"Watch out," Jeanne reminded the Masters while her fellow Servants assaulted Lainur's physical form. Multiple waves of magical energy burst forth from the half-submerged pillar entity, and while Chaldea's Servants might normally view such a means of attack as rather lacking compared to using weapons strengthened by the power of legends...
"That's no joke," Gudako frowned, watching one of the attack fronts break against Jeanne's banner. "We could've really used Artoria's (Caliburn) against something like this."
At first they might have thought the eyes to be obvious targets, but these soon proved themselves to be defensive strongpoints instead. Each time one of the eyes shone with energy, an attack soon came out - and the pillar was covered in the things ! Though if damaged an eye took some time to regenerate, it wasn't obvious how this helped to actually take down Lainur's non-human version.
"Hyup!" Scathach nimbly dodged an attack sent her way, smoothly skating across the now calm and glassy black pond. The cavern shook as the pillar attempted to swat Kojirou and Georgios out of the air around it, but they had figured out to move around quickly enough that any eye was unable to properly track them. Despite his revealed power, Lainur did not seem to have a good way to apply it to them and was certainly sustaining damage, even if for the moment it was apparently non-fatal.
"Keep cutting away !" Gudao shouted encouragement to Kojirou who had just finished a bold series of slashes while making short teleports around the pillar in order to complete a circuit and meet up with Georgios, who had also switched to Ascalon's sword form. "We'll have to trust in Shirou and the rest to clinch the deal !"
Scathach had placed a number of small, which is to say rune-sized, supports in midair for them. Nimble for a mount as he was, four-legged Bayard could not navigate this battlefield, leaving the knight and swordsman to rely on their footwork. Obviously Lainur could easily destroy a number of these at once with an attack, but doing so meant letting up, if slightly, on the Servants who were rapidly adjusting to the vertical game of eye-slicing.
Chaldea's Caster also tried using her runes to effect (Dispel Magic) and (Counterspell) in an attempt to reverse the tide of combat, but it seemed like Lainur was largely lashing out with raw power, the energy of which would not simply, as convenient as it might have been, be counteracted.
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(A pocket of Imaginary Numbers Space)
In an empty void, a girl draped in black and a man in an attention-grabbing green suit stared at one another. "How the fuck did you..."
The man was the first to speak, but the girl the first to act. Invisible from their source somewhere in the darkness, razor sharp red-edged black ribbons lashed out and red-streaked spikes thrust themselves at her chosen target.
Frowning in disappointment, or perhaps half-surprised amazement, the magus made a small hand gesture, shattering the spikes and ripping up the ribbons contemptuously. "You could have had everything you wanted, why? ... I suppose it's foolish to ask for rationality from a human."
Sakura just smiled thinly, but paused as Lainur abruptly bent over to the side in an uncanny manner to avoid a pair of thrown shortswords as Shirou appeared behind him.
"You pest," Lainur growled as Shirou took a moment to throw a few black iron spears at him for good measure while dodging an attempt at retaliation. "You were definitely a mistake."
"Indeed," the other male grinned. "I'm sure you thought it was pretty clever, finding the versions of me who weren't Counter Guardians able to kill you on sight. But thinking I was some second-rate summon you could dangle as a boytoy was a massive miscalculation."
The two-on-one fight continued for some time, with neither side gaining any momentum. It was hard to tell if it was only an opening flurry that despite many blows and counter-blows had taken only a blink of an eye, or a drawn-out confrontation more like a marathon. But this stalemate was broken by the arrival, with a splash in the normally solid void, of a familiar schoolgirl.
At that moment, though, Lainur seemed distracted even as the tempo of the battle in this odd worldspace sped up. While the trio opposing him couldn't tell, the Masters had decided to resort to using their remaining Command Spells, figuring that a concentrated attack with the three offensive Noble Phantasms they had was best done early and concentrated to try and reach some sort of Spirit Core analogue.
"Just like you to arrive to the final battle by landing on your ass," Shirou quipped, reaching down to help Sasaku to her feet. At the same time, he quickly passed her a scabbarded sword. "You'll know what to do."
The Ruler nodded as she and the Archer quickly went separate ways to avoid an attack from Lainur. Truth be told, while he had been initially quite easily able to handle Sakura's attacks before, she had been able to keep him busy during the other two's exchance. This was in part because she was leeching magical energy from Shirou and Sasaku, who had come in with Command Spell-filled reservoirs.
"This shouldn't be possible, you humans are such weak lifeforms..." Lainur was moving like a blur, constantly fending off attacks from Sakura and now Shirou and Sasaku who had closed in to use swords. While he was fully capable of stopping the projected Noble Phantasm copies being used on him, it was beginning to take a toll. Sasaku was swinging the loaned sword in her usual high-hand style as she and Shirou constantly circled around Lainur, forcing him around and around just to avoid being pincered.
"You realize your real mistake was in 'accidentally' summoning the Shirou you murdered, right?" Reading the situation deftly, Shirou tried to pull Lainur's attention which of course meant trying to distract or taunt him. "...yeah come to think of that, you must have had accomplices to attack Chaldea, but I assume you made sure they ended up mutually killing one another, huh?" Shirou had previously made the point to Sakura not long after being summoned by Lainur as a 'present' for her, though at that point, it was largely speculation.
"Like I care-" Lainur made as though to slap at Shirou; if it connected that would probably represent a strike much heaver than a cut from one of the Archer's swords. However, Shirou had been waiting for such an over-extension, taking advantage of the opportunity to grab hold of Lainur's hand and then arm, quickly transitioning to a standing necklock that resembled a bearhug.
"Now !" he shouted as Sakura, misunderstanding the situation, tried to run up to the interlocked pair as though to somehow pull them apart.
Switching smoothly from her intended cut, Sasaku grabbed her weapon halfway down the blade's length and then, practically jumping for the right angle, thrust it downwards into Lainur's ribcage from the back of his neck. "Cleave the wicked ! (Caliburn) !"
The weapon shattered as a terrifyingly powerful ray pieced through the magus' chest cavity, exiting downwards between Shirou's legs and then disappearing into the void he was standing on. As Lainur's form slumped to the ground with an obvious hole all the way through it, Shirou projected his dual swords and in an elegant coup de grace took off his head.
"Hu hu hu," Lainur's disembodied voice mocked them. "You this a real victory?"
"On the contrary," Sakura retorted quietly, having by this point made it up to Shirou's side and realized the sudden reversal brought about by his strategy. "If you come here physically, it's beyond simply real." She nonchalantly picked up the fallen head. "How ironic, guess I'm going to eat your soul."
"On the contrary," he repeated the girl's words back to her mockingly, "I'm going back to the Temple now, thanks for making it convenient." And with that 'Lainur' abruptly disappeared from Sakura's space. In the physical world, his massive pillar form spontaneously broke up into spiritrons and disappeared.
"Hmm, even that wasn't enough to kill him, I see." Shirou simply appeared thoughtful at this turn of events. "You did charge that sword to the max, right?"
Sasaku calmly sat down in the middle of the void, brushing some stray hairs into place. "I thought that was the plan, but I guess even the two of us couldn't get enough juice to one-shot him."
"Well, honestly he's probably above Servant-level," Shirou shrugged. "I mean... Chaldea's Servants are a bit downranked, otherwise two Masters wouldn't be able to keep six of you around. But you know what I mean."
"Ahem." Sakura made her remaining presence known. "Two things: he probably has an affinity for the element of Imaginary Numbers, so... yeah. And we didn't even get all of him in here. Not by far, since there was a big fight on the other side."
"Well, we couldn't tell what was going on outside," Shirou replied. "Anyway, I think that mostly wraps up everything?"
Sakura nodded quietly. "Take this." And with that she casually tossed a golden goblet-like object into Sasaku's lap. "Goodbye."
"Tell our kids we love them," Shirou added as Sasaku abruptly dropped through the emptiness with a yelp, "Wait, wha- !"
"..."
"Eh, good luck with everything," Ruby commented, appearing without warning from its contractor's last position. "Can't wait to see you ag- oh, the recall- " And then it disappeared.
(An undisclosed cavern under London)
"I don't think that was him dying," Gudao remarked with an upset look for many reasons. "More like pulling a fast one on the way out."
*cough* "Yeah well I'm afraid that'll have to do for now," Kojirou spluttered, still recovering from being smashed by Lainur's pillar which was not as stationary as it had seemed earlier. Granted, it might have been his pride more than anything else that was injured by the parting sucker punch, though as Georgios pointed out, blunt force would have harmed even his armored form.
"-at?!" Everyone turned to spot a small Servant, in a seated posture, abruptly fall upwards from the glassy black grail mud pool while clutching what was obviously a grail fragment. Not long after that, Ruby also appeared and Sasaku quickly transformed before landing with a semblance of grace.
"Guessing you didn't manage to kill him either?" Gudako asked, immediately receiving confirmation from the Servant. "Ah well, he did pretty well hiding all... that while in Chaldea. Impressive, unfortunately."
"By the way, what about Shirou and Sakura?" Gudao added, motioning for everyone to get clear of the slick surface as it apparently started to evaporate. Considering what it was, that was both alarming and encouraging in equal measure.
"... don't tell me they're stuck?" Remembering what the Masters had said about the end of Shirou and Illya's mortal careers, Sasaku quickly passed the golden cup into Jeanne's custody before running back to the shrinking pond and trying to hop in - only to slip on the hard surface and slide a ways after falling over in surprise, much to Ruby's amusement.
"Uh, you can't get back in?" Gudako sounded surprised and a little upset by this surprising outcome.
"Apparently she must have specifically let me in before," Sasaku replied after attempting to get to her feet and just hovering instead since it was more straightforward then getting to one's feet on the abnormally frictionless pond.
"I should point out that she's probably not the Matou Sakura you met in the previous war," Gudao informed the Ruler with a small frown. "I think she has her own issues to work out right now."
"But what about Shirou?" was the natural response.
"I think he... well their relationship rather, is one of the more critical issues, actually."
(Sakura's Imaginary Numbers Space)
"It's a good thing Lainur misinterpreted my surprise on seeing you," Shirou remarked casually to Sakura a moment after confirming Sasaku's departure.
"Hmm, how so?" she replied obligingly in a much softer voice than before.
"You know that I know that you're mostly actually not my wife, yeah?" he said as neutrally as possible.
There was nothing much to be said to that, so Sakura simply nodded.
"Ok, so besides that odd velvety ribbon-dress thing, hair ribbon, and of course very nice red eyes, the really critical difference was, and please listen carefully here, the very first thing you said when you saw that Lainur had summoned me." Shirou paused for a moment before prompting her. "You do remember that?"
'Senpai?' was what it had been, and she knew it.
But it was her clear realization of the significance of that fact that gave Shirou the confirmation that he had been seeking, though outwardly all he said initially was, "Hmm... I see, I see."
Based off Lainur's comments, it seemed apparent now that the non-human magus had not exactly 'summoned' Sakura, so much as somehow constructed her Spirit Origin, possibly by adding a large number of various individuals from across different branches together in a, successful, effort to make up the necessary power for a Servant-level entity. Perhaps he had somehow used their matching elemental affinity to find, what might it be, something like 'Sakuras who were extraordinarily powerful and died with regrets,' perhaps.
But he had either messed up, or the Grail interfered, causing at least one Sakura that had married Shirou, or more specifically with respect to that giveaway moment, one that had as far back as their Grail War, been asked to not call him Senpai any more, to be added to the mix. This meant that Lainur didn't end up with exactly the sort of monster like the had managed with the Dragon Witch and Boudica, if those two were his work.
And that detail had been the linchpin in his defeat today, Shirou reflected with some satisfaction.
"... Shirou, I..."
There wasn't time to awkwardly stumble around trying to keep it smooth, so he simply started straightforwardly. "No, just listen to what I have to say, since we're on a timer now."
The dark Sakura quickly nodded acceptance.
"After Jack took off, I took the chance to follow her as an excuse to get out of Lainur's sight. Of course, I soon lost sight of Jack and then was forced to forget about her due to Jack the Ripper's special Skill. Anyway, wandering about like that, I ran into Nursery Rhyme."
"And?"
"Ah well, she trapped me until I agreed to have tea with her. Of course that was the real trap, except that Spartacus somehow ran in and broke up the event. Rhyme seemed quite knowledgeable though, since she said something that clued me in on what had happened. Before the interruption, that is."
'She's had a lot of Bad Ends. But now, their story isn't ended.'
"So who am I?" Sakura asked in a confusion that matched her own internal state.
Shirou had a pretty good guess, to be honest, even though from a second-hand source. Though he looked like a child, that Gilgamesh in the Grail War had a special type of (Clairvoyance) and knew that in many cases, Sakura was able to become the sort of catastrophe able to provoke a Counter Force response or even cause branch pruning where she had thus manifested.
But at the same time, somehow the Masters, with only the one chance to look at her, might have been able to figure out all this about the Sakura in front of him. Still, even Shirou could hardly think it anything other than intuition, Gudao had said...
"Aren't you my wife?" Shirou found it odd how easily it came out. He held up a left hand with the ring on it; she didn't actually have one, though. "And Iri and Matthew's mother. But we haven't beaten the odds, haven't made it yet."
Sakura just blinked in surprise, but was already completely pulled into his current.
"Give me your hand," Shirou said simply, holding out his own.
"Without the Grail, I can't really control my magecraft that- " she protested, but he interrupted her.
"I wasn't asking. We don't have time." However, he did not move, just left his hand extended towards her as an invitation.
"..."
"... ok then, Shirou." She reached out and clasped his offered hand in both of hers, but only loosely. The two of them watched as familiar black lines started to run down Shirou's arm, and then up to his shoulder.
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Notes:
Basically, Lainur summoned his 'custom' Dark Sakura, along with Artoria, Shirou, Babbage, Paracelsus, Jack the Ripper and Spartacus. The World summoned Mordred, and Nursery Rhyme basically just "popped in on her own" (but her story is for another time).
Mordred and Artoria's duel will be next time.