A sound akin to a cannon rang out. Or maybe not a cannon… Honestly, it was a sound I couldn't quite place; something I hadn't ever heard before in real life. A loud explosion, but… merged, with the crackling of lightning.
A purple glow lit up the background of flying dirt as whatever it was plowed right on through the pillars that Sortiara's magecraft had created. Rapidly, it grew brighter, intensely; almost forced me to close my eyes as the wall of black cloth neared its ultimate destination, many points of gleaming metal now visible from the extra lighting.
Yet, right before the wall reached us, before the three of us were skewered to death, before the desire to shut out the light forced my eyes closed… the wall of black cloth… disintegrated...
Yes, disintegrated… for there was no other word I could use to describe what I witnessed. Purple arcs of lightning shot out from the first point of contact of the mob of assassins. It spread rapidly across the group, coursing from one assassin to the next, all in less than even a single second. The moment the lightning made contact with an assassin, it dissipated into a mixture of purple, blue and black specks.
The intense light faded immediately with the disintegration of the assassin mob. A moment later, I felt chunks of dirt pelt me, hitting my face, body… everywhere. More dirt rained down all around, pelting Sortiara, Johnathan, the priest, the ground...
The man in green armor now standing before us.
Looking down at us. Expression serious, but… gentle. One of determination, but not grim determination. Arms outstretched, holding two swords. But… not the swords I had seen him use previously; not the two Jian swords from all my earlier encounters with him.
In his hands now were two very ornate swords. One, a blade of gold, along with the pommel and guard. The hilt wrapped in red. The other, black and silver, the hilt devoid of any wrapping. Both blades had purple markings etched in their center, running from the hilt about one third up their length. Both still crackled faintly with purple lightning.
T-The Shuang Gu Jian… So Saber does have them… Holy shit… holy shit, holy shit, holy shit!
As I stared, wide-eyed, up at Saber and, more specifically, the two legendary blades he now held in his hands, his voice broke through my trance-like state.
"Come now, the battle has only just begun" a trace of a smile danced across his face, before he turned to face the priest. "Don't tell me one set back is all it takes to bring you three to a standstill. Regardless of the ordeals, one should always keep moving forward; towards the future they envision."
That was enough to bring me back to my feet, despite the aching pain I felt from both the dirt that had smacked me just now, and the two daggers still sticking out of me. I couldn't make it out, but there was something… rousing in Saber's words. As if, because he was still standing, then so could I.
It must have been some kind of skill or something at play. The words of others never roused me to do anything, under normal conditions. That, and I knew there was precedent for verbal skills or magical effects; Rider had Proof of Friendship as a skill, after all. But whatever it was, I was grateful for it. It was exactly what I needed to get my head back in the game.
Apparently, it was enough for Sortiara and Johnathan as well, for both of them were now also standing on their feet. Johnathan was still clutching his arm, but hey, it was progress. That, and his arm was no longer sparking up with that blue lightning-like effect. I took that as a good sign.
Across from us, the priest still had his arm raised. The black keys still danced with flames. Yet, his smile was gone. The gleam in his eyes shrouded. A look of pure neutrality had washed over him.
Lowering his arm, the black keys dissipated into nothing, and he let out a snort of disgust.
"Tch. So, you have some tricks after all, Saber. Here I thought you were just a sub-par servant."
"Not typical of knight class servants, I know" Saber nodded, adopting what I could only assume was his fighting stance. "But even a Saber servant should-"
"Woah! Where did you all come from?!"
A shout cut Saber off as it garnered all our attention. The sounds of ringing metal had never ended, but now that it wasn't just background noise to other, more pressing things, I noticed it was far more… consistent than earlier. Suddenly, the red armor of Lancer was visible in the air, above the trees of dirt. It was flying backwards towards us, but Lancer was clearly in control. Landing beside Saber, he raised his shield up to his head. Just in time too, as a scattering of daggers rained down upon it.
Looking back up, I could see cloaked figures perched atop the dirt trees. A quick count put their number at 25. 25 newly summoned assassins were now staring down upon our group.
"Ok, those ones had to be new summons" Sortiara shouted in protest. "Just how many can he summon before he's run out of magical energy?!"
"I stand corrected" Rider commented, emerging from the forest of dirt trees and bringing himself into view. "There was one piece of information your friend there asked that could be of some use to you all."
…At the very least, the dirt trees seemed to have done what I'd originally wanted actual trees to accomplish. Rider was on foot, rather than on horseback, when he came into view.
"Namely, how that Noble Phantasm of mine works" Rider continued. "If you believe you can exhaust my magical energy supply by constantly laying waste to the assassins, I would say it is a pointless endeavor. They require negligent amounts of magical energy to both summon and maintain. Especially taking into consideration the amount of mana within the city to use."
…That… That may change in the future though. Depending on the amount of magical energy the labyrinth ended up draining from the five leylines it was hooked up to…
But, now that all the fighting had come to a momentary stop, I took the time to look over the three servants. Saber was looking the most beat up, which I could only assume was due to his initial skirmish with Rider. Rider was actually looking the next worse off of the three. Nothing serious, mind you, but I could see cuts in the fabric around his legs and arms. A scratch upon his face too; the red line really standing out to me, as before this, I'd never seen a wound on him.
Lancer, by contrast, was actually looking in good shape. Maybe a little worn out and tired, but there were no visible injuries from what I could tell. A lone dagger was sticking to his chest plate, but if it had actually done any injury to Lancer, I couldn't tell. If it had, Lancer sure didn't seem to mind it all that much.
"Well…" I grinned slightly to Sortiara and Johnathan, first to break the setting silence. "If nothing else, we've sort of reached what the plan set out to do."
"Except that all the assassins are still standing" Johnathan pointed out.
"I mean, I said sort of for a reason…"
"Realized yet the futility of your struggles" Rider cut in. "You have spirit, I grant you all that much. But spirit alone will not overcome the disadvantage you all face here. Surrender now, Saber, Lancer; your masters may still yet be allowed to live if you do."
"But not me" I asked, doing my best to sound as innocent as possible as I smiled.
A blank stare from both Rider and the priest was my response. Figured as much, but… well, couldn't hurt to ask, so might as well, eh?
"Fair, I suppose" I mused. "Not that I would ever advocate for surrender. No matter how far ahead an opponent may be, there is always the chance they throw, no matter how slight."
"…Odd choice of wording aside, I find myself in agreement with you, for once" Saber actually backed me up on this, of all things.
Must have been the experience of Chibi talking… Why else would Saber, of all people, agree with anything I say?
"I'm all for not surrendering; my pride as a knight wouldn't allow it" Lancer chimed in. "But I think a... let's call it a tactical retreat, is our best course of action here."
"Alas, you all have nowhere to run to" the priest smirked. "There will be no escape for you all this day. I suggest you take Rider's offer now, for such a mercy won't be granted again, I assure you."
"…"
"…"
"…Your orders, master" Saber and Lancer spoke in unison.
"Would rather die than give up at this point" Sortiara spat, the wind around us picking up ever so slightly.
"Jailbreak time, then" Johnathan asked.
"Jailbreak time" I grinned, nodding in agreement.
"Slay them" Rider ordered the assassins, rousing them to action.
The three of us humans didn't stick around long enough to see more than that though. We took off running, towards the edges of the bounded field, trying to find an anchor point. Or that was what I assumed the two actual magi were looking for; I was more or less following their lead here.
As I would come to find out during our running, Saber had charged back in to face Rider. Lancer stayed back, covering for us against the assassins. It made sense to go with this set up, if one considered that Saber's best defense against the mass of assassins was his lightning; no way to guarantee it wouldn't arc and electrocute one of us in the process. Lancer could easily enough ward the assassins away though, and between his skills with the spear and shield, when combined with Sortiara's wind magic, thrown daggers were no threat.
It also helped, though, that Saber's change in weaponry actually seemed to have given him the edge over Rider. Or, at the very least, assisted it, when combined with Rider's lack of space to maneuver on horseback. Some of the assassins had actually fallen back to assist Rider, meaning Lancer only had about 15 or so assassins to content with, rather than all 25 in here with us.
…Hey, it was hard to get an accurate count with them constantly jumping all over the place. Sue me!
"Found one" Sortiara called out, pointing at it so Johnathan wouldn't miss it.
"So, what now" I asked as we came to a stop beside it and Sortiara set up another wind wall; Lancer still playing the role of what was basically a bouncer for a club.
"Now we nullify the mana being fed to it" Sortiara grunted. "Or rather, Johnathan does. You can do this, right?"
"I can do it" he glared back at her. "Just… give me a moment."
Slipping some talismans out of his sleeves, Johnathan got to work rather quickly for someone who just said they'd need a moment. Forming a semicircle around the black key sticking out of the ground, the talismans began to glow a faint blue color. As they did so, I could visibly see the green, web-like magical energy of the barrier flicker into view. Slowly, the edge of the barrier began to rise. When there was enough space for talismans to slip under and to the outside, Johnathan had some do so. Now, a full circle of talismans surrounded the black key.
"T-This-" Johnathan grunted as the repelling of the barrier came to a standstill. "This could… take a bit!"
"A bit?! How long is a bit" Sortiara demanded. "We don't exactly have 'a bit' here, Johnathan!"
"If you think… you can… do better" Johnathan continued, sounding strained, "then by all means! Do this… yourself! Otherwise… s-shut up… and l-let me… w-work h-here…"
Watching Johnathan struggle against the barrier, protected behind the wind wall and by Lancer, I finally had a moment to fully re-evaluate the battlefield.
Saber is dealing with Rider… Lancer has this group of… shit, still can't track them all; say 15 for now… So, Saber has 10 assassins and Rider, we have 15 assassins here… then there's just the priest, who is-
Wait… where did the priest go? I actually hadn't noticed where he'd gone as we took off. Was he back with Rider, helping fight against Saber? It was possible, but between all the ringing of metal and the flashes of purple light coming from where I assumed Saber was fighting, I couldn't spot any red or orange from the priest's fire magecraft. Nor could I hear any of his usual comments, curses, grunts; anything of the sort.
But it wasn't like he was helping the assassins here either. Sure, the assassins may have been a blur to me, as well as their daggers, but the priest wasn't as fast as them. If he were acting alongside them, I would have spotted him by now, for sure. That, and his outfit tended to stick out to me; I couldn't spot it in the flurry of black cloaks and white masks.
But then, where…?
"Damnit Johnathan! Hurry it up" Sortiara shouted, her wind walls becoming noticeably weaker, even to myself; the currents of wind losing speed with each recasting.
"I can't go any- Any- …grh… Grh… Gah, fuck!"
Johnathan's arm was sparking like crazy now, drawing my attention over to it. Blue arcs raced up and down all along his arm, and were even starting to run across other parts of his body. Then, in a sound very similar to Saber's lightning, Johnathan's magic… well… exploded.
The talismans went flying outwards, away from the black key. The web-like magical energy immediately slammed the small gap along the ground shut, then disappeared from view, now fully complete once again.
Johnathan, meanwhile, was also sent flying backwards. Right into Sortiara, who barely had enough time to stick her arms out and try to keep him off of her. Not that it did any good; the force of the collision knocked both of them to the ground, Johnathan sprawled on top of her.
"You absolute imbecile" Sortiara screeched at him. "I knew it! I told you! I told you your system was overloaded! I told you there was no way you'd be able to perform magecraft tonight! Yet you-"
Johnathan wasn't hearing any of it though. He was completely out of it, groaning in pain, a trickle of blood coming out the corner of his mouth. Must have bit either his tongue or cheek. The clothing over his arm was shredded, the arm itself glowing a bright blue color, in a pattern that I could only describe as that of circuitry. It was also cut up all over the place, blood trickling down the limb in multiple thin lines.
Just then, the wind wall died. Sortiara, still pinned down with Johnathan on top of her, tried to move. Tried to push him off. Tried to raise her arms. Anything to get another wall up. But it was no use. Regardless of what she ultimately ended up doing, the wall would be down for a few good seconds. Precious seconds that we did not have.
Not because of the assassins, mind you. Lancer may not have watched the scene unfold, but he had great battlefield awareness. He immediately kicked into overdrive, moving to repel both the few assassins trying to divebomb in, as well as the curtain of daggers now sailing our way, capitalizing on the disruption.
No, it was the priest who would kill us. Just before Johnathan basically exploded himself, I had just managed to spot him. Or rather, the glint of his black keys. Three of them, just barely poking out from behind one of the dirt trees. The moment the wind wall fell, he moved. Three black keys went sailing through the air, the priest himself diving in right behind them, his hands showing the sign of that bodily reinforcement magic shit.
The assassins had Lancer out of position to assist. Johnathan couldn't do anything, and Sortiara had so many priorities to sort out and cover than I doubt she'd even noticed the priest waiting for his moment to strike. That left only… me…
The first black key just barely missed as I moved into the path of the priest. The second black key I managed to deflect with my sword. This actually filled me with euphoria for a moment.
I did it! I'd actually deflected it! I'm amaz-
The third black key immediately killed that high as it sunk into my right thigh. Thankfully, it wasn't on fire. But even then, it was painful enough to nearly take me off my feet, the leg immediately feeling like dead weight. Honestly, had it been a second or two longer, I would have been on my knees from the pain, opening me up for a killing blow.
But the priest was too fast, and too close to his victory to wait, it seemed.
*Clang*
His fist slammed into the sword I had just managed to raise in my defense. Thank god I managed too; that fist was aimed right at my heart, and I didn't even want to think of the damage it'd have caused to my chest. Provided it hadn't just outright killed me, that is. I'd even managed to brace my other arm behind the sword; try to provide it with something to assist in absorbing the blow.
…Yeah… that did fuck all, honestly speaking. With my leg momentarily losing feeling in it, I could barely stand. On top of that, this was me we were talking about. I wasn't even fit from a human standpoint, let alone as strong as Saber, a fucking servant! I wasn't absorbing this blow. I wasn't absorbing shit.
I found myself flying backwards from the force. That momentary weightlessness came to a very sudden stop as I slammed into a part of the barrier. The green magical energy flashed as I slammed into it, and I fell straight to the ground.
My right arm was vibrating like crazy. I'd played baseball for years growing up; I'd taken bad hits on my bat and had felt bad vibrations before. This was on a whole other level, believe you me. Left arm was worse though; couldn't feel anything there. I couldn't tell if it was just numb, or broken, or what. Honestly, I didn't want to think about it either.
I was gasping for breath, wind knocked out of me, struggling to stand, barely managing to maintain my grip on my sword. It hurt. It all hurt so much. I was impressed with myself on the sheer notion that I hadn't blacked out; this was probably the most pain I'd ever been in. Must have been the adrenalin coursing through me; I'd heard it was one hell of a pain killer.
All the while, the priest just leisurely walked over to me, completely ignoring the kids. Which, I suppose had been the goal?
Good job me. Now you get to die at the hands of a psychotic member of the damn Catholic Church…
In terms of ways to go, this was far from anything I'd wanted!
"I suppose it's just natural for a heretic to cling desperately to its depraved life" the priest smiled, preparing another three black keys.
Unlike the last ones, these ones were very much on fire.
"Heh" I laughed weakly, forcing myself to stand through all the pain. "If I must start as the god of 'heretics', then so be it. Still an existence above yours and your non-existent 'God'."
"Perish now, heretic, among the holy flames."
Fuck, I was not expecting to have to deal with this kind of a mess tonight!
As the priest threw the flaming black keys, I threw my backpack. In what I could only describe as a sick twist of fate, some god must have granted me some mercy, for the backpack successfully intercepted all three of the black keys. Or so I told myself; I didn't stick around long enough to watch it actually happen. I took off running, or rather, hobbling, as fast as I could, into the collection of dirt trees.
"Yes, continue to scurry as long as you can" the laughter of the priest echoed in my head. "Entertain me for as long as you wish; you will not leave this battlefield alive! You will perish in the holy flames of the Lord!"
A/N
Yay! No longer gimped Saber! I'm sure some of you will be able to draw a connection as to why I had Saber using different, much more basic swords, rather than his good blades, but if not, then... well, least he has them now, right? xD
Also, I hope the fight isn't seeming too... outlandish? Don't know how else to put it, but I am trying to create fight scenarios that are more... practical? Realistic? Have more common sense and thinking used than what I consider typical canonic fights to have? Again, don't know the best way to put it, and with how much I constantly rewrite before posting anything involving a fighting section, I always feel like I'm grasping at straws. Always wishing I could have visuals for this kind of stuff as well, but alas... must make do with what I got.
That said, if any of you have suggestions for fight sequences and the like, please do let me know; not like I got a real good idea how to do em yet xD
Now, on to the review!
First off, thank you for the explanation on skills. While I would say I'm fairly confident in my understanding on how skills work in FATE, I'm never going to turn down any info/explanations, so if anyone has anything to say/explain/correct, please do; I always would rather hear it than not! I do get that Information Erasure is conceptualizing how Jake was never ID'd in real life though (which, actually, isn't even true anymore, fully at any rate; they've pinned down Jack's ID to one of two people). Also, I don't believe the grail 'corrects' skills, so to speak, to match the time period, so much as the skills just always, naturally act that way. Riding, for example, working on mounts, with things like cars, motorcycles, ships, planes, ect. just being modern day 'mounts', as opposed to horses and other animals/beasts.
But back to Information Erasure as a skill. Really, I only used it as an example because I personally wished that A) they'd let tech be the 'hard counter' to magecraft, considering mankind has literally rejected the Age of Magic for what is basically the 'Age of Science', and banished all that shit to the Reverse Side of the World, or B) at least use those skills in interesting ways in their canonic showings.
Like, in Apoc, there are no security cameras, or cell phones recording things, or anything of the sort, by nature of where the war takes place. So they basically create a really powerful skill that lets you break all sorts of the standard rules of Holy Grail War engagement, but never create a scenario where that can be shown off, yet also basically just make magecraft 'more powerful' than tech (In what I consider to be a dumb way that wasn't required; magecraft SHOULD be 'stronger' than tech, due to it's limited pool of users making it far less convenient to use day to day. Hell, that very notion was played with in FATE Zero by both Kiritsugu and Kotomine) despite having mankind reject magic for science. Can we just... you know... pick one? Please Type-Moon? LOL
As for the other bit of the review... I mean, thank you for the kind words! Seriously. Though the notion of anyone being "enraptured" in my writing just can't fail to bring a chuckle out of me, seriously, thank you. That said, I do think anyone who considers my writing to be THAT good to be certified crazy xD
Seriously, I can't be... THAT good; this is only my first serious attempt writing shit! Surely there's much better to be found, even on this site.
Granted, I, uh, wouldn't know myself; this may count (it totally does...) as me writing fanfiction, but I've never looked... favorably... on fanfiction myself. I've only ever read one work of fanfiction, and that was for RWBY, because honestly, RWBY might just be the one IP I can think of where legit ANY fanfiction would be better written that what's become of the canonic work. Perhaps it's time I changed that and actually browse some of the works on this site, at least... though with school starting back up in like a week for me, it's fairly bad timing.
…Maybe I should take recommendations from y'all, though fair warning: I'm very judgy/picky on medium I consume, so think wisely before trying to self-advert to me xD
As always though, many thanks to everyone who's sticking it out and reading this far in. Whether you're "enraptured" (never gonna stop giggling at that), enjoying, or secretly hating and just waiting for all this to become a colossal dumpster fire, thank you all the same.
See y'all at the end of the next chapter xD