Fate/first order derivative
Part III.8
⇒ continue: iteration 29, day 8, afternoon
"We do what we came here to do," Saber says. She emerges from the plane, all signs of fear or anxiety banished from her face. "We find Shirou and Rin."
"Right, but where do we start?" Archer studies the tower. "In case you haven't noticed, this place's a little bigger than it was on Monday."
"On it," Lancer says. "Just a mo."
He hunkers down over a stone tile the plane knocked loose from the ground. With the tip of his spear, he traces a symbol that looks a bit like - but not quite - the letter B on the rock. The tile floats up from the ground, glowing with green light, then rockets off across the courtyard. Lancer whistles absentmindedly. The stone halts and hovers a few meters ahead of us.
"There," he says cheerfully. "We follow that, it'll bring us to Little Red, straight as ya please."
"You know rune magic, Lancer?" Saber raises her eyebrows, clearly impressed. "Then - what about Shirou?"
"Hold yer horses, woman. I'm gettin' to it." Lancer turns to a stray chunk of airplane fuselage and repeats the process. The new rune rises from the ground and joins the other one. "There, one fer your fella. Looks like they're both in the same direction right now."
"Not bad," Archer concedes.
"Oh ho, is tha' a compliment, Archer?" Lancer grins. "And here I thought the age of miracles was dead and buri -"
He freezes and cocks his head, as if he's trying to hear something.
"... what's wrong?" I ask.
Lancer suddenly flickers, like the channel being changed on a bad TV. Disoriented, he stumbles back before catching himself with his spear.
"Lancer!" Saber reaches out to him.
"Stay back! I have this!" Lancer waves her off and seems to focus. A blue aura collects around him. "Oh no you don't," he mutters through clenched teeth. "Don't ya play with me, ya scrubber. That won't end well fer -"
He vanishes in a burst of white static.
"Heh." Archer smirks. "Loser."
Then he flickers too. Archer just looks at us and sighs. "Yeah, okay. Really should've seen that coming."
With that, he disappears as well.
Saber and I stare at each other. A few seconds pass. Nothing seems to happen to either of us.
"What the fuck?" I finally croak.
"I'm not certain." Saber glances around. "It looked like they were transported against their will. By something powerful enough to overcome their Magic Resistance, no less..."
"That sounds... not good."
"It is not." She looks at the runes, still floating in front of us. "We'd best continue while we can. Lancer and Archer couldn't have gone far. Hopefully, they'll catch up with us..."
"Yeah. Yeah, okay." Involuntary party split. That's a new one on me.
⇒ some ol' bullshit is what that is
Preach. Nervously, I follow behind Saber as the runes lead us on.
⇒ skip forward
Whoever did the renovations on this place (not that I'm not like 90% sure at this point that said person's name rhymes with blaster), I can't say I care much for their design sense. We follow the runes down long corridors of traditional Japanese paper walls and tatami mats, broken up at random intervals by Western-style brickwork and gaudy Rococo plaster. The only consistent feature seems to be these weird full-length glass panels set into the walls every few meters or so. They don't look like mirrors, and I can't see anything through them. They're just... dark, like windows into nothing.
Otherwise, stuff I recognize from the von Einzbern place is strewn about willy-nilly - here a marble bust, there a leather-bound chair. At one point, we come across a full suit of plate armor, posed at attention inside an open closet. Saber immediately draws her sword and slashes it in half. I look at her and raise an eyebrow.
"Before it comes to life and attacks." Saber replaces the blade on her side. "I'm in no mood for games."
I nod approvingly. "Nice."
We continue onwards.
After what feels like a kilometer or more of empty hallways, we reach this vast dark chamber. It's here that the runes abruptly diverge paths. One suddenly rockets off into the blackness and vanishes, while the other heads towards a marble staircase directly opposite the room's entrance.
I glance at Saber. "So now what?"
She doesn't answer. Instead, she just stares off into the dark, her eyes narrowed.
Then she grabs me and flings us both to the side. "Down!" Two energy blasts rocket out of the dark and slam into the wall behind us. Wait... I know that sound...
Rising into a crouch, Saber draws her blade and dispels the invisible sheath. Excalibur casts a pale gold glow, barely enough to illuminate half of the room. (Damn, this place is big.) It is, however, enough to help me notice the light switch on the wall next to us. I stumble to my feet and flip it.
A handful of bare incandescent bulbs flicker to life on the ceiling. I find myself looking at what might've been the temple's main hall prior to a significant expansion. While the walls around the room are stone, the floors and roof are all hardwood, as are the thick support pillars running between them.
Rin stands on the far side of the hall from us, both arms pointed in our direction. She stares blankly through this pair of mirrored steampunkish goggles. And she... um... well...
⇒ what
She's... wearing a maid outfit. Black and white, with the apron and the short skirt and even that frilly bonnet thingy. The dress is... um... flattering on her, let's say? Looks a bit tight, in fact...
⇒ oh ffs
I know, I know, focus. Especially since she's firing at us again. I reflexively duck. Saber holds up her hand. This wall of moving air springs up around us. The Gandr blasts ram into it and vanish. Huh. Didn't know she could do that.
"So," I say loudly over the sound of the wind rushing around us, "she's obviously being controlled or brainwashed or something."
"Mmh." Saber's eyes scan across the room.
"How we gonna snap her out of it? Get the goggles off her, maybe?" Another salvo of blasts rebound off the wind wall.
"That's not our only problem. Look." Saber points towards the staircase.
"Shit." The other rune - the one keyed to Shirou - is moving on without us. I see its glow vanish around a corner further up the stairs.
"... no choice, then." Saber shifts her jaw. "You go after it. I'll handle Rin. Find Shirou if you can. If you run into any trouble, hide or return here. Got it?"
"Got it." I'm not going to even try and second-guess her. Saber knows what's she doing.
"Head for the staircase on three. I'll cover you." She changes her grip on her sword. "Three - two -"
She drops the wall. I run for it. A gem comes hurdling at us. Saber bats it away into the wall, where it goes off like a grenade, then intercepts two more blasts headed in my direction.
I jump up the first few stairs, then risk one last glance back. I see Saber rush across the room at Rin, who frigging cartwheels out of the way, that short skirt whipping around her thighs...
... damn.
⇒ bluh
⇒ since when do you have a meido fetish anyway
I don't. Or, well... at least, I didn't up until now. Learning new things about myself, I guess?
⇒ facepalm_gif
Anyway, right, Shirou. I sprint up the stairs two at a time.
⇒ skip forward
Looks like the staircase finally leads up into the tower. I find myself going up floor after floor. The decor up here seems pretty much unchanged from how things looked inside the von Einzbern place - with the exception of those dark glass panes on the walls that I mentioned before. They're a lot thicker up here too, spaced just a few centimeters apart from each other.
The rune is moving way too goddamn fast. I can barely keep it in sight, and I'm moving as fast as I can. I feel my lungs scream for mercy as I reach the top of the latest staircase, just in time to see the green glow shoot down another short hallway and whip around a corner.
Then I freeze in place, because I hear a voice nearby. Coming from the same direction the rune went.
What do I do? Do I run back and tell Saber, or... ?
⇒ hm
⇒ at least see who it is first maybe
... yeah. Yeah, okay. I carefully creep my way down the hall. As I get closer, I make out what the voice is saying:
"He loves me... he loves me not... he loves me... he loves me not..."
I reach the end and peek around the corner.
I find myself looking into a large, marble-floored room, the walls lined with dark glass. At the center of the room, there's a crystal bench set on a raised dais. A figure dressed in a white robe and hood sits on top of it, next to a pile of assorted flowers. Delicate fingers pick the petals off of an orange lily, one by one.
"He loves me... he loves me not... he loves me." The last petal drifts away through the air. She makes a fart sound with her mouth. "I need better flowers...
"Oh, it's you," Caster says, without raising or turning her head. "You're the funny, talky one."
So much for that Hide check. Run now?
⇒ is there a point
⇒ she can just stop you with those invisible thread things if she wants
Fuck, you're right. And besides... if she's actually willing to talk some... this may be our one chance to get some damn answers here.
I step out from behind the corner, my hands raised. "Uh, yep, that's me. The funny, talky, completely harmless one."
She turns and smiles. Maybe it's just the light, but Caster's skin looks a lot paler than it did on Monday. Her hair, by contrast, is way darker, not to mention sort of frazzled and sticking up in places. And her eyes...
Her eyes are pure black. Sclera, iris, everything. Like looking into midnight.
⇒ shit
⇒ she's gone full sadako
Oh, so now you want to run?! I swallow and try to keep a straight face. "You've... um... changed up your look, I see."
"Uh-huh."
"Seems like you've changed up a lot of things lately." I hesitantly take a step or two into the room.
"Mmh." She rocks back and forth in place.
"Any particular reason why?" I don't see any sign of the rune in here. There's two other exits, though. Did it move on without me?
"I dunno." She shrugs. "It's mostly 'cuz of my aunt, I guess."
I blink. "Your... aunt?"
"Uh-huh." Caster nods. "I just remembered a bunch of stuff she told me a really long time ago. 'Your secrets are your power, never reveal them.' 'Only the weak are not lonely.' 'Sailors are all pigs, but they make the best lovers.'
"It all just seems so silly now, you know? Especially the secrets part. It's like... you ever notice how much time adults spend lying to each other? Lying and making excuses an' holding stuff back. And what's the point? I mean, why even be a grown-up if all you're gonna do is hide from other people?...
"So..." She waves her hands vaguely at our surroundings. "No more hiding. No more secrets."
"Um, yeah," I cautiously agree. "Mission definitely accomplished there, I'd say."
"And the other part's the stories." She twists around and faces me, cross-legged on top of the bench. "They always get it wrong, you know?"
"Who does?"
"People. Poets. Playwriters." She shakes her head. "They say I burned kids, but I didn't. I'm the one who burned - or they kept trying to burn me, anyway. And the other thing - they never let me have a happy ending! They'll make up one for everyone else, but not for me!"
"That sucks."
"I know! But that's just how it is." She picks up a discarded flower stem and sullenly twirls it back and forth in her fingers. "No happy endings for big brother. No happy endings for Lily..."
I don't have any idea how to respond to that. Or to any of this, really. "Um..."
"But those are just the rules, y'know? Witches don't get happy endings." She tosses the stem away with a sigh. "And I wasn't one. I didn't never want to be one. But they called me it so many times, I thought I better figure out how to be good at it."
She tilts her head at a puzzled angle. "But then I thought, what do witches even do? I didn't know. Poison princesses? Live in the woods? Fly on broomsticks!" She snaps her fingers. "But I couldn't find one. So I made the house fly instead. And then I made it into a castle 'cause I wanted one."
She leans towards me conspiratorially and whispers, as if sharing a huge secret: "I wanted it to be an ice cream castle, too. But the walls kept melting."
"Oh." I blink. "I'm... sorry to hear that. That's disappointing."
"I know!" She sits back and grins happily. "Bored. I'm gonna watch teevee now."
Caster gets up and skips across the room, humming under her breath. Okay... I don't need to talk about how wrong all this feels, right? It's so obvious it's painful.
⇒ i dunno
⇒ she actually seems kinda sweet
That's just it, though! The woman I talked to on Monday? She wasn't sweet. At all!
Caster goes over to an object in the room I didn't notice before - an old-fashioned CRT television sitting on a wooden cart against the wall. The rabbit ears are all bent, the power cord's been shredded, and going by the open hole in the side, it looks like most of its guts have been ripped out. I start to say, "I don't know if -"
She twists the dial. Black-and-white static explodes onto the screen. Shows what I know, I guess.
Caster sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of the screen. "I hate teevee," she explains cheerfully. "Especially Disney. The monks had a bunch on tape. I've watched them all twice. Except Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Those I've watched three times."
"Impressive." I wander over and stand a few paces behind her.
She holds up what I'm fairly certain is a pocket calculator and changes the channel. I watch as she flips through a few emergency broadcasts.
⇒ btw remember what brought you here
What, you mean, Shirou? I know, I know...
⇒ well yeah that
⇒ but also
⇒ remember the club
The club?... oh. OH. Shit, you're right. If she's really serious about the whole not-keeping-secrets thing...
I hesitate, then go over and crouch down next to her. "Hey, um... can I ask you something?"
"Huh?" Caster looks up at me, slack-jawed.
"So... let's say you had to fight this guy who's a really strong teleporter," I say. "He can, like, open up portals everywhere, and store stuff inside of them, and launch this huge amount of weapons everywhere -"
"The Gate of Babylon," she rattles off as if reading from a book. "Noble Phantasm of Gilgameš Shūtur-eli-sharrī, the King of Heroes."
"... yeah, kinda like that." I shift my jaw. "So how would you stop him? Is there, like, a particular spell you could use to shut him down or something?"
"Nah."
I blink. "Huh?"
"Can't do it." Caster shrugs. "It's a work of the ancient gods, sealed at the dawn of time and baked in the heat of the first stars. Even Zeus couldn'ta messed with that. So I really can't."
... that makes no sense. Is she lying? Did she notice something in the club? Some kind of hack or weakness or -
"... but I could maybe make him think I can. For a little while, anyway."
That throws me. "W-what do you mean?"
"Lôdix agnoíain, the blanket of ignorance." Caster sticks out her tongue a little as she thinks. "It's like... every time he opens a portal, I put up an illusion that hides it. Wouldn't last too long. He'd know as soon as he tried teleporting himself or, like, someone in front of him." She shrugs again. "I dunno. Something like that, I guess. 'The essence of all magic is illusion.' That's another thing auntie said."
... are you fucking kidding me.
So... that entire time Caster was strutting through Gilgamesh's club like she owned the place... about to play steal-yo-girl right from under his damn nose... she was bluffing?!
⇒ sounds that way
... okay. Not gonna pretend I'm not mad we came all this way just to find out about a literal magic trick... but that's still kind of awesome.
⇒ yup
"... cool. Thanks." I cough and stand back up, mostly just to hide my frustration. She turns back to the TV.
That's when I finally catch sight of the rune. The chunk of metal inscribed with the not-actually-a-B lies dead on the ground beneath the TV cart. Does that mean Shirou's in here somewhere? I glance around the room in what hopefully seems like a casual manner.
Sound blares out of the television. I look at the screen and see:
Lancer slams into the wall painfully with a loud grunt. He's bleeding from a large slash on his left shoulder. Next to him, Archer wheels and throws one of his knives. There's a flash, and the blade clatters uselessly against the far wall.
Somewhere, an unfamiliar voice giggles. It's not a pleasant sound.
Cut to a wide shot. Lancer and Archer stand inside of a circular room, stone-walled with no windows. The only visible exit is the temple gate, positioned against the far wall from them, its doors bound in thick chains.
Lancer stumbles upright. "Bloody phantom...," he mumbles.
"You," Archer growls, his narrowed eyes scanning the room. "You're not just shifting back and forth into your spiritual form. How are you doing that?"
"Oh-ho-ho, that?!" the voice roars. "That's SIMPLE! That's so very very VERY fuckin' simple!"
A man appears out of thin air on top of the temple gate, a wide maniac grin on his scarred face. The only clothing he wears is a ragged pair of hemp hakama trousers. His unkempt hair runs down to his waist. The tattoos on his bare chest seem to shift and morph with the changing light. He sports a pair of handaxes tied to either hip, and carries a strange hooked pike over one shoulder.
(- hold on, I've seen that weapon before. What was it called, the thing firemen used to use to pull down roofs... a kama-yari, I think? Yeah. That seems right.)
"You see, I," he says, twirling the kama-yari over his head, "do not exist! Maybe existed? Could've existed. Heh, who cares, who cares, not me.
"And what was I?" he continues with a leer. "A bandit? A beggar? A farmer who took the wrong path home one night? Who gives a shit? Because there's one constant, one god, one thing that's always the same..."
He vanishes and reappears in an eyeblink, flying towards Archer with an axe in each hand, a look of crazed euphoria on his face.
"SHOW ME YOUR BLOOD!"
Yikes. Okay, then. I glance at Caster. "Who's that?"
"Assassin." She plays with her lip indifferently.
... this is the super-honorable swordsman Saber mentioned? Can't say I'm seeing it.
"He doesn't even need that gate around anymore, you know that?" Caster remarks as Assassin and Archer exchange blows. "He just thinks it looks cool."
"Wawawawait." Assassin flash-steps back over to the gate. "I just realized something. This is too fair. I think I hate that. I dislike it. I don't care. Fix it anyway though, fix it."
He bangs his pike a few times into the door. "HEY, FATASS! GET THE HELL OUT HERE, YOU LAZY BASTARD! WE GOT THINGS TO CUT!"
There's a rumble. Something strikes the back of the gate's door with the force of an eight-wheel truck.
"Well." Lancer brandishes his spear, a weary smile on his face. "'Bout time tings finally got interesting here." Archer's face tightens as another pair of knives materialize in his hands.
The next blow shatters the chains and throws the gate open. The thing that charges out on all fours looks less like a man and more like a mass of exposed muscle, lacking eyes and ears and even a nose. It roars out a senseless challenge as it blindly dashes forward, an uncontrolled whirlwind of pure strength...
"Wait - is that Berserker?!" I look at Caster in disbelief. "I thought you hated him!"
"Mmm... maybe a little, I guess?" She shrugs. "Mostly, I just realized I kinda missed having him around." She watches as Assassin rides on Berserker's back, gleefully swinging the kama-yari around like a polo player on meth. "So they're having fun. That's good." She yawns and changes the channel.
"Hey...," I say weakly. How did she get Berserker working for her? And what the hell happened to him?
Caster squeals and bolts upright. "Eeeeeeeee this is it this is it! I knew it was here somewhere!" She stares into the screen, completely enraptured.
Her head blocks my view of the TV. I step to the side and see:
Rin aims a palm strike at Saber's face, the Magic Circuits on her arm at full power. The Servant blocks the blow and counters with a knee to the stomach. Rin dodges and, falling back a pace or two, fires a Gandr blast.
(The room around them is a complete mess at this point. The walls are pockmarked with craters and fist-prints. Most of the support columns have been shattered or cleaved into pieces. Clearly, this has been going on for quite some time.)
Saber knocks the blast away with her sword and charges, slicing down at Rin's legs. The girl leaps over the blade and backflips over her opponent, intending to land on the Servant's blind side -
- but Saber's ready for that, too. In a single motion, she sidesteps and slashes up at the back of Rin's head, her aim so precise she doesn't even break the skin. She cuts only what she targets: the leather strap holding the mirrored goggles on.
Rin lands and stumbles. The goggles go flying. Saber drops the sword and cups the girl's face with both hands. "RIN!"
The mage freezes in place. Without the goggles, her eyes are visible. They're completely black, iris and all, containing no hint of light or emotion.
"I know you," Saber growls, staring Rin straight in the eye with an almost magnetic intensity. "You're stronger than this. Whatever this curse is, you can beat it. I know you can. The heir of the Tohsaka family is no one's puppet."
(Caster giggles and rocks back and forth, blushing furiously.)
Saber pauses. Her face softens. "... you've spent your whole life living in your father's shadow, haven't you? Trying to be as cold and terrible as he taught you to be. You still haven't realized... you're already better than Tokiomi ever was. And not in spite of that heart you work so hard to hide. Because of it."
(I shift my feet uncomfortably. Um. Should... I be watching this?
⇒ probably not
⇒ too late now tho
Yeah, I figured...)
Rin's hands fall limply to her sides.
"Fight it, Rin..." Saber strokes her cheek affectionately with her thumb. "Remember who you are and fight. Remember your pride. Remember your fire. Come back to us. Come back to me." An odd expression, somewhere between surprise and consternation, flickers across her face before she regains her composure.
(Okay, I definitely should not be watching this.)
Rin's lips move, but no sound comes out.
"What?" Saber leans her ear in. "Tell me what you need."
"... run," Rin whispers. Her jaw drops open. A pitch-black substance floods out of her mouth and down her chin.
Paper-thin tendrils explode out of ground and envelop them. The wooden floor beneath their feet shatters and collapses, tipping them both into what lies beneath - the monastery lake.
And all at once, I get it. Including something really, incredibly, insanely obvious I should have spotted from a million miles away. Rider's message - she didn't mean 景 or "vista" or "scene" or any of that.
She was trying to write 影. "Shadow."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I'm curious. Show of hands - who saw this coming?