explosion. Unless she had managed to get away in time I didn't-
There was another explosion which was immediately followed by another wave of force slamming into me barely a heartbeat after the first one ended, derailing my thoughts. Though I hadn't been expecting it I still managed to weather through the shock-wave of the explosion with little trouble, though I did find that this one was noticeably more powerful than the last. And then it had barely even ended before it was followed by another explosion, then another and another, each one stronger than the last as if they somehow managed to feed off one another.
Just when I thought a sixth blast was about to follow, a loud bellow of agony rang out, drowning out even the noise of the explosions and signalling the end to the chain of attacks. And over Heracles's wails of agony, I could hear Karasuba chiding him, amusement colouring her voice.
"Now, now, none of that." Karasuba lightly admonished him as she tightened her grip on Heracles's head, somehow still managing to retain her hold on him despite his attacks. Heracles yelled out even louder as Karasuba added even more pressure to his skull, all but crushing it her hand.
Somehow the grey-haired girl managed to make it through the explosions without any obvious signs of injury. Though the ground around her feet had shattered, fracturing to fragments the size of coins under the onslaught of the attack, Karasuba barely look frazzled. In fact, other than her slightly tattered clothing and a light sheen of brown dust that covered her, there were no signs that she had suffered through an explosion.
It was then that my senses picked it up.
"...How?" I found myself asking as I stared in disbelief at the energy that had suddenly appeared around her, too low for anyone but me to detect. It was invisible to the eye but I could all but see it clearly with Devil senses, how an energy was cloaking her, covering every inch of skin.
No, that wasn't right. As I thought back I realised it hadn't just 'appeared' but that it was there all along. Since I had stepped into the Bounded Field it had been there, coating and protecting her from the very beginning. The familiar sensation had been pricking on the edge of my mind the entire time, teasing my senses and begging to be noticed but I had been so distracted by all that had been happening that I failed to pay attention to it.
Now though, now that I knew where to look it was startling that I ever failed to realise it was there. The energy cloaked Karasuba's entire form, surrounding her like a second skin, cocooning and protecting her from the blunt of the explosion like armour. And what stood out the most to me was how the energy seemed to taste like life to my senses, shimmering like green leaves bathing in sunlight.
And oddly enough, it was a power that I recognised.
How could I not when I had just seen it for the first time today, not even a few hours earlier. This was weaker than the version I had seen him use, far more diluted, a gust of wind compared the typhoon of energy that Sairaorg had summoned, but it was undeniably the same thing.
"Touki," I mouthed the word, still not able to believe what I was sensing.
It was not a power you could be given, it was something that could only be earned. Only through hard backbreaking work, training to the point of madness, continuous effort on a scale beyond what most people could imagine, let alone achieve, could someone gain it.
And now, standing before me, a young girl just barely in her sixteenth year of life had attained it. An inferior version or not, it was an achievement that should not have been possible for someone so young and yet, there it was, blazing in my senses.
I was snapped out of my thoughts as the giant screamed again.
"Let go, damn you!" Heracles screamed, channelling his pain to fuel his rage. "You're crushing my skull you fucking bitch-"
[Boost!]
*CRUNCH*
Blood and gore splattered into the air as Karasuba tightened her grip and Heracles's skull burst like a grape. Her fingers dug into his head and buried themselves in his brain, caving his skull as if it were made of soft clay instead of bone.
"Now, now, there is no need to resort to name calling." Karasuba chided the dead man lightly as he hung limply from her grip. She gave the lifeless body in her hand a pleasant smile. "Why, if you wanted me to let you go, all you had to was ask. See?"
Karasuba proceeded to do just that and released her hold on him. Heracles's body stood straight up for a brief moment as if it didn't realise it was free, before it began to slowly tilt to one side and slump over, hitting the ground with a sickening splat.
"Now, then." Karasuba turned away from the corpse, having lost all interest it. "It looks like it's only you and me left."
For a brief moment I actually thought she had been talking to me, only to notice she was facing away from me. Following her line of sight, I discovered that there was someone else in the Bounded Field with us.
"So it would seem."
From the other side of the lot, a young man, perhaps not quite out of his teenage years yet, stepped forward. He was dressed up in dark-coloured robes and had a face with distinctly Asian features, topped with a mop of black hair. Had he been wearing a Kuoh academy uniform I had no doubt that most people would have easily mistaken him for an ordinary high schooler. And yet anyone who had even a drop of ability to sense magic would have known how abnormal he was.
Even if I ignored the gaping hole he had in the middle of his head, something that would have earned him more than a few passing glances, I would have immediately been able to tell that there was something extremely wrong with the boy. To my eyes he appeared completely normal, nothing but an ordinary human male, but to my magical senses the boy appeared to be a void in space.
He was hollow, as in physically hollow, nothing but human skin draped over a void. I could sense nothing from inside of him, not organs, not his heart, not his brain, not his lungs, not even air or magic or even space. There was literally nothing there. It was as if something had scooped everything out from inside of him and forgotten to replace it with anything else, leaving behind a hollowed out human with an emptiness inside of him. An emptiness so profound that it felt like it was where reality ended, a void where nothing existed, not even space.
And yet, he somehow managed to have a heartbeat despite not having a heart. I could just barely hear it on the edge of my hearing if I reinforced my ears, far quieter that it should have been, but it was definitely there. And I could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed, though I knew he had no lungs to breath with.
So no, no matter what my eyes told me, this boy was far from ordinary.
And as if to match the void within him, the boy's face was equally empty of expression, lacking even a hint of emotion as he calmly eyed the body of the dead man by Karasuba's feet before glancing to the corpse of a blonde girl not too far away – what the hell had happened in the time it took me to get here?
A moment later the boy shrugged, "A pity." he glanced up at Karasuba. "Heracles and Jeanne both numbered among our most reliable fighters. They may not have been the strongest or even the smartest among those who joined the Hero Faction, but they were competent and loyal to our cause. Replacing them will not be easy." Despite his words his voice was flat, tone unconcerned, almost as if he was stating facts rather mourning the loss of his comrades.
"Still, I suppose this outcome is only to be excepted." He raised a hand to his nose, as if he was about to push up a pair of glasses, only to pull up short when he realised there was nothing there. A frown appeared on his face for an instant, the most emotion I had seen out of him so far, before it was gone as swiftly as it had appeared and he gave an unconcerned shrug. "I asked them to take down a Longinus wielder. It was my error in judgement to have anticipated a different result than this one. Though in my defence, none of us expected you to have mastered the Boosted Gear." He shrugged again. "Ah well, I suppose that there is a lesson to be learned here: never presume anything about an enemy. I will be sure to take the lesson to heart. Nevertheless, I have wasted enough time and resources on you. It is time to end this."
"Ho~," Though Karasuba's face was angled mostly away from me, I could almost hear the amused smirk in her voice. "You make it sound as if you have a chance of winning. What makes you think you have any better chance of succeeding than they did?"
She emphasised her point by kicking the corpse by her feet.
"For one, I have a Longinus, which should put us on more than even footing." The boy raised a hand into the air and balled it into a fist, two knuckles slightly extended as if he was about to rap on a door. "Secondly, like you, I too have mastered my Scared Gear."
Then he twisted his hand around and reached over his shoulder before he knocked twice on the air behind him.
Reality rippled.
Starting from where he rapped his knuckles, two ripples spread vertically across the air like the waves on a curtain. It was like watching a stone tossed in still lake as reality distorted. And that was only what I was seeing with my eyes; what I could sense through magic was even more unbelievable.
He had summoned a void with the first ripple. It was thin, barely thick enough for me to even sense, but it was wide, and it was crafted from an emptiness that was every bit an equal to what the boy held inside himself. Then with the second ripple he linked the void to some place or something else, and wherever it was it must have held an enormous amount of magic because so much Mana flowed through that link that it flooded the entire void he had summoned almost immediately.
After the second ripple had passed, lines of magic appeared to take its place in the air. They started out as mere dots, pinpoints of different coloured lights hanging in the air, before they began to grow, stretching into lines and curving back into themselves.
In less than three seconds since they had appeared, the pinpoints of light transformed themselves into magical circles, hundreds of them, each one crafted with such intricate designs and complexity that was beyond anything I was able to comprehend. Each and every single last one of them of a different design, spanning from a dozen and more different schools of magic. They filled the air with their numbers, painting the sky with a kaleidoscope of colours as they hung behind the boy.
"And finally, just like you learned to wield a sword and your Touki, I too have acquired powers beyond what was granted to me by my Sacred Gear." The boy lowered his hand, his frame backlit by the wall of dimly glowing magical circles. "Hyoudou Karasuba, while this meeting has not gone as I had expected it to, I cannot deny it has been interesting. But I fear our acquaintance has come to an end."
The runes that lined the inner border of the magic circle began to spin, building up speed as they began to activate. The circles flared up with light as they gathered Mana into themselves, drawing it in not from the air as they should have but from beyond. Reaching out into whatever realm that boy had linked them to, the magical circles drew in a massive amount of Mana to fuel their attack. And what should have been a long time consuming process was over in a matter of seconds, and now each of the myriad circles held enough energy to bring down a small building.
The hundreds of circles spun in the air behind the boy, brimming with so much power that they burned in the air like fire. And as the boy was backlit by their light, I was momentary reminded of Gilgamesh and his Gates of Babylon.
The boy gave Karasuba a polite nod. "I'll be taking your head now."
If Karasuba was in any way daunted by the overwhelming fire power that was levelled against her, she didn't show it. Her mockery of a benevolent smile was gone, nowhere to be seen, replaced by something that was less a grin and more of a bearing of teeth, and I could almost taste the excitement radiating from her as she watched the Magician with eyes wide open. Swiftly she readied her nodachi, a weapon that I would have sworn that she hadn't been holding a minute earlier, raising the sword over her head in preparation for a strike.
[Boost!][Boost!][Boost!]
If I had any doubts remaining that Karasuba knew how to use the Boosted Gear then they were all gone. Just like she had when she crushed Heracles's skull, I felt her power double, only to double again and again. Everything about her increased eight-fold in the span of a single second. Her strength, her life-force, even her minuscule magic rose up until it had reached a respectable amount by human levels, but more worrying was her Touki. It too had grown stronger, becoming far denser than it had been before, adding to her already enhanced power.
The Boosted Gear had the power to double anything, and I was finally beginning to completely understand how terrifying a power it was.
On one side a storm of magic had assembled, the shades of their light staining the sky in a kaleidoscope of colours, each ring holding enough power to bring down an ordinary man a hundred times over. While on the other side the might of a Dragon gathered, with the strength to strike down Gods and bring ruin to the greatest of cities.
These two titanic forces were about to clash, right in the heart of a residential district in Kuoh city, with only a hastily built Bounded Field separating their attacks from the rest of city. And I knew it wouldn't be enough to stop the blast. It didn't matter who would win, when these two struck, a lot of people were going to die.
There was a lull of silence as these two powers prepared themselves before they crashed. It was like the calm before the storm, an omen of ruin that was to come, almost as if they were allowing the city a final moment of peace before devastation claimed it.
All too quickly it was over.
They struck, attacking almost simultaneously as if under the command of some unseen signal. The circles of magic flared, burning even brighter in the air as they prepared to discharge their gathered power. While opposing them, Karasuba began to bring her sword down in a strike, as if somehow a sword of plain steel could cut down both the mage and his magic despite the distance separating them.
"Enough." I commanded.
And their hearts stopped.
The air freezes, it literally freezes as all the Mana in the air froze over. Deep in their chests both Karasuba's and the Magician's hearts fell silent as they both stopped beating, while even their very lungs had halted in mid-breath.
That was no surprise. As it stood, the only one allowed to breath here was me.
In the air up above and behind the Magician, the rings of magic appeared to bulge as they tried to hold back the tide of their power, the magic circles sputtering in their rotation as they aborted their attack in the last possible moment. Karasuba reacted much the same way, her limbs almost buckling under the strain of pulling her attack short, stopping her sword's descent almost as soon as it had begun.
Both of them, Magician and swordswoman alike, froze in place and stood like stone statues, so still that it was only the cold sweat that had broken out on their faces and slight trembling of their limbs that told me they were alive.
I didn't need to read their minds to know what was happening to them, I already knew too well. Even now, over two years since that day, I still remembered the feeling clearly. How the air seemed to freeze over, a chill like thorns hooking into your flesh as it gripped you, holding you in place, body turning numb with fear, and how you had to clench your teeth just to stop yourself from trembling.
And above all, the absolute certainty that you were about to die.
And they were right, if either of them had moved a single step, I would have killed them.
"Seeing as you have both stopped moving, I don't think I need to explain what will happen if either of you try anything. But let me make it clear anyway." I walked forward and placed myself off to one side from the two, positioning myself in both their line of sight while making sure I had them both in mine. "If you move, you'll die."
Bathed in the blood of thousands, born from the corpse of a great beast, its cursed edge could cut short even the fates of men, so even those burdened with great destinies could not escape the bite of its barbed blade. It began its legend in hands of the trainer of heroes and ended its journey in the hands of her greatest student, a man so ferocious that he stuck a man down long after his heart had stopped beating in his chest and the river had turned red from his blood.
Now the cursed spear of the Irish hero, the hound of Culan, sat in my hands, blazing with a demonic light as it stood ready to deliverer the fatal blow to any who dared oppose it.
Wielded by a Lancer in blue, this cursed spear had once killed me, its wicked tip tearing through my chest, effortlessly slicing past muscles and ribs before piercing my heart. I should have died that night, bleeding on the cold floor of the school corridor, and I almost had. It was only thanks to the kindness of a girl that I had barely even spoken to that I was saved.
It should have felt odd, holding a weapon that had taken my life not too long ago, the memory of its bite still vivid in my memory, the coldness of its steel in my flesh. Yet for all of the spear's bloody history I could not help but feel reassured as I felt the solid weight of Gàe Bolg's shaft in my grip. If a fight were about to break out then I needed to take these two down, fast, before they dragged anyone else into their encounter. And I could think of no better weapon for the task than this one.
Glancing between the two to make sure I had their attention, I ordered, "This ends now, both of you will cease your attacks and withdraw. If either of you try to continue this fight, I will kill you."
They both stared at me, neither of them reacting. Karasuba, armoured with the life energy of her boosted Touki, with her sword still held above her head poised for a strike, while hanging in the air behind the Magician the magic circles continued to spin lazily, still charged with power and ready to strike at a moment's notice. Either one of them could attack at any given moment.
For a long, heart-stopping moment I thought that they were going to ignore my warning and fight anyway, forcing me to kill them to protect the surrounding civilians. I had already begun to pull the spear back slightly, ready to thrust it at whoever moved first, while in my mind I held the blueprints of a dozen other swords ready to fire at the second, when one of them finally acted.
It was the Magician.
Like the gears of a giant clock, the runes spinning within the borders of the circles began to slow their rotation, steadily grinding to halt while the magic they had gathered dispersed into the air and flooded the area with raw Mana. The blazing lines of magic that formed the body of the circles began to dim before fading entirely as the circles were extinguished.
"I...I remember this feeling. This is fear, isn't it?" The boy was literally shivering after his close encounter with death, his face drenched with sweat. He stared down at his open hands as they continued to tremble, and there was so much raw emotion on his face at that moment than I couldn't tell what he was feeling.
"To think, it wasn't just a boast. You really are an immortal-killer." He turned to look up at me, and there was something approaching wonder in his eyes. "Aren't you, Emiya Shirou?"
Seeing that it looked like he was willing to back off I lowered the tip of my spear, pointing it to the ground, but still held it ready by my side in case he tried something. "You make it should like you're an immortal." I replied with a slight frown.
"I am. Or at least I was before you came along." He answered, and as he spoke I could actually see the emotions begin to drain from his face. It had barely been a few seconds since I lowered Gàe Bolg and already he had recovered from his near brush with death, his trembling disappearing entirely and his expression retuning to the cool look he wore before. "Ah, forgive me. I'm rambling. I've even forgotten to introduce myself, how rude of me."
The Magician placed his hand on his chest and bent from the waist in a bow. "My name is Georg, a member of the Hero Faction of the Khaos Brigade, and my lord Cao Cao's humble servant."
Slightly taken aback by the declaration – he had just told me more information about the Khaos Brigade in once sentence than the Satans had been able to uncover over the past year - it took me a moment to gather my wits and reply.
"Emiya Shirou," I nodded, "Serafall leviathan's Queen, though you already knew that. I have to admit I'm rather surprised, I didn't expect anyone from the Khaos Brigade to ever bother introducing themselves. I thought you were supposed to be a secretive lot."
"Normally that would be the case," he rose up from his bow and flashed me a polite smile, "but things have changed. We have no use for anonymity any longer. The time for hiding is almost done, and soon all the world shall know about the Khaos Brigade. And, that being the case, I see no harm in telling you our name."
"I see," I answered, doing my best to hide the alarm I was feeling. I made a mental note to report this back to Serafall as soon as possible. If the Khaos Brigade were ready to strike then it meant that war might be even closer than anyone of us had expected.
"Leaving that aside, I'll ask you again Georg." I shifted Gàe Bolg in my grip as a warning. "Will you retreat? I'll give you my word if you withdraw now that I will let you leave unhindered."
"Yes, I believe I must." He sighed, running a hand through his hair as he glanced around. "This mission has been a complete failure. Not only has the Boosted Gear wielder proven to be far more hostile to our cause than we anticipated, but also far more powerful. Not to mention we did not foresee you being here, Emiya." He gave me a measuring look. "Our latest intelligence had you pegged down in the Underworld with the Gathering, and without the Heiresses to guard we had believed you would have no reason to appear here. It seems we were wrong."
Georg shook his head. "So yes, I will leave. We have already wasted more resources on this venture than predicted, and I cannot justify risking any more now that you've arrived. Faced with such odds, I'd rather cut my losses and retreat, but I must insist on taking the bodies of my comrades with me." He waved a hand over the two corpses scattered across the field.
"Then fine," I waved him on with my spear, "take the bodies and leave."
"As you wish," giving me another brief bow, "but before I depart would you permit me to ask you a single question?"
I considered denying his request. Right now I wanted nothing more than for him to be gone before something else went wrong, but after thinking on it I decided against it. We had almost no information on the Khaos Brigade and he had already proven more than willing to spill some of their secrets; if keeping him talking meant he would spill some more, then answering a question would be a cheap price to pay.
"Thank you," he said once he saw me nod. "My question is this: your power, the one you used to strike down the Phenex and make Lucifer himself bleed, was it something you already possessed before you were remade into a Devil or did you had acquire it after your transformation?"
"Before," I answered, seeing no harm in answering the question. "My powers were something I developed as a human. My reincarnation into a Devil did nothing but enhance what I had always been able to do, nothing more."
"I see, so it was a power born from man. If only we had found you first," Georg sighed, though there was a smile on his lips. "Still, it is heartening to know that humans can reach such heights. We may not have acquired the Boosted Gear, but the knowledge that humanity can bring down gods with their own power is reward enough."
"I am grateful to you for answering my question," Georg bowed again. "In thanks, let me provide you with some information in turn." Whatever I had expected Georg to tell me, it wasn't what he ended up saying. "Your sister is looking forward to finally meeting you."
"Ilya?" For one heart-stopping moment I thought he had been talking about Ilya, before reason took hold and I realised that there was no way he could have meant her.
"No, not her," Georg shook his head, confirming my thoughts, "or at least I do not believe she has ever referred to herself by that name before. All I know is that your sister has been eager to meet with you, and I believe she plans to seek you out soon enough. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be taking my leave."
Before I could get another word in the young Magician calmly lifted his foot off the ground, only to bring it back down again, stomping on the dirt.
It was as if the earth had turned to water as a ripple ran through the ground, no, through reality itself when his foot hit the earth. The wave travelled across the ground, spreading away from him in a circle as if he were a stone tossed in a lake, leaving a strange mist-like haze hovering over the ground in its wake.
Seeing the ripple approaching me I leapt back, lifting Gàe Bolg in case this was some kind of attack, but I relaxed a moment later when the wave stopped well away from me. It was only when I saw the fate of the corpses that had been caught in the range of the ripple that I understood what he was doing.
They were sinking, the bodies of Heracles and the other girl were submerging into the ground as if had turned to quicksand, rapidly disappearing beneath the surface of the earth until they couldn't be seen. When I looked back at the Magician I realised that he too had been included in the spell's effect.
"Goodbye Emiya Shirou," Georg gave me a polite smile as he sank into the ground, which had already reached up to his shoulder and was on the brink of swallowing him whole, "it has been a pleasure meeting you."
Then he was gone, his head dipping beneath the surface of the earth, and I could immediately feel whatever spell he had used disappearing along with him as the ground turned solid once again. For the next few seconds I scanned the surrounding area, straining my senses both magical and mundane as I tried to make sure that he was really gone, only allowing myself to relax a little once I couldn't sense even a hint of his presence.
While I had been tempted to stop Georg, the knowledge that he had on the Khaos Brigade would have been invaluable, I knew it was better to let him go than to try. Not only was it unlikely that I could have captured him alive, but even if it were possible I doubted that she would have been content to sit back for much longer.
I had been trying my best to ignore her, focusing all of my attention on Georg in an effort to push away any thoughts about her from my mind, but now that Georg was gone I had nothing else to distract myself. So with a heavy heart, along with the knowledge that I had no real choice in the matter, I forced myself to turn around and looked at her.
Karasuba was looking at me like Christmas had come early.
"Emiya," she breathed ,and it was such a happy sound. Had it been anyone else speaking, I would have easily mistaken her tone for that of a women in love. As it was it took everything I had in me not to stab her in the face with Gàe Bolg.
It was funny, really. I had just seen her crush a man's skull with her bare hands, her face was still spattered with his blood, and it failed to faze me, I hadn't even batted an eye. But when she called my name like that, with a voice filled with so much longing and hunger, I wanted nothing more than to put as much space between us as I could and run for the hills.
I wonder if that said more about me than about Karasuba.
Though unlike my first encounter with her, I refused to allow her to affect me. I had been caught unaware back then, the encounter a completely unexpected one. This time, however, I came knowing what to expect. So I steeled myself, refusing to allow her to affect me or even permit a hint of the discomfort I was feeling to appear on my face.
They did say that animals could smell fear after all.
"Karasuba," I answered back, secretly proud of how calm I sounded.
"Emiya," she repeated again, this time with far more glee. A mad grin stretched across her lips while she stared at me with wide open eyes, radiating an unholy joy
It was the voice, I decided, that creeped me out the most. The raw yearning in it was something I could not handle. I had heard Serafall speak to me in the same tone of voice a couple of times before but I had a feeling that she had a different reason for doing so. Plus, at least Serafall hadn't been covered in the remains of her victims when she spoke to me like that.
It made me so uncomfortable that I felt almost relieved when Karasuba levelled her sword at me.
A fight was something I could handle, blood and mayhem something I was trained to face. It was something that I understood. The sheer delight that radiated off of her, mixed in with a deep-seated desperation, however, was something I did not, and it honestly confused me to a point that having her try and kill me was a relief in comparison.
Again, I wasn't sure if that said more about me or her.
Then I remembered where we were, and any relief that I was feeling turned to dread as I thought of all the people that risked getting caught in our fight.
"Karasuba, stop." I commanded, but she didn't hear me or wasn't willing listen. Instead of stopping I sensed the Touki flare back to life around her, just as strong as it was when she was about to face Georg, as she raised the sword over her head, ready to strike. And I swore she seemed to shiver with anticipation as she eyed me with blood-lust.
"Karasuba!" I yelled, bringing Gàe Bolg to bear and pouring my Prana into, causing its blade to blaze to life and flood the air with its power. "Stop now!"
But it was no good. Even the threat of death that the spear emitted did nothing to deter her, rather, it actually seemed to spur her on as I sensed her excitement begin to build.
It was at that moment, with the startling clarity of insight, that I finally began to comprehend what it was about Karasuba that bothered me so.
Obsession.
It radiated off her in endless waves, so thick in the air that I could almost taste it. A need so powerful it was almost a compulsion, a desperate desire for something, though what I didn't know, that it drove her to brink of madness. She wanted it so very, very badly, from the very depth of her soul, and was willing to do anything to get it.
And she believed I was the one that could give it to her.
It explained why she was willing to let Georg go. Why despite all her blood-lust and battle hunger, she had completely ignored the existence of a powerful opponent that she had been so eager to fight not a minute earlier in favour of focusing exclusively on me. And her need was so strong, her desire so great that she was willing to toss away everything, even her own life, just for the chance of finding it.
Even now, with my blade pointed at her throat, she was willing to cut herself on it to get to me, throw herself on my spear if it meant she could grasp it in her hands. And somehow I knew that whatever it was she wanted, it was not something that could be found on the edge of a blade. As blood-soaked as she was, if what she wanted could have been on the field of battle, then she would have surely found it by now.
I remembered the first time we met, after I had entered the realm of her soul and seen a crimson Dragon roar in defiance to the heavens. I remembered how I fled the classroom that day, how I was filled with the absolute certainty that if I didn't leave her sight that instant she would have jumped right through the window to get to me, break through the glass and charge at me blade swinging in a room filled with Devils. And looking at her now, as she radiated an unholy joy at the prospect of facing me, I was sure that decision was the right one.
I think it was that desperation that had scared me.
The reason why she was so reckless, why she had been willing to attack not just two Devil Heirs but even me as well, an opponent that she had no chance of winning against, was because she was so desperate to find what she was looking for that even the loss of her life would not dissuade her.
It was like she had nothing to lose.
She should have felt the touch of Gàe Bolg brush over her heart, understood the certainty of her death on its blade should she continue, but she still raised her sword anyway. She had nothing to lose; whatever it was she wanted, her life would have no meaning without it, so she would throw it all away for the chance to find it.
Like Assassin, who had fought and died on the temple steps though he had nothing to gain, so too would Karasuba fight and die here because she believed she had already lost everything.
"Please," I pleaded, trying to find a way to stop her, "please don't make me kill you."
But it was no good, she was already lost, whatever madness that gripped her soul made her beyond reasoning. I could already tell by the way she shifted her stance slightly and tensed her legs, that she was about to charge. And when she did, I knew I would have no choice but to kill her. Though it was not what I had wanted when I had sought her out, if it meant saving innocent lives I would not hesitate to put her down.
Shame, I thought as I readied my lance at Karasuba and hardened my resolve, it looks like I could not save her after all. Still, I decided to give one last attempt to stop her before I would thrust my spear and end her life.
"Karasuba, if we fight here then all the people around us will be caught up in our battle," I tried reasoning with her. "They'll die Karasuba. If you don't care about your life then at last care about theirs."
Honestly, I said those words more out of desperation than any real hope of them working at persuading her to stop.
Which is why I was so stunned when it did work.
Karasuba actually seemed to hesitate, halting her attack to stop and consider my words. I could tell the exact moment that the meaning of my words began to sink in, her brows furrowed as her lips twisted slightly in distaste, almost as if she had bitten into something bitter. She glanced around herself, taking in the houses that stood just outside the border of the hastily constructed Bounded Field, one that would do next to nothing to protect them if we ended up fighting all out.
She sighed then, slumping slightly as she lowered her sword before looking up at me from beneath her bangs with an almost reproachful look, "You really know how to ruin a girl's mood, don't you Emiya?" She chided, though there was a hint of teasing in her tone.
She shook her head one final time before obediently sheathing her sword without complaint, her Touki dispersing a moment later, and I watched as her manic smile receded back into something a little more tame while her grey eyes were hidden one again behind her lids.
"Really, getting me all worked up over nothing." She shook her head, sending her bangs swaying. She did quirk an eyebrow a moment later before snorting, an amused sounding noise. "And you might want to shut your mouth before something flies in."
I shut my mouth with a click. I was caught so off balanced by her last minute change that I had been gaping at her in stunned disbelief, while Gàe Bolg hung limply in my grip and...
...what the hell just happened?
I couldn't bring myself to believe what I was seeing, I was still half certain that this was all a dream and I'll wake any second now to find Karasuba coming at me in a suicidal charge. And I would have probably continued to stare dumbly at her for the next couple of minutes if her cellphone hadn't chosen that moment to ring.
Completely ignoring me, Karasuba dug into her pocket to pull out her phone before flipping it open and placing it by her ear.
"Hello mum," She began, turning away from me. "Yes, I'm almost home, I just ran into a friend from school and decided to stop for a chat. What?" Karasuba looked startled by what she heard, before her shock was replaced by a sly grin and she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "Sure, hang on while I ask him."
Karasuba lowered her phone and turned back to me. "Emiya," She began pleasantly, a polite smile on her lips that fooled no one, "my mum wants to invite you over for lunch."
...This day just keeps getting crazier and crazier.
*Chapter End*
Author's notes:
Poor Shirou, he really has had one hell of a long day. I never intended it to be but as I was looking over the last few chapters I realised that it has been less than 24 hours since the ceremony starting the young Devils Gathering. Which meant since chapter 17 till now has all happened in the same day...and it's still not over!
Anyway, sorry it took me so long to get this chapter out but I was once again plagued with writer's block (the bane of my existence) and I had a hell of time getting this chapter out (the words kept fighting me every step of the way), but with some help I managed to get through it an I'm back again. And like I expected I ended up cutting this chapter in half (If I hadn't the chapter would have been 30K+ and another month late), so all the major reveals and plot twist will be in the upcoming chapter.
And one thing I would like to make clear with this story, when people fight there are going to be deaths. This isn't going to be one of those stories where people fight in wars or enter battles where both sides are trying to kill each other yet everyone leaves without a single causality because the characters are needed for plot (I'm looking at you here Freed. do you know how many fics – plus in cannon – this guy kept surviving even when he gets his ass handed to him time and again but lives just because he is needed later on in the story. Well not here, hell Freed didn't get to survive the start of the fic...and now that I think of it this fic has a high mortality rate, Raynare and the other Fallen were killed off without any screen-time.) If someone is fighting against an opponent that's trying to kill them and lose, they'll die. While I can understand key characters surviving at times (if the hero dies the story ends after all) but so many minor villains and side characters surviving is mind boggling to me. The problem with doing things like that is there is no longer any stakes and consequences, it's what in my eyes can potentially ruin even great fics because nothing really matters. That one of the reasons is why Fate/Stay night is so memorable because every choice does matter and ultimately changes fate, and in the end even the Servants who we grew to love and cheer for end up dying. So one of the things I want to convey is that war is war, not a game. You don't go into a fight to the death and expect everyone to come back out alive.
And allow me to make it clear now, (outside of the Evil Pieces) once a person is dead and is confirmed dead, they will stay dead. No ass-pull revivals here. And once someone enters a battlefield anyone can die.
Well, anyway, other than that I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Part of the reason why I had trouble getting it out is because it was mostly in third person and made up mostly of fights scenes (both are things I have trouble typing) so it might have been a little rough around the edges. But hopefully it turned out well and you ended up enjoying it.
That's all for now, be sure to tell me what you think and thanks for reading.