Chapter 4- And Into the Fires
It was a rather beautiful night, the stars were out there was a pleasant breeze, and were in a relatively secure location, perfect for a midnight stroll or stargazing. Yet in the main tent Arthur sat unmoving and unresponsive, he(she) didn't notice the cooling dinner beside him(her), he(she) didn't notice the pleasant breeze and he(she) certainly didn't notice the loss of light. For their time was consumed staring at their shattered sword, Caliburn. They heard the flap of the tent open
"Leave Kay" Curt and direct was the voice filled with Iron.
"No Arthur, I will not" Kay had come to check on her many times since it broke, but she remained the same, inconsolable and unreachable. This time he wouldn't leave things be.
"You've been wallowing enough Arthur" He(she) looked up and glared at him.
"Don't" He didn't care.
"You took up this responsibility, you followed this path. Is it really going to end here all because your sword broke?" He(she) pushes back the table and the chair shouting at him
"Caliburn was not just a sword! It was-"
"A dream of innocence" Kay picked the shards off the floor and he(she) winced as he(she) realized that they were tossed in that burst of passion.
"Let it go Artoria" She froze, did he just?
"You can't save anybody like this" He shook his head and wrapped the shards in a cloak "you can't save yourself like this" She looked away in shame.
"You're being crushed sister, slowly, and surely you are being crushed under the weight of your own expectations" He turned and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Go sister" she looked at him in confusion, "Merlin says he can replace Caliburn with a greater blade, but it will take some time for him to obtain it. In the meantime, you should travel across the countryside and remind yourself of why you took up this burden or at least decide if you even want this burden"
"But the kingdom…"
"I can take care of it in your absence Artoria, it will be difficult, but I can only see ruin for you if you stay"
She was quiet for a long moment before she nodded, showing a soft smile.
"I'll tell the men in the morning" Kay smiled himself and turned to leave but she grabbed his wrist.
"Kay… thank you"
He was wrong, in the time that should have been Kay stayed silent leaving Arthur to drag himself(herself) out of this funk and eventually take up Excalibur spelling a new period of prosperity for the kingdom. And perhaps in another time, Arthur would have found happiness in this journey across the kingdoms. Perhaps, that is such a painful phrase. Perhaps.
(Linebreak)
Olga groaned as she forced her eyes open, ash was falling from the sky and it looked like she was in some ruined building. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and tried to move her legs, she froze. Slowly looking down she saw exactly what she feared.
"H-how...?" Her voice shook with fear and panic, her right leg was a stump, and her left leg was just gone. She frantically looked about to see she was alone, but she wouldn't allow for there to be absolutely nothing she could do, so searched onwards. Success there was a short break in the wall that would allow her to see whatever is beyond this prison of stone. She dragged herself across the stone floor gritting her teeth in pain and looked upon the hellscape below. Fire everywhere across the ruins of a Japanese city, fire. And within that fire, something lurked, something… evil.
"A bad dream, this has to be a bad dream" She whispered to herself over and over, so lost was she in this nightmarish reverie that she didn't notice the footsteps behind her until she heard the figure kneel down and reach towards her. Her face lit up in rage as resolve filled her, the scion of Aminushperes will not go out like some weak candle! As soon as it grabbed her shoulder she whirled about and punched it, right in its fleshy face?
"SON OF A BITCH!" Harker slammed into the back wall holding his jaw. "God that hurts, is this really the thanks I can expect from my new boss whenever I help them?!"
"W-what?" She looked at him taking a second to realize that this wasn't some monster; this was her rather impudent new employee. She looked into his muddy brown eyes to see the sheer annoyance within, ash was soaking both his clothes and his messy raven hair.
"What do you mean what?! I just saved your life twice!" The teenager glared at her, but she really didn't have any idea what he was talking about. She breathed deep and tried to remember. Everything was going well, Lev was in the command room making sure everything would go off without a hitch while she walked among the coffins to make sure everything was fine on that end, then what? A burst of movement in the corner, something tackling her… wait a minute.
"YOU! YOU MUST HAVE DONE THIS!"
He looked at her in utter bafflement. "The fuck?" She didn't care.
"YOU TACKLED ME; YOU MUST HAVE DRAGGED ME HERE FOR SOME NEFARIOUS PURPOSE!"
"Really? Really!? Is that really what you think just happened asshat!" He was just as pissed as her at this point. "Ignoring the fact I was wounded too-" He gestured down at the small cuts and occasional gashes bound in whatever cloth he could find. "But if intended to kill you I would have let the explosion done its work or just let you die under that pile of burning fucking metal!"
"What- you-" She didn't remember being trapped under metal " Doesn't matter, you could have been keeping me alive for some malevolent reason! It won't work, whatever you're planning Lev will come save me!" He always did, he was always there to save her. The one thing she could count on.
"A bit hard for anyone to save either one of us considering we're in a damn singularity" She looked at him in shock. "T-that's not possible, I'm not even rayshift compatible!"
He grinned "Maybe you just had too many limbs for the rayshift to accept you" She sat there in shock for a moment before throwing a rock at him. He knocked it aside with an arm as he laughed.
"Seriously though, by word of your own machine we are in a singularity and I have no idea where to go from here" She could have sworn that he muttered "And I went in with such a cool phrase"
"What do you mean my own machine?"
"The warning signals were screaming it out before we got transported here, doesn't really matter" He scratched his butt causing Olga to look on in disgust. "Any idea on how to get out of this mess because I've got none"
"Why should I tell you anything, you caused this" He sighed at her stubbornness, though he supposed he wasn't one to talk much on that particular front.
"If I hadn't knocked you down the blast would have vaporized you, Olga, if I had started the bomb I wouldn't have even been in the same room I value my own life too much for that"
"Then how did you know about this bomb?"
He rested against the wall. "Call it spiritual intuition" He looked towards the black smoky sky and grimaced. As for Olga, she was busy remembering the different profiles she had on the candidates specifically his.
'Alva Aldain hmm. His family is known for being shamans so spiritual favoritism is not out of the realm of possibility, but something is still off.'
She looked down at her le- stump she looked at her stump and wanted to scream.
'It doesn't matter does it. I'm not going to be able to get out of here on my own with a single stump of a leg but trusting him… Damn'
"I'll trust you, for now, any funny business, and I will end you" The bastard had the gall to look amused
"Well we won't be skipping into the sunset anytime soon or in your case ever, but this is a start"
'Asshole'
He clapped his hands together and stood up, he was a lot taller now that she wasn't standing on a platform above him.
"Now then since you had obviously had a plan for the singularity, I assume that you have an idea of what to do?" She thought a bit before deciding on a certain course of action.
"Can you summon up a spirit to help us?" Focus Olga don't show any more weakness to this impudent bastard, who knows what he's planning.
"No" She snapped her head to him.
"What do you mean no!"
"Can you really not smell the sheer suffering around here? The stench of regret and misery is permeating the very land around us like an all consumed cloud of evil, or the shit winds in Texas" He looked away and shuddered(though where'd it was at the evil or the cow winds was a toss-up) before continuing. "Any spirit I try to summon will likely try to share it's suffering with us" He raised a brow and dared her to refute that.
She looked at the ground for a moment before looking up with slightly less energy.
'There goes that plan' (Sigh)
"We need to find a ley-line then"
"Alright, why?" She stared at him incredulously.
"To summon a servant of course"
"A servant, a mythical hero built to fight to the death with other heroes so some random mage can go jack off the grail, and probably Akasha as well is just going to appear for us" His tone was both confused and mocking as he crossed his arms.
"Were you not listening to any part of my presentation!"
"Lady, you spent the 15 minutes I was there bitching at me" That took the wind right out of her sails.
"Just- we need to find one or without a servant, we'll likely die to whatever anomaly caused this" She was really tired of dealing with him. He sighed and walked over to her
"Right then, let's get moving" He picked her up and threw her on his back trying to get her in a piggyback ride.
"W-what are you doing!?" Her face burned crimson at his actions, is he…?
"Are you able to magically grow legs back?" 'Back to reality Olga, expect no warmth or empathy from this jerk.'
"No…"
"Then kindly shut up, I already have enough hell to deal with without your whining"
"Asshole" Somehow the most infuriating part was that he just simply grinned at that.
(Linebreak)
He wasn't completely bullshiting back there, even if he did remember the old rituals(which he didn't) the spirit would be in such anguish that it would be trying to kill them, hell even when he did remember it he was barely capable of doing it. It all came down to his stupid element, cause come on what kind of god-awful luck do you have to have to get the element Overflow.
"Alva" She spoke into his neck as she held on. This was rather difficult at times due to the harshness of the terrain around them. Veins of magma and fallen buildings made for a poor environment to take a stroll through
"Harker call me Harker" He could feel her staring at him from on his back.
"Why?" He climbed over a building and walked down an alleyway as he followed the magic- ley-line things
'I really need to crack open the old tomes… if there are still tomes'
It wasn't that he could see them as much as he got the general gist of how they were flowing, it was confusing as all hell for him in his childhood and it is still confusing as hell to him now.
"It's just the name I prefer to use on a daily basis" He walked through a store, oddly enough daily items like snacks, satchels, and water bottles were here if slightly singed though. He took the water bottles and threw it into the satchel now sling over Olga's shoulder.
"I see…" She was silent for a moment before she remembered what she wanted to ask. "Where are you taking us?"
"I'm following the ley-line, well I'm following it ish"
"Ish?"
"This isn't an exact science" She slapped the back of his head, he chuckled. They continued on that way before they took a break in a ruin of a home improvement store.
"Mind telling me the story behind this place?" He took a swig of water as he kept an eye on the perimeter. So far, they managed to get through the city without incident but that in itself felt wrong like a butcher awaiting the eventual harvest.
"Of the store?" Olga was looking rather tired; he couldn't blame her. He was honestly shocked she wasn't curled up in pain, the burns alone would be agonizing but either the situation has dulled things, or she was tougher than he thought.
"The city, I'm pretty sure this was the place on presentation as I entered the debriefing room" She nodded
"This Fuyuki city, it's where all the holy grail wars have taken place in the past" Harker whistled the grail wars were a rather interesting if examples of general arrogance and symbols of how little mages care about the consequences of their actions
"In other words, it is a center of so many things that could have gone so horribly wrong that it threatened humanity itself" She brushes off some of the ash and started to eat Twinkie, seems that riding piggyback through hell dampened her pride.
'Even in the apocalypse Twinkies are immortal'
"Got a way to contact Chaldea?" She shook her head.
"Any equipment I had was destroyed, we are alone until we solve the singularity" He sighed and threw the empty bottle aside.
"Well I'm sure they are working hard to reach us"
'If anyone's still alive that is' It was a massive tossup if there was anyone left most of the employees would have been in the command room to look at such a monumental moment. Anyone who wasn't there would have had other duties. An image of Roman appeared in his mind, he amended his previous statement adding or fapping to it.
He knocked on her shoulder and grinned. "No point being so gloomy, we'll get this done soon enough. Who knows maybe once we get back they can make you rocket legs and you can finally kick my teeth in with the amount of force equal to the amount of rage my presence brings you" It was a bad joke, but bad times have an effect of making those bad jokes seem better. Olga giggled a little.
"I'm sorry Harker, I judged you too unfairly. I know it would be a lot easier just to leave me behind…" She rubbed her arm and looked like she wanted to cry.
"Well, I did call you a cunt so your opinion of me was probably not far off" she snorted and gave him a rueful smile.
"Please don't make me laugh I'm trying to be upfront here" He raised his hand in surrender. "It would've been easily justifiable and would lessen your burden so much." She seemed unsure of how to go on. "T-thank you, for not abandoning me"
He scratched his neck awkwardly really not sure how to respond to that. He opened his mouth before jolting in his seat as he heard the clack of bones walking.
'Shit'
He motioned for her to be quiet and moved down a passage.
"Wait! Where are you going?! Don't leave me!" Her voice was panicked and full of desperation. He scowled at her and ran down an aisle.
'Had to grab their attention, wonderful, just wonderful'
"Please don't go! please don't leave me alone!" She begged with tears in her eyes but to no avail. Harker was still leaving her behind to sob on the ashen floor.
"HARKER!"
(Linebreak)
'That- that bastard'
Harker he- he- she was just starting to trust him god-damnit! She- Why? Why does everyone abandon her? Why is she destined to be alone? She shook off that thought, Lev has never abandoned her, he'll come, he has to, but right now she has to fend for herself. With tears in her eyes, she crawled to a cart in the distance with a broom in hand. The clacking was getting louder, but she pulled herself into the cart just in time to see the skeletons walk into her aisle. She pushed the broom against the floor and the cart started to move. This was really hurting her, especially since she no longer had knees.
'What would you think if you saw your daughter using a shopping cart like a boat father? The scandal…'
That bitter humor fueled her as she did her best to keep ahead of the pursuing skeletons, but the cart was getting wobbly and she was losing strength fast.
'I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't-'
SNAP
Three things happened at once.
Her broom snapped
The weak metal on the cartwheel broke sending her tumbling into a broken tv sending glass shard through her shoulder
The cart flipped atop her burn wounds causing her to scream in agony and trapping her in this pile of glass and blood.
"No- No, no please no, not like this. I don't want to die like this!" They walked towards her with something approaching malice in their empty eyes.
"I haven't done anything yet! I haven't accomplished anything that made anyone want me! From the very moment I was born NO ONE EVER WANTED ME!" Three of the four stopped to watch the only one with a sword cut down the young woman.
"EVERYONE HAS ALWAYS HATED ME, EVERYONE, FATHER, ROMAN, THE CANDIDATES, THE STAFF, EVERYONE, EVERYONE!" She was screaming now, for… anyone, anyone to save her or at least hear her final words
"LEV!" Her voice was hoarse as she screeched her voice hoarse for the one thing that always saved her even if she knew deep down that even the one person that always came to save her never, ever wanted her. "LEV!"
The blade fell.
She closed her eyes.
CRACK
Death did not follow.
"Lev?" she opened her eyes to see the very teen that ran away with a shovel in hand and a skull that he just crushed under his foot.
"Harker?" There was no snappy one-liner, no quip or heroic affirmation that she would be alright, not even acknowledgment that she existed. Instead, he clenched his fists around the shovel shaft like a knight in sardonic armor and charged into battle.
He wasn't trained to fight, that much was obvious. There were plenty of wholes in his form, but he made up for it to by not giving a flying fuck about honor or proper dueling methods. He was brutal, his shovel blade severed joints and the wooden shaft pushed away spears from vital points. He didn't scream or shout but instead just grit his teeth with a look of cold fury on his face.
Duck, slide to the right, aim for the elbow, disarmed. Next, hit the shaft of the spear to push it away then lunge and sever the spine. Ignore hit to the head and roll with the shovel to take out their ankle. Rinse and repeat as needed. And so, the melee continued until he was the last one left.
He smashed the last head and collapsed, awake but exhausted.
"You came back…" She managed to pull herself out during the melee.
"This would've gone a lot easier if you just kept quiet" He moaned out as he pushed himself to a sitting position against a wall. It was quite arguably the wrong thing to say
"You left me behind! What was I supposed to do?!" Her voice was angry, but she really didn't have the energy to shout. He rolled her a water bottle which she greedily drank up.
"Stay quiet so they wouldn't find you allowing me to find a weapon" He shook the shovel in his hand, Olga just stared.
"You weren't running away?" Her voice was weak.
(Sigh) "No, We just would've died if I tried to fight those things with my fists and sharp words" He took a piece of glass and cut off a piece of his shirt, he pushed himself up and started to take care of her shoulder.
"..." Olga was silent, what could she have possibly said?
"What was I supposed to do Olga, any spell I cast would end badly for the both of us and without a weapon in hand, I just would have been turned to mincemeat. We were lucky I membered there was still some intact gardening gear a couple aisles down"
He finished wrapping the bandage about her shoulder and looked to her expecting a response, some kind of snappy come back, insult anything really but instead she just looked so tired.
"A bit different doing this on someone of the opposite gender and well not fat" She just stared at him emptily and started to cry silently. Harker just held her as her body shook with sobs. Jokes wouldn't help, not now. Right now, all he could really do was to be there for a girl who never really had anyone be there at all.
(Linebreak)
The journey was continuing, there was no safety that could be found without a servant, so they had to continue onwards while evading whatever force came along. Currently, he was walking up a building, he could sense a leyline was at the top which he was convinced was just Murphy's way of making his life hell. He sighed as he trudged up the stairs, Olga's weight made this a very grueling task; speaking of which she had been silent ever since the attack, clinging to him like a lifeline which he supposed was fair considering what just happened.
"We're almost there boss, just a few flights of stairs before we make it to safety" She didn't respond to him but she did look up from his neck, he grinned at her "A good thing too, anymore and my back will break" She looked away with shame dotting her eyes. Harker grimaced that was definitely the wrong thing to say.
'We really don't know how to deal with these things do we"
The only time he's ever dealt with anything like this was during his "childhood" with Goredolf and Ophelia. Any hope for good friendship was screwed up in their beginning by their parent's ideas of a "friend" i.e someone to manipulate and gain influence through, (mostly. Goredolf's father was honestly nice), but somehow the three of them became friends and there's the kicker: he screwed everything up or at least played a big role in the death of it. What's worse is that Olga's problem didn't seem so different from theirs so on one hand it was on familiar ground on the other there was a good chance it would blow up, maybe literally.
'Why do all mages have to be so dysfunctional? Oh, right we're all pretty much textbook definition for a mad scientist. Ironic considering how many of them hate science and all its advancements'
He needed something to pass the time and something to cheer her up, an idea sparked but he cringed internally.
'I know we are desperate, but these are pretty bad jokes, they might just make her feel worse.
Do we have any other ideas?
…
Jokes it is then.
But we only know gallows humor from off the internet!'
To late'
"Why was the leper hockey game canceled?" Olga didn't respond.
"Because there was a face-off in the corner" She looked confused for a bit before her eyes widened and then gave him a half-hearted glare.
'Improvement'
Grinning, he continued. "I was ordering at a restaurant and I asked how do you prepare you chicken? They said nothing special we just tell them they're going to die" Olga smiled just a little but that was enough.
"With a smile as pleasant as that you can keep all the doctors away! Lucky, I have to do it with an apple. Throw enough of them at people's heads and they start to avoid you on principal" giggle
And so, it continued as they went up the stairs, it was artificial, it was stale, that small bit of joy wouldn't last but right now he knew she needed just for something to not completely suck.
"We're here, in a few moments we can rest!" He set her down and moved to the leyline.
"Alright lead me through this"
She nodded "Repeat after me" Her voice seemed a lot healthier now and she seemed a lot more lively
Let Silver and Steel be the essence
Prana flowed through his body, the horse barely keeping ahead.
Let Stone and the Archduke of Contracts be the Foundation
Wind picked about them as a light show signaled two figures in the distance that there was someone else alive
Let the Watchers of the Star be my Patron
Olga felt like she could hear the rushing of water.
Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall
The hunter in the dark gave a sultry sickening grin as she closed in.
Let the four cardinal gates close
The thing in the grail felt something shift. "Well let's get the party started" The darkness within the mountain grew ready to burst out into the world.
Watcher beyond Grant me eyes
Olga's eyes widened and looked to Harker. There wasn't any summoning chant like that…
Thy Astral existence shall be my Sword and my Shield
"Harker what are you doing! Those aren't the words!" Olga tried to get through to him, but it was like he was lost in a daydream.
My Soul and Sanity the Tribute
The horse was drowning beneath the waters, yet he continued onward unknowing of the damage being wrecked on his own body. He was caught in a dream, a willowy woman with long dark black hair and strange green eyes staring back at him as she sank into the deep.
Energy arced through the air with Olga staring in fear. At the top of the Mountain watching the dark one doing its work was a knight in black armor. Souls seemed to surround it like a tormented spiral of the damned.
This covenant be sworn-
Harker's body leapt to the side as his survival instincts screamed. A black chain came screeching down, crushing the summoning circle. Boots slammed down on where Harker stood a moment before
"Well now, isn't this a surprise?" Harker groaned in pain as he finally shook out of the weird dream. A woman about 7 inches shorter than him walked out of the dust. She was easily one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen but seemed wrong, broken almost. Darkness seemed to crawl up her form, both on her clothes, her body, and her hair. It's like some kind of taint had claimed her.
"Olga…" He walked slowly back to her where she seemed frozen in fear.
"It can't be…" The woman radiated power and terror as she walked forward her chain twirling in hand.
"I'm going to have a lot of fun with you two before you die"
"A servant" Olga looked completely defeated.
"Oh, fuck all kinds of duck" This was not going to end well.
So, the first fight scene for this story and I'm really not sure how I feel about it, hmm. Well I can only get better if I continue to write so yeah. As for Olga well she has been having a really, really bad day, she will try to affirm her old personality once Mash and Roman make their way back into the picture so don't worry too much. Have a good day everyone.
Crappyidiots
The only thing I'm willing to say to that right now is "Requiem Hungers"
PrazniFrizider
Oops, I will try to look out for that better.
'Something was wrong'
The woman continued to sink into the inky abyss as she thought on this, she was about to be summoned to whatever war she was needed for. A first for this woman, due to both the nature of her core and the near-nothingness of her legend no one would ever try to summon her and yet that boy almost did. Strange, he was alive, but the ritual was cut off. Cessair closed her sickly emerald eyes and sighed, just a little more patience. Her time would come soon enough. Until then she would continue to sink into the endless dark
'No matter what I'll see the dawn again'