Chapter Twenty Five

The Ruins

They were a team and as such, they worked best together, so they didn't split off. They headed into the fray together, and staying together. Carving the way through the machines, through the White Fang soldiers. The machines were too many. The Atlesian Paladins, too. The academy was teetering on the verge of collapse. No, more like. There was hardly anything they could do to stop this catastrophe. All their strength couldn't do more that delay it.

It hurt. The deafening explosions, the breaking ground, the rocks flying about. The fire, the screams. The crushed tents, dreams. The Vytal Festival was only a formality, but still, it didn't even need to be said that a tragedy that couldn't be taken back was happening right here. They had chosen this time, this place, and prepared themselves like that to drive a knife through humanity's heart. To carve out their numbers. To spread distrust. To control.

Her teeth gritted. Damn it, this just wasn't… It wasn't supposed to be this way. She had promised Shirou she would take on his dream, but she wasn't capable of saving even a single person. No, it wasn't exactly like that. Out of the many people dying around her, she was only saved herself. Damn.

This was no good. This was no good at all. If this continued like this, they were finished. The guards had come to help, and the teaching staff, too. Also, thankfully, since it was the Vytal Festival, all the students of the academy were right here, but they were students from a reason. And the White Fang and the Atlas' forces, which had been taken over, overwhelmed them in both numbers and power. What an absolute hell. She couldn't even imagine a way out of this nightmare.

Aura was the best defense, but no matter how strong it might be, it still at a limit. That it would break. That it would take time to reform. So they couldn't stand against their merciless onslaught. Moreover, that wasn't the last of it. That gun. That strange gun that would cleave through any aura in an instant, the same strange gun that had been used to end Shirou's life. They had it. They had mass produced it. Not every soldier had it. Just a dozen, as far as she could see her. But that was already to many of them.

Two mistakes. That was all it would take for one of them to die. Sometimes, not even that. One single mistake would sometimes would be enough, since their Aura's would be breaking down because of the onslaught of the Atlas machines and the White Fang forces. And more often that not, there didn't even need to be a mistake to end it all. A stray shot would also be good enough. In other words… there was nothing. This was more like a slaughter, rather that a battle.

Ruby bit her lip so hard she drew blood. Her Aura. It was already under halfway. So close. Death was so close. With the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears, she continued the desperate battle. Desperate, but not hopeless. There was a chance for them. They could still overcome these long odds. But more than that, they would be left alone. The forces of Vale would come here. The only question was, could they last until then? Would enough of them would be alive at that time for the arrival of the Vale forces to make a difference? To many if's, far too many.

An explosion, and she was blow away. Only natural. As she hadn't even see it coming, she hadn't been able to move, let alone dodge it. So she was send flying into the air like trash. And, like trash, she hit the ground hard. A crack. An audible crack that felt like she had been stabbed right in her heart. She didn't know how much was left. She didn't know, but she knew her Aura was dangerously low.

Tears of anger stung at the corner of her eyes as she forced herself to her knees and surveyed the battlefield. How ridiculous. So very ridiculous. Until so little before, things had been going so well. People had been smiling and laughed together. People came together, mingled, bonded with people they hadn't even know. It was like the happiness from before had been only a dream, and this was simple the cold, harsh reality. She stared laughing.

How course.

They were soldiers, so this was their reality. Their mission was supposed to be killing Grimm, not people, but in the end, when it came down to it, when you really though about it… there really wasn't much of a difference between the Grimm and the White Fang, between the Grimm and those criminals who would wipe off lives carelessly, like they didn't matter. They were just different flavors of the same nature: monsters. She laughed even harder, gripping her scythe so thigh that it started to hurt.

At instant later…

Her breath stopped.

There. In the middle of the battlefield, something was streaking through all of it without a care. Raging winds were left in her wake, scattering the surrounding people and even the machines. Ruby stopped. She even stopped breathing, and concentrated on the approaching whirlwind. That valiant blue knight, clenching something invisible in her hand… that was, without a doubt a Servant. It didn't make sense, the Grail had been shut down and there shouldn't be a War at this time anyway, but it didn't change the fact than that woman was there and she was definitively a Servant.

She didn't felt hopeless.

She didn't felt despair.

She didn't felt like throwing her scythe down, and just surrendering to the inevitable.

She only felt a great hate from the bottom of her heart. Because, she understood. What this woman was, why this woman was here. The sheath that was ripped away from Shirou. The very reason they were after him, and everything ended on that day. It was all to summon this woman. This… this thing.

"I going to kill you." she said that lightly, as if singing, even though she fully knew what kind of being she was intending to face.

She ran after that figure. She ran, alone. It was many times faster that her. Even if she faced that thing, she would be cut down in an instant. And her Aura wouldn't do much good. No, it might not do much good even if it had been at full power. Because, that invisible thing. Her Noble Phantasm. Her Aura couldn't possible stand against such a thing. Still, she didn't care. Had something snapped in her mind at that sight? Maybe.

She had to use her Semblance and also occasionally push herself to the speed that left a whirlwind in her wake to kept up, and still, the thing was clearly faster that her. Up, up. Into the headmaster's office. Ruby followed after her, not even allowing herself to wonder why such a weapon was heading to such a place instead of dominating the battlefield. Why? Because such things didn't matter, of course. Her mind was only pure, condensed hatred now.

Ruby followed her. Down the steps beyond a hole in the wall that wasn't there before, to a basement she didn' even know existed. The blue knight was already in the middle of the room when she came down the steps. The room's illumination wasn't good, but that was fine, too. It was only another obstacle she had to overcome for the sake of ending her.

"Go back." the knight said. Ah. So it had know the whole time, it had just hadn't said it. "You don't stand a chance against me. To attack me means facing a meaningless death."

A meaningless death. Of course, that was the whole problem to begin with. The body made of swords. His weak, trembling hand reaching out for her as the door's of the Bullhead closed. Because of its existence, things had ended up like that. Because Shirou somehow had that catalyst inside of himself, things had ended up like that. So, she couldn't forgive this thing in front of her. She couldn't back down, even if it might be hopeless.

"I don't care."

"...I see." the knight turned. She was so short, but even her face looked like she was only a few years older that her. It was unbelievable that she would have that kind of power, at that age. Off the top of her head, she didn't remember any hero that would classify for the class of Saber that was so young like that. Then again, that was just her appearance.

Sh… it got into stance, holding the invisible sword with both hands. Without a doubt, the invisible thing was a sword.

Like from another world, Ruby heard footstep from behind her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the three getting into formation. They didn't say anything. She didn't, either. There was no need for words. They didn't even know what she knew about the thing in front of her, but they could clearly felt they could only spare attention to kill it for certain.

Ten meters. It will only take a few seconds for her to close that distance. So, if she wasn't careful, the outcome of the battle would be decided in the next two seconds. The cracking of the ground beneath the knights feet. That served as the signal.

It charged. A single, flawless motion for the sake of killing the enemies in front of it. Behind it, overpowering amounts of magical energy and raging winds.

Weiss ran towards her. Channeling the necessary Dust through Myrtenaster, she encased the speeding Servant in a large dome of ice. To do such a thing, she had to use all of the Ice Dust in the container in one shoot to extend the rage of effect, so as to account for the Servant's demonic speed. But not even that was enough. The prison of ice made for a whole container of Dust barely lasted more that a second, and even that was a surprise.

It exploded, scattering broken shards of ice across the massive basement. The knight was unharmed, and it didn't allow that to slow it down for even one more instant. Weiss put herself between it and the rest, but it just smashed her invisible swords against Weiss's rapier. The burst of magical energy send her flying away.

Ruby stared.

Blake and Yang, whose body was already aflame, rushed towards the Servant. Blake used her Semblance in combination with Dust to create several clones of herself, each one infused with different properties. They all attacked the Servant at the same time. The Fire clone exploded right in it's face, but it didn't even manage to move it. The Ice Clone bound the invisible sword with ice upon exploding, revealing its shape and length. The Ice Clone exploded too, delivering a powerful blast of wind that forced it to dig its feet into the earth to not be blow away, and even then, it managed to send it a few steps back.

While it was preoccupied with that, Yang punched her square in the face with both of her gauntlets. The ice binding the sword shattered, and it counter attacked. Her sister Aura shattered, and the invisible sword stabbed her through the stomach. It came out of her back, stained with blood. Blake came to attack it, screaming in rage. But it was useless. It wasuseless.

It avoided the attack with contemptuous ease, and put Blake down. The impact was so strong that she was knocked unconscious. Then, its eyes shifted to her. It charged. Ruby pushed her speed to the limit, and meet the spirit head-on. A huge weight. The sword of legend crashed against her Crescent Rose. It hurt. It was a wonder that lone strike didn't send her flying, and, for a moment, she had believed that the force behind the attack would have shattered it. But it didn't. She could still kept on fighting. She had to kept on fighting.

It pushed her back, and all she could do was barely dodge, wave or parry its ferocious attacks. She was going to be overwhelmed and killed soon if things continued like this. No, it was a wonder she had lasted that long already. It had greater speed and strength. So, she made a desperate gamble.

She tried to control the flow of battle by leaving fatal openings. She didn't have a read on her opponents fighting style, but she had enough battle experience to kept it up. Moreover, buying time like this meant her Aura would have time to recover. Even if it only allowed her to take one single hit unscathed, that was good enough. What else would she expect when facing a Heroic Spirit?

A hit in the side. Her regrowing Aura, which had almost broke, shattered in that instant. The invisible sword cut through the shirt, and her flesh, dragging a ragged line. If she had moved even a second slower, the blade would have cut her in two. She gritted her teeth. Screaming to ward off the pain, she swung the scythe at her enemy's exposed neck. It didn't parry her attack, but pushed it back. And she was pushed back along with her weapon. The gap between a human and a Heroic Spirit was made all the more obvious. And how she was now, with nothing to protect her but her own ability, every second carried even more of a risk of getting killed. Damn damn damn damn!

The invisible sword was an annoyance. That, perhaps, was the greatest danger to her in this battle. She had seen the shape and length of it once, when the copy born from Blake's Semblance encased it in ice. That's why she had been able to do dodge. She kept the shape and length always in her mind, and moved accordingly. But that didn't change that she would have an easier time if she would actually seen it. In the rush of battle, she might make a misstep she wouldn't have made if she had a visual of her opponent's weapon. But it couldn't be helped. All the illusions she had of killing this creature had vanished under the first blow, and now she was merely pitifully trying to stay alive.

This thing… she had to erase this one from this world, at the very least. The reason that Shirou got killed, that he was no more, that they would spend their time together anymore. Even though she could clearly remember his voice, his smile, the way he talked, the things he said and the warmness that would grow in her chest every time he looked at her… Never again. She wouldn't experience any of it ever again. So, she had to kill it. She had to kill it for that sin, and that woman, too, for ordering his death.

She was pushed back. With that single strike, that single lucky strike, she was send flying like a rag doll. She hit the wall. It cracked, and she almost went through it. She gasped for breath, and even that hurt. She slid down the wall limply, like a doll with its strings cut. Where did all her strength go? It seemed like a fleeting illusion. She tried to stand up on her shaky legs.

"I'll kill you!" she screamed even though she knew she shouldn't, even though she knew damn well it was only a useless excess. She faltered and nearly fell, but somehow managed to straighten herself. "Damn you, I'll kill you! I'll kill you I'll kill you I'll kill you!"

Who was she kidding? She barely had the strength to kept her body upright. Even an Ursa would have feasted on her without any effort, as she was now. Still, she defiantly held her opponent's gaze, without even a sign of fear or backing down. Only pure hatred. Perhaps that made it hesitate.

"What grudge do you bear against me?" it said. It didn't know. Of course it didn't. That woman wouldn't have told this thing unimportant things like how had she had acquired its catalyst. It made her even more pissed off.

"All right." she closed her eyes, and held her head high. It was the only salvation left for her and, more than that, she didn't care about the consequences. The World. That would be her life-line. "Let me make a contract. I shall give you..."

"Trace On." she froze. Those words. She had heard those words once before, just once. Every single thing about that accident had been burned in her mind. Shirou had said that when reproducing Crescent Rose for the second time. Her heat leaped up to her throat, and the tears fell freely. She opened her eyes, and…

A barrage of swords went whirling past her head. The Heroic Spirit, who until now had barely reacted to their attacks, was forced on the defensive. It jumped back. But not only that. It had to use the invisible sword in its attack to deflect the swords shoot at it to take its head off. One very nearly did it. One of those swords drew a ragged line on her right shoulder, another buried itself in its armor but didn't manage to penetrate to the skin, and another cut its cheek, leaving a bleeding wound. But otherwise, she emerged unscathed for the hail of swords. In its retreat, it very nearly returned to its early position at the center of the basement. Surrounding it were the numerous swords, buried it in the ground.

A flash of red. Ruby saw a red knight step in front of her, his hands clenched. His hair was white, he was taller and older, and even his skin tone was different from him. She also could clearly felt that the man in front of her was a being of the same nature as that thing. A Heroic Spirit. So he couldn't be Shirou. But still. That Aria. And, more that, she felt from the bottom of her heart that he was Shirou.

It was unmistakable.