Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.
Aozaki and Tohsaka – The Serpent's Feathers
Chapter 10
"Omnidirectional Warp!"
Sakura shouted the aria even as she pulled the trigger, and loosed a trio of bolts from her crossbow. Like the bolts for her pocket crossbow, the bolts for her full-sized crossbow were made from manganese steel and magically-augmented, but with a key difference: they had tungsten cores and tips. Together with the increased power that came with a bigger crossbow, each bolt struck with the force of an armor-piercing, 20 mm cannon round.
Flying through the air in a blur, the three bolts met the chittering mass of writhing, chitin-plated forms that boiled out of the shadows and which protectively placed themselves between Sakura and her reflection. Flesh and chitin were reduced to mulch as the bolt simply blew through the mass, and reduced the reflection's torso into a mangled mess of ruined flesh and shattered bone.
At the same time, more of the worms boiled out of the shadows, heaving like a hideous parody of an ocean swell towards Sakura. Their chittering built to a crescendo, their sinuous forms oozing slime as though in anticipation of forcing themselves into the young woman's orifices. That, and fangs were bared, as most simply sought to tear into her flesh, by far the simplest and easiest way to enter and nest in her body.
Then they crossed an unmarked boundary around Sakura…
…and were promptly torn apart by her auto-defense mystery, omnidirectional warp.
An application of the spatial manipulation properties of Imaginary Numbers, it functioned by folding anything that entered a set boundary into Imaginary Numbers Space. But this was no static storage – or imprisonment – within that separate dimension of reality. Nor was it a safe and near-instantaneous transit between two points in space-time through circumvention of the intervening distance.
In omnidirectional warp, the spatial parameters were deliberately left undefined, essentially dumping anything folded through Imaginary Numbers Space into a quantum singularity. From there, they would be recycled and ejected back into the greater source of the World, that is the ambient field of mana naturally-generated by the environment.
Such was the fate of the worms that tried to swarm Sakura, dozens and then hundreds of the writhing, lowly familiars visibly being torn apart before the resulting remains faded into the infinite depths of Imaginary Numbers Space. All in fractions of seconds to boot…
…while Sakura reoriented herself, and flipping a switch, reset her crossbow from three-round bursts to full-auto.
"Get away from me!" she shouted even as she pulled the trigger.
Bolt after bolt launched from her crossbow, the sound of its mechanisms in operation a series of sharp and staccato notes. Roaring wordlessly, Sakura turned full-circle while keeping up the barrage, the cannon-like rounds of her crossbow blowing visible holes into the swarm and sending mulched remains splattering in great sheets across the floor and ceiling.
And then with a wordless shout, Sakura's reflection leapt out of the shadows, hand held out as though to grab. Witch light visibly shimmered around the hand, and Sakura drew a sharp breath in as she pivoted out of the way, wary of what would happen should her reflection make contact.
Evading with barely inches to spare, Sakura brought her crossbow up, even as her reflection turned and raised an arm. Then bolts all but blew the reflection apart, and sent its remains flying away from Sakura.
A sharp and final note rang in the dark, and Sakura hissed in dismay. That could only mean one thing.
Snarling, Sakura ejected the spent ammunition drum, the empty container falling into Imaginary Numbers Space even as Sakura pulled out a fresh one, and loaded it into place. Metal rang sharply as it slid home, and then once more as a bolt was loaded into place.
Sakura raised the crossbow to aim…
…and then a glowing bolt blew a hole through her right shoulder, flesh melting and bone rotting on impact. Her eyes widened…
…and then she screamed in agony, her right arm falling limp and her crossbow dropping to the ground with a clatter, the mystic code too heavy to carry with one hand, reinforcement or not. Still screaming, Sakura grabbed her ruined shoulder…
…as another bolt narrowly missed perforating her skull, and instead burned a gash across her left temple. Even then, it was enough to compromise her sight, and send her tumbling to the ground.
"That was just a taste, Sakura!" Sakura's reflection spat, rising to its full height even as its flesh flowed like wax to recover from the damage inflicted by Sakura's crossbow. "Put the toy down, take your clothes off, and lie down! Playtime's over, and…!"
Snarling once more, Sakura pulled out a pocket crossbow with her functioning hand, and loosed after a moment to aim. The explosive bolt blew a hole at least six-inches across through the reflection's torso, and floored it with a shout of pain.
Sakura took advantage of that to get up, heaving shallow breaths and struggling to keep steady on her feet. Her right arm hung limp and useless to her side, while her left eye was closed, that side of her face and head slick with blood.
Despite that, she kept her right eye on her reflection, face set resolutely as the reflection pulled itself together.
"…why?"
Sakura blinked, or tried to, holding back a wince as the compromised muscles on the left side of her face protested painfully. "W-what?" she stammered.
"Why?" the reflection repeated, staying on all fours on the ground. "Why are you still on your feet? Why are you still fighting? Why are you so strong?"
Sakura's mouth opened wordlessly in confusion, even as her reflection raised its face, violet eyes filled with hate, anger, and – surprisingly – envy meeting a blue eye firm with resolve.
"WHY HAVEN'T YOU GIVEN UP?" the reflection screamed as it launched itself at Sakura once more. "WHY…?"
Sakura raised another pocket crossbow, this one loaded with anti-spirit rounds. A bolt buried itself in the reflection's left shoulder, and it screamed in agony as blue-white lightning exploded over its body from the bolt. Sakura loosed again, and two more bolts buried themselves into the reflection's left hip and right lung respectively.
The screaming rose to a crescendo, all but drowning out the sharp crackling of displaced air from the lightning, and then both died down, the reflection slumping weakly to the ground. "…why…?" it whispered.
Sakura lowered her crossbow, the resolute set of her face softening with understanding and pity. "…if you're really me…" she said with a shake of her head. "…then you know I never give up. But then again, you're not me, are you? Not really…"
Sakura paused to briefly look away. "…you gave up." She finally said while turning back to her reflection. "That's why you asked that question…all of them…everything you just asked me, it all comes back to that. Or am I wrong?"
There was no answer, and Sakura closed her eyes while shaking her head. "If you want an answer," she began while reopening her eyes. "You only had to try."
The reflection lifted its head, face twisted with rage. "You think it's that easy?" she roared.
Sakura tilted her head. "I never said it was easy." She said.
The reflection grit its teeth, black and poisoned blood oozing from its wounds and mouth, and dripping down from its nose. Sakura stared for a long moment, and then slowly approached. She and her reflection kept their eyes on each other's own, until they were in front of each other.
And then raising her crossbow, Sakura reversed it, and offered it to her reflection.
In a heartbeat, the reflection grabbed the mystic code and pointed it up at Sakura. Sakura just stared down, impassive and unmoved, and then the reflection began to laugh. It was equally shrill and soft, not entirely sane and in no way innocent, and then it shook its head.
"You're a damn fool, Sakura Tohsaka." It mockingly said, before lifting and pointing the crossbow at its own head. And then it pulled the trigger, the reflection's body jerking as its head was blown apart.
Then it fell against the ground, the crossbow clattering against the stone floor as it did. The remaining worms' chittering faded into disappointed silence, and then Sakura snorted.
"Maybe I am," she admitted. "But it's better than the alternative."
For a long moment, her reflection's corpse lay in a growing pool of its own blood…
…and then as though a condition were met, it vanished, along with the witch light and the remains of the worms and all the filth inside the room. Instead, Sakura stood alone in a stone room with walls lined with obsidian mirrors, before stone heaved and an exit was revealed on the far side of the room.
Returning her weapons to Imaginary Numbers Space, Sakura winced as she clutched at her ruined shoulder, before running through the exit and down the passageway beyond. Again, stone heaved and the door slid shut, Tezcatlipoca's image leering triumphantly in the dark.
"Argh! That's bright!"
Touko hissed as she stepped through the exit, emerging from a portal built into the side of the pyramid and onto one of its stepped levels. Moments after passing through, stone heaved and sealed the exit behind her. Still blinking at the bright Sun outside – it seemed to be just around noon, give or take an hour or so – Touko silently regarded the seamless but time-pitted stone behind her for several moments, before sighing and looking around.
Now that her eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, it seemed that she'd emerged about a third of the way up the pyramid, and not far from one of the stairways carved into its sides towards the summit. Walking along the level's edge towards the stairs, it took only a couple of minutes to reach them.
Stepping around the gnarled image of Tlaloc, Touko nearly slipped on the stairs, built steep if wide, and like the pyramid or indeed, the rest of the city, worn and battered by millennia of desolation under the onslaught of the elements. Looking up the stairs towards the summit above, Touko sighed.
"This is going to take a while." She thought. A moment later and she found herself regarding the dead-eyed gaze of Tlaloc, the god's image flanking the stairway on either side each and every time it passed one level to the next. "Tlaloc…unsurprising he's here…but not really the most…encouraging, of any of the Mesoamerican gods…"
Sighing once more, Touko began to climb. As expected, it was long and tiresome, taking the better part of another hour by the time she reached the summit. A canopy of what looked like obsidian in a stone frame held up by four pillars stood at the summit, the pillars carved like dragons wound protectively around the stone with their heads protectively glaring outwards in four different directions.
It also seemed that at some point in the past, sculptures of jaguars guarded the canopy's base, though all were gone now. The only indication they were even there was the shattered remains of one of them, standing opposite from the side Touko had come up on.
The Grand Magus blinked as motion from below drew her away from her examination of the broken jaguar sculpture…
…and then with a yell of alarm, she was clambering down another stairway, risking sliding down and breaking herself against the stone, to where her apprentice was lying unconscious on the stairs, blood pooling around her and dripping down the steps.
"Oh fucking hell no…" Touko said with a shake of her head. "…no, no, no, no…damn it, girl, this is no place for you to die at…"
Gathering Sakura into her arms, Touko reinforced her body as she heaved her up, wincing as she spotted the ruined and infected remains of the younger woman's right shoulder. "Hang in there, Sakura." She whispered urgently. "Do you hear me, girl? Hang in there!"
There was movement above, followed by a voice. "Hello, my friends…what the…? Touko!" Benedek shouted from above.
"Benedek, get down here!" Touko shouted. "Help me with Sakura!"
Without further words, Benedek was rushing down the stairway, and together with Touko lifted the unconscious Sakura up to the summit.
"How bad is it?" Benedek asked.
"Bad," Touko hissed, busy setting a splint for Sakura's arm, her ruined shoulder already bound with a thick bandage to stop the bleeding and slow the infection. The same went for her head wound. "I'm going to have to completely rebuild her shoulder when we get back to camp. I'll also have to do something about that head wound, otherwise it's going to scar."
"What could have caused that degree of injury?" Benedek wondered. "Booby traps inside the pyramid? Her trial?"
"We'll find out once she wakes up." Touko said. "Though she probably passed her trial, otherwise she wouldn't be here."
"Fair enough." Benedek conceded, before turning away to regard the pyramid's summit. He'd already seen most of it earlier, when he first climbed up and before he'd gone to help Touko and Sakura, but he hadn't really taken in the details.
Now, as he looked up at the obsidian canopy and how it focused the light down on the carving below…
…no…not mere carvings…
…it was a map.
And somehow, he just knew where they were supposed to go.
"Hey…?" he began.
"What?" Touko snapped, still fussing over her apprentice.
"Come take a look at this for a moment…" Benedek said, waving Touko over.
Grumbling and heaving an unhappy sigh, Touko did just that. "This better be…oh." Touko began only to trail off, her irritation torpedoed by realization. "…I…huh…"
"…seems like passing our trials also planted the knowledge we needed – how to get to the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent at Rising Sun Point – directly into our heads." Benedek observed. And then catching himself, blinked and narrowed his eyes. "And what it's actually called."
"So it would seem." Touko agreed with a nod. "Though, not what we can expect over there."
Benedek hummed in agreement, and then Touko was going back to Sakura. "So what now?" he asked, following her with his eyes.
"I need to finish patching up Sakura, and then we'll head back to camp." Touko replied.
Benedek hummed again, and looked on in silence as Touko continued to fuss over her apprentice. After a few minutes though, said apprentice began to stir, feverishly swaying back and forth, and fluttering her eyes open.
And then throwing them wide, she pulled a pocket crossbow out of seemingly nowhere with her free hand…
…only for Touko to grab her by the wrist and point the crossbow to empty air. "Easy, Sakura!" she barked. "It's only us."
"Master…?"
"Yeah…it's me…"
Sakura relaxed, breathing heavily as she slumped against the pillar Touko had laid her on. "I…I'm not doing so good…" she groaned.
"Yeah…no kidding…" Touko said with a sigh, before gathering the younger woman into her arms again. "Come on kid, let's get out of here. We have what we want, and we can talk later, once we're somewhere safe."
"Hmm…"
"So what's the story? How'd you get this bad?"
Sakura and Touko were sitting in their pavilion hours later, the journey back from the Pyramid of the Mirror of the Sun thankfully quick and without trouble. Now, master and apprentice were seated next to each other, Sakura stripped down to her waist to allow Touko to work on her shoulder.
Touko had her sleeves rolled up, her hands covered by surgical gloves and her face masked. Having cleaned Sakura's shoulder and cut out dead and rotting flesh, to say nothing of shattered and broken bone, the Grand Magus could begin the task of literally rebuilding the ruined shoulder.
Sakura shrugged…
…or at least she tried to, what with the right side of her body numb and effectively-paralyzed thanks to the effects of anesthetic. "The illusions conjured by the mysteries in that temple were nasty, master." She said. "I…I'm not sure how realistic what…what they showed me was, but its attacks were…powerful…"
"…you used your omnidirectional warp, didn't you?" Touko asked after a moment.
"Yes."
"…very nasty indeed…" Touko agreed.
And why shouldn't she? Between Sakura's forty A-rank magic circuits, plus the sheer rarity – and thus profoundness of the resulting mysteries – of her Sorcery Trait, for an offensive mystery to break through her omnidirectional warp would require a rank of at least A.
The same went for familiars, and spirits…
…Imaginary Numbers were especially effective against spirits. Sakura and her mysteries didn't have enough accumulated weight to affect Heroic, Divine, and Nature Spirits, but common spirits would be completely helpless against her. The same went for Animal and Guardian Spirits with less than five hundred years of accumulated weight, to say nothing of mere apparitions and wraiths.
"…we might think of Estray's people as silly old men and women with their heads stuck up their own asses," Touko continued. "And rightly so…but thing is, they're not completely wrong either."
"The best lies have a touch of truth at their heart, huh?" Sakura asked.
"…not completely appropriate," Touko said after a moment. "But not completely incorrect either. The Age of Man and its works both mundane and supernatural aren't completely worthless despite what Estray might think…but while the gods are dead and gone, the mysteries they crafted and which Estray trumpet are indeed powerful and profound."
Sakura said nothing, merely nodding in agreement. She knew and understood that much.
Touko continued working in silence for several more minutes, and after finishing the bone work, began to do the same for the flesh around. "What'd you see anyway?" she asked.
Sakura did not answer for a very long time, so much so that Touko thought and accepted that she wouldn't. She was prepared to let it go, master or not, privacy was still a thing, and facing one's own inner demons was understandably in that area.
But then Sakura answered.
"I saw myself." She said softly.
"…talk about facing one's inner demons." Touko murmured, and Sakura nodded.
"…I saw myself as a lab rat, and deluded into thinking that was all I was ever born to be." She softly continued.
"A lab rat?" Touko echoed. "Really?"
"Why else would its hair and irises have been violet?" Sakura asked back. "Only alchemy could have done such a thing…and to such an extent…what a nightmare that would be…"
Touko briefly looked away, humming in thought, and nodded in agreement. "Is that all?" she asked while resuming work.
"…master, do you know of any…magical construct or whatnot, that looks like a…well, a worm, that looks like a man's dick, with fangs at its head?"
Touko froze, and looked at Sakura incredulously. "Are you seriously asking me that question?" she asked in a disbelieving tone.
"…yes."
"That sounds a lot like crest worms to me." Touko said with an expression of mixed disgust and disbelief. "Disgusting things…who would use them in this day and age? Talk about barbaric."
"I…do I want to know?"
"From what I know they're parasites." Touko said while continuing to work on Sakura's shoulder. "They nest in their host, feeding on blood and flesh in men, but driving up a woman's sexual frustration to force her into having sexual relations to produce prana for them to feed on. Male hosts die in a matter of months to a year or two as their bodies are torn apart from the inside out. Female hosts go mad one way or another in about the same time."
"…why on Earth would anyone let those things nest in them?" Sakura asked, disgusted.
"Crest worms have the ability to widen magic circuits, allowing for more power and quality." Touko replied. "You know how magi are. Some greedy – or desperate – morons would think the risk worth it."
"…guess I can't argue with you there."
"That," Touko continued after a moment. "And they're technically a Phantasmal Species…though I personally disagree with that assessment."
"Seriously?" Sakura asked, her turn to be incredulous this time.
"About what?" Touko asked back.
"They're a Phantasmal Species." Sakura said. "Those things were going down the drain into Imaginary Numbers Space like there was no tomorrow."
"And that's why I disagree with them being considered one." Touko said. "Even if they can't normally exist as per the rules of physics, they shouldn't qualify to be considered a Phantasmal Species, even of just Monstrous Rank. Care to guess why?"
"…the appearance of a Phantasmal Species is supposed to be comparable to True Magic." Sakura said with a nod after a moment.
"Precisely," Touko said with a nod. "Even your basic familiar made from a dead animal has a higher quality than a single fucking crest worm."
"…even used in swarms," Sakura remarked after a moment. "It's still like multiplying something against zero. The answer still comes out as zero."
"And that doesn't factor in how suicidal the other side-effects of using them are." Touko said with a nod.
Sakura nodded as well, and then master and apprentice settled into silence as Touko continued to mold and knit Sakura's flesh back together. After nearly half an hour, Touko finished, and moved onto the gash along the side of Sakura's head.
"…I'm guessing your…reflection, was using crest worms?" Touko asked as she cleaned the gash. "I can't think of any other reason why you'd be asking about them otherwise."
"Yup."
"Huh…guessing you weren't found by me then in that kind of scenario…and probably by some third-rate hack or whatnot instead."
Sakura snorted and then laughed. "Guess I got lucky then." She said. "Really lucky."
Touko snorted in her turn. "Nothing wrong with being lucky." She said. "Some people would downplay it, or even dismiss it entirely, but me? That's just sour grapes, nothing more and nothing less. Hell, we lionize geniuses and prodigies, but the only reason they're geniuses and prodigies in the first place is that they were lucky to be born with such talent. The same goes for all those snobby aristocrats with their heads up their asses, whether magi or not. How many of them earned their money with their own hands? Their status in society? How many of them only got it because they were born with the right names at the right time?"
Snorting again, Touko shook her head. "Never be ashamed about getting lucky." She said. "There's no reason to be."
Sakura nodded in understanding, and again silence fell, as Touko worked on Sakura's head wound.
"So we now know where the final destination is." Alba said.
"Yes." Touko said with a nod.
They were standing around a map table in the command tent, coffee available to one side. The magi had freshened up, changed clothes, and in Sakura's case, sported a sling to hold her right arm in place for the night.
It should be back to normal by tomorrow, though it'll probably be stiff come morning.
Oh, and drink these. Something to replenish lost blood, and to keep off any potential infection.
"Where exactly?" Alba asked.
The three magi pointed as one to a point on the map. "Rising Sun Point, that's what the Mayan name for it more or less means in English." Touko said. "The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent is there, at least the last one she personally graced with her presence."
"Her?" Alba echoed.
"Yeah," Sakura said with a nod. "Turns out everyone whether magi or not have been…misinformed, the whole time. Quetzalcoatl wasn't a god but a goddess."
"I suspect the Aztecs or even the post-Classic Maya were too." Touko said.
"And you know this…how?" Alba asked.
"Passing the trials of the Mirror of the Sun planted information in our heads." Benedek explained. "It's…subconscious, really…it told us where the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent was, and in hindsight, corrected some misconceptions about the Feathered Serpent as well."
"Huh…well, I guess I won't pry there…so what's the plan, boss lady?"
Touko glanced at the captain evenly, and then nodded. "…we get a good night's rest," she said. "And then we head out at dawn."
"…alright then."
A/N
A couple more weaknesses of Sakura's omnidirectional warp I couldn't properly insert into the chapter: it doesn't affect Humans unless they let it. Not without Angra Mainyu's curse (this is also why she can't affect higher-level spirits like Dark Sakura can i.e. Heroic/Divine/Nature Spirits). And without Matou absorption magecraft, Sakura can't absorb the resulting prana when something is sucked into the quantum singularity that comes from Imaginary Numbers Space having undefined parameters.
