44: Good food is good for morale.
As usual, I wake up annoyingly damp - body coated with a mixture of morning dew and the sweat of barely-remembered night terrors. That's the price to be paid for not remembering to bring a damn tent, huh? The makeshift shelters we've been setting up really aren't the same. Still, it hasn't stormed or anything, so I should be counting my blessings.
"Well, time to get started, I guess." I mutter as I sit up and brush the dust from my back. Besides, from the telltale smell of smoke and sound of boiling water, it seems like breakfast is already in the works.
"Oh, Subaru, you're awake already!" Jeanne notes, glancing up from the bubbling pot. "It'll be a few more minutes until the food's done, but you're still close enough that I can call it good timing."
Since Jeanne and Mordred don't have to sleep, they've been keeping watch, letting Mash and I get more than our fair share of rest. I kind of feel bad about it, but they insisted, so...
"Still, you don't have to go so far as to make breakfast for us every morning, Jeanne." I say.
"I know I don't have to. I'm doing this because I want to." The girl replies. "It reminds me of when I cooked for my siblings growing up. It's… fun, I guess."
"...I guess that makes sense. Still, thanks a ton. It's really helpful that we don't have to rely entirely on my somewhat shaky cooking skills to get by." I chuckle. I'm a decent cook in a fully stocked kitchen, but with us relying so much on foraging, I'm not sure how well that'd go. Mash obviously has no experience in food prep, and the less said about Mordred's crimes against the culinary arts, the better.
"Haha… well, you say that, but it's just bland porridge again today." Jeanne gives a forced smile.
"Right, it can't be helped then. Sorry, Director. We're summoning Hanaya Yohei." I say, nodding to myself.
"Senpai, as exciting as it would be…. to meet the Father of Sushi, I doubt even I can protect you from the Director's wrath if you summoned him." Mash mumbles with a yawn, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Shoot, I was sure I'd stump you with that one, Mashupedia! Is there a famous historical figure you haven't got memorized?"
"I-it's not that amazing, Senpai. I still get a bunch of the Ptolemeic Pharaohs mixed up, after all." Mash demurs.
"That's just because they're all named Ptolemy though!?" I exclaim.
"Right!? At least do some small variations on the name if you're gonna keep reusing it - like Grandfather did!" Mordred says as she re-materializes.
"Morning, Mordred. Where were you, anyway?" I ask as I scoop flavorless gruel into my bowl.
"A stray wyvern spotted us during the night, so I had to go run it down," she says.
"Oi! Running off on your own is dangerous! It's not like you've got independent action; if that was a trap…" I fret, but she cuts me off.
"It's fine, it's fine!" She waves off my concern. "I caught it like, two minutes from here. The thing was already wounded, so it wasn't hard to overtake it."
"Already wounded?" Mash asks.
"Had a harpoon crippling its left wing. That'll be the captain you mentioned, right Master?" The knight explains while spooning porridge into her gauntleted hand.
"Ahab was a whaler, so it matches, yeah." I confirm. "You think he's in the area?"
"Usually Servants'll dematerialize their projectiles pretty quickly after firing, but it's not like it's a hard rule or anything." She shrugs. "In any case, we ought to finish eating pretty quick. I saw something while I was hunting it down - the hill blocks the view, but the city's only a mile or so out."
Jeanne ponders for a moment. "La Charité… it's held by the English, so I doubt we'll be getting a warm welcome, but-"
"-No, the English aren't gonna be the problem." Mordred says darkly.
The saint gasps. "You can't mean-!"
"Yeah. That city's… already been reduced to a smoldering ruin."
Mordred firmly prevents us from leaving that instant - yelling "Hunger is the enemy!" in a clear impression of Arthur's voice. And so, it's after finishing our bland gruel that we take off down the road at a brisk march, arriving at the burned out skeleton of La Charité.
"-In my professional opinion, you guys should definitely be running the other way." Doctor Roman complains with a sigh as we approach. "But at the same time, Vaucouleurs was a decent reminder that moving towards danger is a good way to find friendly Servants. Considering the lack of any Dragonkind responses nearby, I'll say it's probably safe for now. Subaru-kun, your judgement has been pretty on point so far, so I'll let you go for it, but…"
"Get out of here at the first sign of trouble. I get it, I get it." I reply while panning my eyes over the wreckage. Ignoring the urge to cringe at his praise of my 'good judgement', I ask the question that's bugging me. "Where's the Director, anyway? Usually she'd be squawking at us over this."
"Luckily for you, she's busy - believe it or not, as of yesterday monitoring your progress in the French Singularity has fallen to something like third place on her priority list." He says with a chuckle, before growing more serious. "Something's up with a few of the other Singularities. The energy readings from Jerusalem have spiked so hard we can't actually measure them anymore, and the readings from the Roman Singularity are moving in the opposite direction. We had that second one pinned as your next destination, but with it suddenly changing like this… best case is that it might actually be resolving itself, but I've got a hunch we're not getting off so easy."
I blink, taking a moment to process that. "I thought the Singularities were static as long as we didn't go poking them. What could be-?" I freeze - that's not right. After all, Prelati told me that Bael took the stage here because we took out Flauros. "-The Demon Gods. They're finally responding to what happened in Fuyuki. We already know that they can do something similar to us - they created this mess in the first place after all."
The doctor nods. "That's our theory too. The delayed response is weird to humans, but immortal beings like that always have pretty glacial reaction times. Of course, according to your mysterious intel, the Demon in France is playing hooky or something, but it wouldn't hurt to be careful anyway."
I nod, stepping through the city gate - and into hell.
La Charité is a slowly smoldering ruin - more medieval than Fuyuki, but familiar nonetheless. Cobblestone streets have been rendered closer to modern roads, the rocks making them up having belted and fused together from the sheer heat of the hell that unfolded in this city. Charred corpses litter the ground here and there, young and old, fat and thin. I even spy the occasional knight, sealed like canned goods inside their heat-warped metal armor.
This isn't the work of Wyverns. They can't breathe fire. Was it Fafnir? The Tarrasque? Some other Dragon? How terrifying. How terrifying. I was acclimated to it, I realize now - the concept of a fire-breathing Dragon failed to properly horrify me until now, because I was overexposed by pop culture. But this is it. This is what such a creature can do.
And even beyond that, I'm certain - there's something worse here. I haven't seen the depths of it yet. There's something in the air, something painfully familiar, that I never wanted to see again. We need to leave. We need to leave. Above everything else, I must not be here.
I open my mouth to sound the retreat - and then, Mash calls out. "I found someone!"
I know. Somehow, I know before I lay eyes on him. Memories of my fourth loop in the World of Magecraft play through my head. The phantom pain of black blood boiling in my veins, tearing my very soul inside out-!
"Help…me..." The man moans, trapped beneath fallen rubble.
Well, I call him a man, but that's not true. Not anymore. In fact, it's not as though this thing can even be called trapped. Because it can lift those stones on its back. It's struggle is a falsehood, just as sure as the words leaving its mouth - preprogrammed by the one that created it to serve as bait.
"Sir, it's going to be-" Mash begins, moving to lift the stones from it.
The [Dead] bursts free and lunges at the same time that my first command spell blazes to life.
"Mash, get away from it!" I roar, and she's compelled backwards, even as Mordred bursts around the corner of a fallen house and cleaves the creature in half.
She might have avoided it on her own. She might have deflected it on her own. As a Demi-Servant, she might be immune to the effects of its bite.
But I didn't want to risk it. I know all too well about the crippling effects of this thing's bite - the real deal is worse, but even a [Familiar] like this is dangerous.
"Wha-?"Mash asks, looking at me - and then, eyes widening, she leaps past me shield crashing against something large and heavy.
There's a coffin there. A hulking metal coffin, with a woman's face on it, its doors yawning open to reveal an interior lined with spikes.
"Presence Concealment- an Assassin!?" The doctor yells.
"My, such unfortunate timing. Well, drawing things out is fun in its own right, though." A sultry voice cuts through the air as she materializes - a white haired woman in a mask, wearing a strange metal-frame dress and an outfit that looks like bondage gear. I'd laugh. I'd laugh if I wasn't terrified all the way down to my bones.
"The people in this city, who survived the Dragon attack… are all already dead, aren't they? Or rather, they've become [The Dead]." I say, taking a step back. "Isn't that right, Vampire-san?"
[The Dead] - animated corpses, created by a vampire. In some sense, I guess they could be considered failed vampires. Just the fact that there's one here means that it's pretty likely all the survivors has been hunted down already.
"I don't know about that. Am I a vampire? I certainly wasn't one back when I was alive." The woman muses, stroking her chin with her long-nailed fingers. "I can't create or control those walking corpses either. Since they're yours, why don't you answer the poor boy's question, Dracul?"
"I do wish you wouldn't do that, Assassin. Both announcing my presence and revealing my identity in one fell swoop, you truly have no mind for tactics, do you?" A male voice echoes through the streets, as faint white mist, spread so thin I hadn't noticed it, flows inward from every corner of the city and condenses into a human form. "But then, that's to be expected from the [Blood Countess] whose sole claim to fame is her torturous hedonism."
As he retakes his human form, I make out his appearance - long white hair and a middle-aged bearded face, clad in what's unmistakably an outfit of nobility. But that's secondary to the feeling.
Terror clenches my heart, and despair crushes my lungs. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It feels like coming face to face with the Whale again - there's an apex predator here, staring at me, sizing me up. My knees buckle and I shiver, collapsing to the ground, barely stopping myself from falling over altogether.
Dracula. Without a doubt, this is the king of vampires, Dracula. Prelati mentioned him, but I had dismissed it. I didn't lose it when interacting with Zelretch, so my resistance to Vampires is back to normal - is what I had thought. But that's not right. From the start, the old man was suppressing his own predatory nature, and so he didn't set me off.
But this thing? A Vampire Heroic Spirit, fully embracing its existence as a monster? I don't stand a chance. The poison planted in me, the scar of the loop I spent in Eastern Europe, is returning once more.
And worst of all - worst of all, is the subtle part. The gnawing urge to just bare my neck to him and get it over with. The subtle draw towards him, the strange desire to feel my lifeblood drained away once more.
Faced with him, it's all I can do to close my senses off and try not to scream. Stay calm, stay calm, just pray that the others succeed - and then there's a sound of tearing cloth, and something is draped across my shoulders. And just like that, all of the feelings generated by his presence melt away.
"Wha-?" I mutter, grabbing at the black cloth wrapped like a scarf around my neck.
"Are you okay now, Subaru?" Jeanne asks, staring at my face with a worried look.
"T-too close!" I say, backing up a bit. "But yeah, that did it. Just what-?"
"My [Saint] skill allows me to produce a Holy Shroud, among other effects." She explains as she helps me to my feet. "There'll be time for that later, though. For now-!"
"We've got some bloodsuckers to kill!" Mordred interjects, giving her trademark feral grin as she bats aside a spear thrust from Dracula.
"Struggle all you like." The Countess says. "After all-!"
"The better the hunt, the better the meal!" Dracula concludes.
A/N:
Been a few weeks but here it is.
Knock-on effects from Flauros getting killed in Fuyuki are taking shape, hehe! With this, clearly Septem will resolve itself and we can safely skip it. (Septem is not actually going to resolve itself.)
Subaru got munched by a vampire in one of his earth loops. Not a great time, and it's left him a bit weak to them, unfortunately. On the other hand, it gave me an opportunity to use the [Saint] skill, so that's fun.
Anyway next chapter should be sometime within the next week, since I know the general gist of what's happening in this fight. No promises, though.