Ereshkigal's sudden appearance ripped the room to shreds in a hurricane of energy. Mana-formed lightning burst through discarded books, decrepit shelves and tables, and narrowly slipped by the living occupants. Olga Marie still had to magically divert a bolt, but the storm was over as soon as it began.
After the storm came the pressure, the weight of godliness nearly driving Olga Marie to the floor. It had always been there- she knew Ereshkigal was divine, but only now did she face the full force of divinity's entrance without any adrenaline shielding her from the effect. Everything in the director's core balked beneath the unfiltered power the goddess exuded. Olga Marie had no way of knowing that the goddess's divinity affected her much more strongly than others- while she physically staggered, the other two seemed unaffected.
The Queen of Kur's cloak billowed behind her, flowing on air that was now ten times denser and full of authority. Her beauty, once hidden by flames and the light of a summoning circle, was incomparable in its cold, regal existence. Even so, Olga Marie found a certain comfort in her presence, a certain instinct telling her that, if her life ended today, being held in this goddess's embrace would be a comfortable afterlife. Beneath the queen's practiced ice, Olga Marie felt the nostalgic warmth of home. She felt suspended in Ereshkigal's light, like a moth drawn to a flame.
The director felt the rush of blood hit her face. She still had to chew the goddess out for ignoring her, and this is where her mind went? Stupid!
"Servant, Lancer-class. Mistress of the Underwo- ow!" She bit her tongue. "Ahem," she cleared her throat and looked around, daring anyone to speak. No one did. "Mistress of the Underworld, Ereshkigal. I have come in answer to your summons. I don't like to help a single person exclusively, but I'll help you out since you summoned me. You should be grateful."
"Thank you for your help, Lady Ereshkigal," Mash said with a slight bow.
The goddess, as dignified as she was, didn't expect such a snappy response.
"Oh, um, well…" Ereshkigal sputtered, "you're very welcome, Mash. Any time." The goddess huffed, pushing her chest out in pride before backtracking. "N-not any time, I mean. You know, I'm a g-goddess and all, so I can't go giving out my support that… freely, so um, like, only sometimes." The goddess's shoulders pulled inwards as she spoke, her posture slowly turning more and more timid. "Not to say I won't help you, just, you know, if I help you too much then it might affect how I'm perceived by other gods and goddesses, which would be a little bit… not… ideal..."
The goddess cleared her throat. "Anyways! Master!"
"Y-yes!" Fujimaru responded. His sharp exhale of pain as he tried to sit up further wasn't lost to Olga Marie; Ereshkigal's healing had saved his life, but he was far from fully recovered. They would have to take that into consideration in the future. For now, though, Ereshkigal's focus was elsewhere.
"You can't waste command seals like that! Actually, I would prefer you not use them on me at all!" she scolded, waving a finger at him disapprovingly. "I said I was preparing, and I'm a reliable goddess. Re-li-a-ble! There's no need to rush me!"
"Umm…"
Olga Marie saw Ritsuka's eyes flicker over towards her. It was a minute movement at most, but Ereshkigal caught on to its implications immediately.
When Ereshkigal shut off their mental link, Olga Marie might have gotten a bit angry. She might have uttered a string of curses that would've made sailors uncomfortable. She also, in the heat of the moment, might have screamed something along the lines of, "Fujimaru, if you don't summon your Servant here right now I will end your bloodline!" That threat, in execution, contained many more explacitives and some unsavory details that Olga Marie redacted from her memory in shame. Regardless the director's rage-fueled desire to rip into Ereshkigal for blowing her off remained. The frustration of being ignored combined the fact that she was leading a frantic emergency mission to save the entire world led to a borderline-manic impatience. Ritsuka, in the face of this, did as he was told.
They could not save anyone if they were not on the same page, and Olga Marie was going to drill that into the goddess's self-important head. At least, that's what she thought before Ereshkigal turned her glowing saffron eyes on her.
When their eyes met, Olga Marie suddenly felt very, very small.
"Did you push my contractor to waste a command seal summoning me, girl?"
The pressure of divinity returned. A deep, primal terror washed over her. She couldn't breathe. She could barely think. Lying wasn't an option- rather, lying never even crossed her mind. Lying could only mean death. Any misstep, Olga Marie realized, would mean death. "I-I did, yes." Her voice held none of its usual bluster. As much as she wanted to bring the Servant to heel, Ereshkigal's glowing eyes pierced whatever veil of power Olga Marie could put up in defense. She felt the cages of the underworld curl around her heart, she felt the cold caress draining her, pulling her down into the abyss, suffocating her, dragging her down oh divines she couldn't breathe-
"Ereshkigal, was it?" Ritsuka asked, punctuated by the director's gasp for air. His smile spoke to his obliviousness, but there was a small crease of anxiety in his brow that only Mash noticed. "We haven't actually had a proper introduction yet. My name is Ritsuka Fujimaru. A pleasure to meet you!"
He held out his and bowed slightly, striking the pose of a knight asking for a noble lady's hand. Ereshkigal struggled internally, offering her hand only to pull it back right before he grabbed it, then, with a deep breath, placing her hand in his.
Ritsuka grasped it gingerly. "The Director did ask me to summon you, yes. However, I'm not an experienced Master or mage, so I didn't know how to access our telepathic link! Silly, right? She didn't push me to use a command seal, but recommended it given the urgency of the situation! Sorry!"
The director bit her tongue to keep her reaction to Ritsuka's lie under wraps. Mash's confused eyes met her own for a brief second, but the moment didn't last. The Shielder fell in next to Ritsuka and the Lancer to complete a neat semi-circle of three, closing Olga Marie off.
Servants, as her father and Lev described them to her, could be fickle, powerful beings that didn't always take to authority well. Some needed to be brought to heel. Olga Marie knew this. Her plan just two minutes ago was to bring Ereshkigal to heel. Ereshkigal, however, didn't even let her consider enacting that plan.
Ereshkigal, with nothing but a simple question, turned Olga Marie into a sniveling puppy.
"You're a respectful one, Fujimaru. This goddess appreciates it," Ereshkigal flashed him a kind smile, so opposite of her powerful scowl. "However, I will ask that you do not use a command seal on me so wastefully. I would not abandon the humans who seek my help. Next time, exercise patience. But I digress. I do feel a connection with you, so let's figure out the telepathic link."
"Lady Ereshkigal, if I may?" Mash interjected.
"Yes, Mash?" she turned to the Shielder.
"Well, now that everyone's awake, we should go over strategies for the future of this operation."
"R-right!" Olga Marie finally forced her voice to work. Her confidence wavered as the goddess fixed her attention on her again, but the pressure wasn't there. "To solve this singularity, we need a plan. Our options are limited and our timeframe is shrinking rapidly; Chaldea is burning and we need to return to it as soon as possible. Let's review what we know and go forward from there."
In the following minutes, the team formulated a (very bare-bones) plan: Avoid Berserker while moving towards the Grail cavern, draw out and eliminate Archer, then take on Saber for the grail. So, basically, the overall plan didn't change from Chaldea's the initial, panic-filled machinations they made when they first landed in Fuyuki and met up with Caster.
At least, that was what Ereshkigal gathered from the spirit's incredulous response. "That's it?!" she had screamed, "That's barely a plan! You can't be calling that a plan! Really?!"
"Our Servant," Ritsuka had said, implying that Ereshkigal had subjugated herself not only to one Master but two (a show of insolence she might have trouble forgiving him for), "will go with you, Director, to scout ahead and make sure Mash and I don't run into any trouble. I understand that your relationship is a little… well, tense, but the director is the most experienced magus here and, no offense to Mash, from what I've heard you're the strongest offensive power we have right now." Ereshkigal remembered vividly the ragged, pained breath he took. "I'm not in any condition to keep up with you two. Mash and I will follow as closely behind as we can, but you can't let me slow you down. Humanity's history depends on us getting this done in a timely manner."
Thus, Ereshkigal's spirit form floated behind a silent director as they navigated the rubble of a ruined Fuyuki. The goddess would give directions now and again (she had created a map of the entire city, after all) but otherwise kept to herself. Her brief interactions with the girl were enough to brand her as 'Ishtar-like,' and thus Ereshkigal didn't want to have anything to do with her. However, their current circumstances didn't allow for such drastic measures. She focused on the passing scenery instead, and let her spirits protect the girl per Ritsuka's request.
Even burning and ruined, Fuyuki was still another place to explore. She was secretly glad Olga couldn't see her face as she silently oo'd and ah'd at, well… the fire. There were remnants of the modern world, shopfronts and gutted vehicles, but not enough for her to satisfy her curiosity. The goddess didn't want to admit her disappointment, but at least it was warm here compared to her underworld.
The goddess frowned. She kept talking about her underworld, but… she didn't preside over anything in these modern times. After the Age of Gods, the deities of her time faded away, or morphed into some other divine entity. Her plans of greeting Risuka after death were, admittedly, nothing more than a nice fantasy. It would be impossible unless she pulled his soul into a cage before she disappeared. Her Noble Phantasm allowed her to temporarily create Kur, but it was more like a reality marble than her actual domain. Actually thinking about the logistics of her dreams further dampened Ereshkigal's mood, so she turned her focus back to their mission.
According to the small group she found herself apart of, a Caster native to this singularity told them that certain corrupted Servants were defending the Grail in a cavern beneath the remnants of a local shrine. Something about their description of the blue-haired caster annoyed her, and she had no words about the blind trust they put in this man, but if those were her Master's wishes… so be it. Some of the fog clouding her memory cleared just enough for her to know 'this was right.' It was just a feeling, but something she felt confident enough in to let them continue as is. Recalling any details was near impossible; if anything, her memories of the Babylonian singularity were fading further away, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
The director and Roman hypothesized that Archer, after encountering an incredibly powerful Servant such as herself, would retreat and fortify their base. Ereshkigal was able to confirm that the cavern they talked about was the same her spirits had clocked earlier, so they at least had a location to work off of. She never realized how much planning went into solving the singularities. To her, they were just stories of adventure and action now locked away into feelings of wanderlust and vague scenes running through her memory. This whole 'strategizing' thing was… tedious.
The ruined city made for difficult travel- for the 'human,' at least. Ereshkigal's spirit flowed here and there, not in the least concerned about rubble, fire, or cracks in the ground. By command, though, she was forced to be concerned enough about the girl to stop and wait for her to cross an exceptionally large fissure splitting a road in half. It wasn't a command-seal induced command, but the order to 'treat the director as if she's your Master' was enough to bind her, at least somewhat. The goddess took on her physical form on the other side of the gap.
The blonde's body remained primly seated on what used to be the wall of a building. She said nothing, merely watching the young spirit gauge the distance and prepare to jump. It seemed she knew better than to ask the Lancer to carry her across; no, something like that was far beneath her stature. She would be reprehensive even if Ritsuka himself asked that of her. Well, maybe not...
The goddess absently turned to look into the broken storefronts lining the street. After a moment, she stood and brushed off her maroon cloak, pulled it snug, and walked towards the shattered windows. While much was destroyed, the thoughts of seeing new things in the outside world drew her to window shop as much as she could without betraying her royal air. Finding anything intact, though, was another issue entirely. It was all just ash and rubble.
Something twinged at her psyche. Her head snapped back towards her mana battery on instinct. Was the girl in danger? The world seemed to slow as Ereshkigal tried to figure out why Ritsuka's order kept replaying in her mind. Olga had started running towards the fissure, blue lines of magic pumping through her legs-
That was it! Ereshkigal tore into action, the ground behind her shattering under the force. Just as the spirit girl reached the edge, prepared to make a jump any mage could make easily, the light blue magic crackled and flickered. Her reinforcement spell failed and sputtered out at the crucial moment. With a yelp of surprise, Chadlea's director stumbled and would have fallen into the earth had Ereshkigal not closed the distance and caught her roughly by the collar. The goddess threw her to the other side before returning herself.
"Oww…" she muttered, rubbing what would surely turn into a nasty series of bruises on her right arm.
"Are you daft?! Be more careful!" Ereshkigal hissed, eyes flaring yellow.
"What… why did my reinforcement fail? That was a perfect cast!"
"Of course the spell failed, you're-" Ereshkigal choked on the last words, 'a spirit, physical reinforcement works differently.' The Throne picked that exact moment to shut her up. How tedious.
Olga Marie's expression darkened. "I'm what, oh great goddess?"
Sarcasm? How crude. "Nothing but mortal."
"Hah!" She barked. Her glare didn't lessen. "You seem fine with other mortals, Servant. You're very respectful of Fujimaru. What were you actually going to call me? Incompetent? A failure? Is that what you were going to say? Go ahead, speak your mind. You've been so unwilling to show me any modicum of respect so far, so please. What am I?"
Ereshkigal cursed her luck. Of course it would end up like this. The little spirit girl had an attitude on par with Ishtar herself, and now with this talk of respect… "Fine. I was attempting to be cordial with you, but if you're so ready to fight, so be it."
Ereshkigal took a deep breath and restrained her Authority. She didn't want to accidentally exorcise the girl, after all. "You ask me for respect but give none in return. I am not a weapon. I am not a tool. I am not some pet at your beck and call, as you seem to believe. I may not have had a choice in the matter, but I am still a damned goddess! And yet you have the gall to call me blondie, to order me around like some common menial- of course I don't respect you! You've done nothing to earn it!"
Olga Marie grit her teeth. "You say that, but you cared more about an unconscious Fujimaru than either Mash or me!"
"Yes, my Master. As much as I hate the implications of that word, my first priority is protecting them!"
Olga Marie brought her hand to her chest. "I summoned you!" she cried, slamming her hand to her chest again. "I'm providing you with mana!" Another slam. "I'm everything but your Master, so just listen to me so we can get out of this without dying!"
"Then stop acting like a spoiled, petulant child!" Ereshkigal shot back. "If you want to take the lead so much, why don't you act like an actual leader?!"
"I'M TRYING!" she screamed. The following silence roared between them, interrupted by a single sniffle from Olga Marie. Tears shone orange under the surrounding flames, sparkling at the corners of the director's eyes. "What do you want from me?! What expectations do I have to live up to now!? I know I'm a failure! I know I'll never live up to everyone's expectations! I am Olga Marie Animusphere, the failed Director of Chaldea, unqualified as a Master and passable as a magus. My father died and hoisted this project, his life's work, onto me and just half a day ago I saw all of it go up in flames. Do you think that I'm utterly unaware of how useless I am right now? Of how empty all of my words are? I haven't left that cold, isolated facility in three fucking years in a vain attempt to pull everything together, and the only person who offered me a foundation to stand on is probably dead. I'm absolutely terrified right now, but if I don't hold it together then Fujimaru and Mash are going to break down too, and then where are we?! We're dead. I'm just trying my best to do a job I never even asked for, so can you please cut me some damned slack!?"
Ereshkigal blinked. She didn't know how to respond. Something told her that she very much misjudged Olga's character. The girl was a mess of tears, but her brows still furrowed in frustration and her eyes drilled into Ereshkigal's. After a tense beat, the girl turned away. Neither continued walking.
The goddess was thankful for the following silence and the time it allowed her to collect her thoughts. "I… I apologize," she finally said. The act of apologizing to a mortal grated on her divinity, but Ereshkigal made the conscious decision that, maybe, befriending even difficult mortals would help expand her horizons and enrich her experience on this plane. That, and… this girl's plight registered strongly with her own experiences. Her actions made sense- Ereshkigal deigned to believe that, if her circumstances were slightly different, she would have ended up being a very similar person. "I believe we both made… assumptions about each other."
She saw Olga Marie's shoulders shudder as she let out a shaking sigh. "My behavior has been… unbecoming. Please forget it."
Ereshkigal planned her diction carefully, handpicking each word. "Shall we… begin again, as it were? Our current dynamic will do nothing but hinder our chances of survival."
"Let's."
Both knew that there was more to be said if they truly wanted to start over. Ereshkigal, however, had stooped as low to apologize to a mortal- a goddess was never supposed to admit mistakes. She felt no actual damage to her pride, but everything she knew about being a goddess said that she couldn't go any further, couldn't say anything more that might compromise her position. She could only guess as to why Olga Marie clammed up.
A moment passed and the two resumed their walk towards the cave. Ereshkigal briefly considered returning to spirit form, but it didn't feel right anymore. She telepathically checked in with Ritsuka; while his life was no longer at risk, the healing took a huge toll on his body and he was having trouble keeping up the pace. What a cute human, continuously pushing himself further… She adored that drive of his, but she also worried for his safety. Ereshkigal saved his life, but he was far from perfectly healthy. If attacked by an enemy Servant, he would be an easy target.
She and the girl had to take the Archer out before he had that opportunity. Ereshkigal would never say it to his face, but Ritsuka was a liability right now. She made sure to pull Mash to the side and tell her as much.
She also made sure that Mash knew to take him and run the other way if a Servant appeared. If a Servant appeared, it meant Ereshkigal failed. If Ereshkigal failed… no, she couldn't think like that. This was her moment to prove herself as a reliable goddess of victory. She could not fail. If she failed and had to spend eternity in the cold, lonely silence of the Throne…
She could not fail.
"Your 'champion,' as you call him, has a sound strategic mind." Olga Marie admitted, pulling Ereshkigal out of her head. "Many fledgling Masters try to do everything themselves. Even the A Team, for so long, would hardly work together or delegate tasks. But… well, maybe it's just because he's lazy."
Ereshkigal pushed her spear into an especially steep pile of rubble to stabilize herself as she stepped over it. Olga Marie, a few steps in front of the goddess, didn't notice the jolt of red energy that shot through the earth and crumbled the ground beneath her. Ereshkigal let a small smile grace her face as the woman-spirit-thing stumbled and fell. "You call him my champion and lazy in the same breath? You're quite the bold one."
Olga Marie lifted herself off of the cracked asphalt, pushing her hair back and shooting the goddess a glare. "Bold? Please. The only thing I knew about Ritsuka Fujimaru before this disaster started was that he was a disrespectful Master candidate who fell asleep during the first five minutes of my welcoming lecture. You and I both are just lucky he turned out to be more reliable than my first impression of him. If he, the only one with Master aptitude here, happened to be a complete idiot… the underworld would find itself heavily overpopulated."
Ereshkigal let out a light giggle befitting royalty. She would've let out a full 'Ohoho!' after learning such a cute and adorable tidbit about her Master's fledgeling steps, but every time she considered a bolt of annoyance crashed through her. Did her host have something against 'Ohoho,' the laugh of royalty? No. That was impossible. They never would've suited Ereshkigal if they had.
But, Ereshkigal would admit, her defensiveness of her champion made her forget that he was but a child compared to the person he would be in… how many singularities was it? It didn't matter.
"Oh? I'm glad someone found his idiocy amusing," Olga sighed, stopping for a moment at the foot of a residential hill. Ruined homes lined the ascent, weaving along with the winding streets. Their goal waited at the top. The director took a deep breath and began her climb, Ereshkigal right behind. She didn't understand why Olga Marie appeared so reticent about the hike. The flatlands surrounding her palace never allowed for such activities and, she would admit, hiking a lush mountain filled with wildlife and flora was like a dream to her. This 'mountain' may not have been lively in any sense of the word, but… well, Ereshkigal could round up.
"I do enjoy the occasional humorous tale," Ereshkigal half-lied through her teeth, pushing aside her desire to sit and listen to more stories instead of actually resolving the singularity. "With my position, I don't often hear them."
Olga Marie shuddered. "I've interacted with enough necromancers to know what you mean. The dead don't tell the best stories."
'Oh, the irony.' Ereshkigal thought while carefully stepping by a burning car, letting the conversation into a slightly-more-companionable silence than the pair had achieved in the past. The flaming chassis distracted the goddess from her complicated relationship with necromancers enough to avoid that rabbit hole. 'I wonder if I'll get the opportunity to drive an automobile in Chaldea… human toys are so fascinating!'
Even with a distracted (but still reliable) goddess, the duo reached the stairs to the temple without incident. It was only when they approached that they realized why, exactly, the walk had been so quiet.
Archer sat at the first of many landings, the first space of respite on the long pilgrimage up the mountain and, unfortunately, the only safe way to reach the cavern now exposed to open air just over the ridge. He only stood as they reached the foot of the staircase, but Olga Marie still found his casual air off-putting. Ereshkigal stopped and motioned for the director to stand behind her.
"You're an Archer, yet you let us approach you like this?" the goddess questioned. "What's your game?"
Archer smirked, warping the tattoo (or was it a scar?) under his left eye. "After your display earlier, trying to snipe you just seemed like a waste of mana." Twin blades, black and white, materialized in his hands. The tension in the air thickened to the point of oppression, but neither Servant moved an inch.
"So you wish to fight a Lancer-class Servant in close quarters combat?" Olga Marie asked, careful not to step away from Ereshkigal's protection.
Archer huffed. "It's hard to exchange witty banter if you can't hear me."
The tree-cast shadows squirmed at the border of the stairway. Archer's eyes didn't leave Ereshkigal, but he did shift his weight slightly when the Gallû spirits made themselves known.
"Wrong answer?" he asked. His smirk only grew as a ring of red spears formed around Ereshkigal in a flash of crimson lightning. The new blades orbited her slowly, sparking maroon occasionally. "I can see now why you were compatible with her… quick to violence, aren't we?"
"Just averse to wasting time," Ereshkigal responded. The ring of spears launched themselves at the Archer with rapid-fire cracks of thunder. Within the same breath, Gallû beasts ripped out of the darkness to descend on the Archer.
In the same second, Archer dove to the left, ripping through spirits in a flicker of black and white and disappearing into the cover of the trees. The impact of Ereshkigal's spears on the stairs lit up the night, giving Ereshkigal just the millisecond she needed to register Archer's bow materializing in his hands. Three swords tore out of the foliage like arrows in quick succession, forcing Ereshkigal to grab Olga Marie and jump backwards.
The howl of Gallû beasts charging through the trees gave a brief moment of respite as they forced Archer to reposition. Ereshkigal materialized her blazing lance in her free hand and stabbed it into the ground, using its power to raise a wall of cages between the duo and Archer's last known location.
"Director, stay-"
Ereshkigal's eyes widened and she acted before Olga Marie even registered a threat. The goddess grabbed her by the collar and threw her backwards a blink of an eye before one of Archer's blades, an infinitely thin katana, wove between the bars of Ereshkigal's bunker of cages and lodged itself where her heart had been.
The wind left Olga Marie's lungs as she bounced once, the pain informing her that her physical reinforcement had failed yet again, but Ereshkigal caught her before she bounced a second time.
'Prepare to shield yourself!'
The mental order forced her into action. Ereshkigal brought her to a stop as gently as she could in the situation, but in another flicker of movement she was gone, off to engage the Archer again and leaving the director on her own.
Olga Marie didn't realize she was chanting her protection spell until the translucent emerald wall appeared before her, just in time to catch the black half of Archer's twin blades. The sword lodged itself three-quarters into her shield, less than a foot from skewering her between the eyes. Her legs shook like jelly, threatening to evaporate under her like the blade evaporated into blue dust, glimmering peacefully as the fight went on. Olga Marie, for the umteenth time in the past few hours, felt very, very small, and very, very mortal.
But she couldn't afford to freak out, not when human history was on the line. The director's eyes could barely follow the fight between Servants- to any human, even a trained magus like herself, the battle played out like a slideshow. Servants appeared and disappeared, their existences punctuated with clangs of metal and cracks of force. Ereshkigal's spear of fire left a line of orange light in her wake, but even with that as a crutch the director felt like she was a cat trying to keep track of a laser pointer. A Servant would pause for half a second, only to disappear and leave a crater where they once were. A human could only hope to feel the fight, maybe hear it if they were lucky.
How was she supposed to help? She couldn't give Ereshkigal any strategies if she couldn't see what was-
Ereshkigal's cloaked form slammed into her shield, cracking and bending it with the force. Three pinpoints of red light followed the goddess closely, but a swarm of spirits swallowed the shots before they could impact her directly. However, their spirit bodies only provided so much protection; an orange glow rumbled beneath the black, cloud-like wall. The spirits managed to muffle the explosion, but the force as the fireball that ripped through them was enough to break through Olga's shield and send her and Ereshkigal tumbling backwards.
'GET UP AND MOVE!'
Ereshkigal's command spurred the director onwards. She rolled to the side, narrowly dodging another blade. Olga Marie could feel her injuries accumulatingy- if adrenaline hadn't been surging through her, she doubted she would be able to move. She forced herself up, ignoring the burning sensation in her quads, and frantically searched for Ereshkigal.
Behind her, the goddess pushed herself up, leaning on her weapon for support. Her cloak was in tatters, and there were various cuts and gashes along her body. When she raised her head, however, Olga Marie saw Ereshkigal's will burn saffron in her eyes. Injured as she was, this goddess still blazed with divine Authority.
Archer was no less worse for wear, but neither Servant had the opportunity to slow down. He emerged from the treeline with his blades in his hands and four arrows leading him. The ringing of Ereshkigal's bell silenced all else, summoning a wolf-like spirit to grab the goddess's cloak and drag her out of danger in the nick of time. Her spear was already up to block the Archer's swords before she even found her footing.
Archer pushed forward, taking advantage of the goddess's lack of balance to keep her on the defensive. Even with the spirits snapping at him on all sides, his speed and constant stream of weapons, tricks, and martial abilities kept her on the backfoot. Ereshkigal's lance of sunlight burned bright, spinning and twirling in defense. Occasionally it would scrape the ground, igniting bolts of lightning that lashed out at Archer. Spiked cages erupted from the earth, stabbing at the aggressor and giving Ereshkigal the moment she needed to reset.
She was the Terrible Earth Mother. All of the earth was her domain. She would not be matched by this nameless Servant. Olga Marie Animusphere knew this to be fact.
But the appearance of a golden blade signalled a different victory. Its light dwarfed Ereshkigal's lance, and it cut through her weapon like butter. In her instant of shock, Archer lashed out with a brutal kick to her sternum that sent her flying, crashing into the remnants of a home directly behind Olga Marie.
Olga Marie turned her head to follow the goddess's trajectory on instinct. She didn't see Archer appear in front of her; the director's only indication of her impending death was a slight change in temperature as close proximity to Archer's golden sword warmed her skin.
Time around Olga Marie slowed to a crawl. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the glint of gold, ready to cut into her exposed neck and chest. At no point did she believe she could dodge the attack- Archer had already proven himself much faster than she could ever hope to be. She highly doubted Ereshkigal could save her again. The dust hadn't even cleared from the hole the goddess left in the home's entryway; even at her maximum speed, the goddess couldn't stop this one.
In the face of terror, Olga Marie moved. Her right hand flicked up, its magic circuits blazing with life.
'Gandr!'
Red and black energy, overloaded far beyond a controlled cast, exploded onto Archer's lower abdomen. He barely flinched- Olga didn't expect him to. For Servants, even the strongest gandr would cause maybe a fraction of a second of vertigo. That fraction of a second wouldn't save a human if they were on their own. In a battle between Servants, however… a fraction of a second of vertigo was as good as paralysis.
Eight maroon spears ripped out of the dilapidated house. Archer stumbled back, blocking two and dodging four others, but two of them struck his torso, pushing him back and nailing him to the ground. In the time it took Olga Marie to fully turn her eyes back towards him, the pack of Gallû spirits had already descended on him and began their feast.
Ereshkigal stumbled back outside, one hand outstretched and the other leaning heavily on a spear like a crutch. Her eyes returned to their normal red color.
"You have healing magic, correct?" Ereshkigal asked, giving Olga Marie a gentle smile. She stumbled as some of the loose dirt gave out beneath her. "I could really use some right now."
Olga Marie stared dumbly for a moment before the words registered. "R-right! Yes, right, of course!"
She ran to Ereshkigal's side and helped lower the Lancer onto a vaguely chair-like piece of broken concrete. The blonde groaned, more in frustration than pain. "What a stupid Archer. I thought I was going to be fighting some long-ranged coward, but noOOoo! Stupid Archer fighting like a stupid Saber… ow!"
"Sorry, sorry!" Olga Marie chuckled her healing magic started flowing. "I'm afraid I don't know any gentler spells. I wasn't meant to be a healing magus, after all."
"Well…" Ereshkigal mumbled, a pout just barely held back by her dignity, "you're still healing me, so you're forgiven!"
Olga Marie almost burst out laughing. She would have if her ribs didn't protest at the thought of it. This was the goddess who had cowed her? She gave the goddess the most genuine smile she could muster. "You saved my life more times than I know. Thank you, truly."
Ereshkigal opened her mouth, blushed, and stammered a little bit before settling on, "Hmp! Of course, I am a reliable goddess after all! And you, mortal, you…" she trailed off and lit up with an even brighter shade of red. "Y-you did-"
"Unlimited... Blade Works."
A/N: And that's chapter 3 for you! Thank you for the support on this story! I love getting your feedback and hope to continue to entertain in the future! I finally got to write a scene with Eresh and Olga Marie together, but there will be more of that next chapter. If that didn't scratch your itch for character interaction, stay tuned!
Quick note: I've seen torn discussion online about whether or not Archer has access to Caliburn, and decided to go for it even if he might not. Call it author's decision-making, I guess.
That's all from me. Have a great day, stay awesome, and all that jazz!