If you are looking for musical accompaniment for the duel between Kotomine and Lancer, I suggest you, Sergio Leone's "Man with the Harmonica". This piece of music fits perfectly with the situation.
Dog and Wolf
Since the fall of the Direnni Hegemony, the ancient catacombs had known an eternal night. While the city above the underground fell into ruin, stifled by vegetation, gradually buried by the passage of time, the tombs and the temple had been forgotten.
But this shroud of silence had just been torn. Light and noises had returned to these places so long left abandoned.
"Ahhhhhh!"
The sword wrapped in compressed layers of air was incredibly sharp but almost invisible had it not been for the blue reflections of Mana which left an iridescent trace in the blade wake. The vaguely humanoid creature, an unholy monster made of smoldering black mud, the condensed of thousands of curses, was instantly cut in half.
"Ta... ta... ta... ta!"
The monster made of black mud, identical to the previous one, stopped abruptly, retreating backward under the force of the impact caused by a dozen of nearly simultaneous spear's thrusts. The patiently chiseled weapon decorated with runes had been cut from a long redbone, an ancient magic had impregnated it, enveloping the spear with blood-colored Mana.
There were two of them.
She.
She seemed to be sixteen years old. Her hair was blond as if powdered with pure gold, carefully gathered in a mat wrapped over the nape of the neck. Nevertheless, a rebel wick formed an ahoge similar to a question mark.
She wore an implausible dress-armor. The dress was royal, blue, and gold, with a white petticoat. Metal gauntlets protected her hands, a plastron adorned with bluish designs encased her, steel boots struck the ground with each of her movements and a strange skirt of articulated metal slats clicked on her flanks.
She wielded the invisible sword with an incredible mastery in fluid and precise gestures, appearing to dance. Never motionless, she dodged while jumping, attacked while bouncing, moving in the three dimensions of space, more often in the air than on the ground.
In spite of the savagery of the battle, as the mud monsters attacked her from all sides, encircling her and seeking to grab her in their tentacles of steaming mud, her beautiful face remained peaceful and focused, her emerald eyes threw terrible glances. Each time, a monster perished.
She was Artoria Pendragon, the legendary King Arthur.
Him.
He was a man with blue hair tied in a ponytail on his neck. His expression was fierce, distorting his face with angry wrinkles. His eyes were red as embers. He wore a kind of blue leather body tights with shoulder pads and a metal plate on the belt. Two silver earrings completed his outfit.
He was incredibly nimble and fast, running almost folded in half. His movements, supple and nervous, had something animal. He constantly shouted, laughed or insulted his enemies, his mouth was no more at rest than the arm with which he wielded his spear. But his voice was hoarse like a dog barking.
It was never seen clearly... in fact, more often than not he was only a fuzzy form running among the mud men, massacring them. Saber killed an opponent every time, but that wasn't the case with Lancer. He hit less hard... but that didn't matter. He seemed to be in ten places at a time. His spear was never resting. At times, he seemed to have ten arms pointing at the opponents in front of him. And at other times, Gae Bolg became a fuzzy propeller, cutting through the mass of his enemies.
He was Cù Chulainn, the famous demigod, son of the Irish god Lug.
They were not alone. Besides the mud creatures, there was another human in the huge cave where a portal opened to the Greater Grail.
Although he was human, he was certainly not on the team of these two champions, protectors of humanity.
He was quite the opposite. This man had accepted his deeply... twisted nature. He had accepted the fact that he only took pleasure in seeing other people suffer. This revelation had initially caused doubt and panic in this man born into a deeply Christian family. But he had found a mentor to cultivate this aspect of his personality and to help him accept it.
A cruel and mocking smile floated on his lips as he watched the two heroes fight against the army of monsters he had invoked.
He was a tall man... immense even... a Japanese whose thick hair went down to his shoulders. His face was bony, with a straight nose and a perpetual look of contempt. He was dressed in trousers and a black tunic that one could see under the blue overcoat that he wore completely unbuttoned. The only thing remarkable in his clothing was the gold amulet on his neck, it represented a wolf's head with ruby eyes.
Uncrossing the arms he held behind his back, he made an almost friendly hand gesture for the two heroes who fought him:
"Truly impressive! Any ordinary individual would have long ago succumbed. The famous dog of the red plains of Ireland and the no less famous King of the Knights honor their legends... but you fight in vain. Whether you kill a hundred or a thousand, it doesn't matter."
The man stretched his arm back, dipping his hand into the filthy mud that continued to flow from the opening leading to the Greater Grail. Then he threw a ball of slime. The projectile exploded as it hit the Elvish alabaster ground, throwing black-dew flaps all over the place. Each drop touching the ground swelled excessively, budding and twisting. Within seconds each puddle of mud had turned into a mound that soon took on a vaguely human form... Other mud men had arrived to join the fight.
Kirei Kotomine crossed his arms back again and stood up to look at the two heroes with a smirk:
"Struggle as much as you want, nothing is more beautiful than men struggling to stay alive. It would be enough for men to accept the evidence of their dead to find peace... but such is human nature... so beautiful, so fragile... That's why I love humans so much."
Saber pulverized three mud monsters from a great movement of the Sword of the Wind King and turned to him. Her beautiful face showed incredible fury:
"Kotomine!"
Artoria had put in that name enough anger, and contempt to make it the worst of all insults. But Kirei Kotomine does not care, on the contrary, his smile grew stronger.
As the young woman rushed at him, he threw another ball of mud in her direction... forcing Artoria to retreat as new enemies took shape to attack her.
"Tonight, whatever you do, here comes the epilogue of your heroic lives... an epilogue worthy of you. The last battle of Cù Chulainn and Arthur Pendragon to prevent the rebirth of All the World's Evil can only be heroic with deeds and feats that will add to your legends. Alas for you, this is a vain fight because tonight, my God, Angra Mainyu will honor Nirn with his presence, turning this world into a hell that will be filled with five billion curses"
Lancer took advantage that Saber distracted the dark priest to leap forward, running as fast as he could, zigzagging between the slow mud men. As animated by a life of its own, Gae Bolg began to vibrate in his hand, eager to fulfill his primary function... to pierce the heart of his master's enemies.
But...
He leaped back just escaping a tentacle as thick as a tree trunk... Cù Chulainn bit his lip with frustration while another tentacle hit the ground in front of him... then, seeing a third tentacle from the corner of the eye, he changed direction... retreating out of reach of the mud strands that were whipping the air in search of him. At least eight appendages formed of the same black and ardent ichor as the mudmen -materialization of the curses weighing on humanity- had just emerged from the depths of the cave.
Kirei smiled and pointed the cave behind him with a large hand gesture:
"This huge room sinks several hundred yards deep. The platform where we stand is at half-height. Since the beginning of Angra Mainyu's liberation ritual, his substance has poured into this abyss... "
The cave was then shaken like an earthquake and then, slowly, like a slow and awkward sleepwalker, something began to move in the deep end, rising from the bottom of the abyss... Angra Mainyu was taking shape.
The mire formed a threatening wall which - for a moment - seemed about to bury the platform. Then the enormous black, fiery and viscous mass gathered together into a pulsating column... Before their eyes, the heap of mud eventually took on the appearance of a monumental silhouette higher than the Buddha of Ushiku (1). A statue made of black mud that represented a man without distinctive features or characteristics... Then the being opened his eyes, two wells illuminated by the flames of hell.
Once again, Saber threw herself forward, the Sword of the Winds' King cutting off her enemies. Under the weight of her fury and in the face of the massacre she was carrying out, humans would have become afraid and fled. But even if the monsters fell one after the other, others were occurring, increasing numbers. The King of the Knights used all the techniques she knew, making a dazzling display of fencing, but for every yard, she had to defeat ten monsters. Already, her breath was short and the sweat made her blink. Had the fight lasted ten minutes or ten hours? Saber did not know this, but what she was sure of was that she would eventually wear herself out... already she had received blows to the arm and face. The tentacles of the monsters struck like blacksmith's hammers and the mud that constituted them burned like acid. Avalon would close her wounds... at least as long as she had Mana to supply to the scabbard so it could heal her. This confrontation was a battle of endurance that Saber could only lose. The eyes reduced to thin slits, Artoria drew from its ultimate resources:
"Mana Burst."
As her Dragon Core was racing, lightning flashed around her, hitting the nearby monsters. It was like an explosion that pulverized the mud creatures into a three meters radius' circle.
Finally, an opening! Artoria Pendragon leaps forward...
And Angra Mainyu opened his mouth, spitting a flow of orange fire toward her.
By reflex, Saber dispelled the Barrier of the Winds' King to free her Sacred Sword, calling upon the power of her Noble Phantasm:
"Excalibur!"
The beam of golden light and the flow of orange energy collided in a formidable explosion that illuminated the entire cave. For a moment, the two powers seemed equivalent, holding each other in respect, and then... an imperceptible movement appeared... slowly at the beginning... then more and more quickly the orange flow pushed back the golden light of Excalibur.
Around Artoria, lightning struck the platform, wind, and light swirling. With clenched teeth, she tried to channel more power to her sword. The brilliance of the golden beam gained strength. For a moment the orange beam hesitated, retreated a little... but only for a moment. Suddenly her resistance collapsed and Artoria was engulfed in the orange flood. The latter drew a long trench in the platform before pushing Saber into the wall.
As tons of rocks collapsed into the darkness below and long cracks progressed on the walls and platform, Lancer ran to Saber.
Her prostrate form lay in a smoking crater, her clothes were torn and burned, Artoria was stained with blood... which formed puddles and projections all around her.
But she was still alive. Already, her hand was tightening on the handle of Excalibur. Using the sword like a cane, Saber managed to stand up. A golden light began to dim from her wounds. Avalon was at work, closing the wounds of the King of Knights.
Of course, the mud men were not going to let Artoria regain her strength. They rushed at her eager to finish her... but Gae Bolg pierced all those who approached her.
Kirei Kotomine looked at the scene with a smile reflecting real joy. With his hands crossed behind his back, he did not make an effort to create new mudmen and hasten the end of his enemies. It must be said that he tasted their efforts to survive as he would have done with a bottle of fine wine.
It would have sufficed to send two or three more balls of mud and, submerged under the number, Artoria and Cù Chulainn would have perished.
However, he wanted to make his pleasure last so that they had time to suffer to pay for what they had done to him.
His joy faded for a few moments as his hands shook with anger.
For years he had worked for the resurrection of his god. With the help of puppets like Shinji Matou or Atrum Galliasta, Kotomine had fomented troubles that had led to the invasion of High-Rock by the Orcs and the Reachmen. He had also used the Redguard Dragonstar's pirates to cut maritime routes to accelerate the fall of the coastal towns that had resisted the initial invasion... Kirei hoped that the generalized war could cause enough suffering and destruction to call All the World's Evil to Nirn, despite the barrier raised by the Aedra.
But, all his pawns had been defeated, all his schemes had failed. And he owed his defeat, especially to Artoria Pendragon. Saber had escaped all attempts to kill her. She and her friends had succeeded in winning the victory wherever they had intervened, returning the tide of battles that has been completely one-sided, stopping the perfect mechanics of his plots.
His smile came back.
Yes, certainly, until then all his plans had failed. However, his luck always turned and Kirei now had the pleasure of seeing his revenge come true before his eyes.
The icing on the cake, Saber and Lancer would perish even as his god would be reborn.
Yes, tonight was truly the culmination of his long efforts.
Artoria straightened up and concentrated for a moment. Her armor dissipated into a blue Prana butterfly. The King of Knights sacrificed her protection without regret. Saber needed Mana too much to keep it. Either way, she wouldn't survive a second attack from Avenger.
"Lancer, get ready."
Cù Chulainn folded his eyes and approached her. His ally had certainly not told him what to prepare for, but he felt that she was going to try a double or nothing. And he had a broad predator smile... If Saber though they still had a chance to win, he certainly wasn't going to discourage her.
His gaze drifted to the other end of the platform. Large sections of the cave wall continued to fall into the void, but the area around the altar... and Bazett... was still stable. Kirei stood there doing nothing, looking at them with a full smile, certain that he had nothing to fear because his god was protecting him.
Saber raised Excalibur above her head and focused. Around the two ex-Servants light particles, similar to small fairies, began to appear. As the former had just merged with the Sword of Promised Victory, the aura of gold enveloping the Sacred Blade began to grow in power. And the luminous fairies multiplied, converging towards Artoria. They now formed veritable torrents of light and the aura of gold had metamorphosed into a torch about ten meters high.
Of course, Angra Mainyu could not let the King of Knights release all the power of Excalibur. He opened his mouth and the orange light appeared, ready to come out...
Exactly what Saber had hoped for.
Her left hand left the grip of his sword and extended forward in an imperious gesture:
"Avalon."
Then a magnificent scabbard, cast in gold, inlaid with blue enamel and bearing a fairy-tale inscription, appeared before his hand. Around the Noble Phantasm, there was a golden aura.
As the attack struck the invincible shield, impenetrable to all magic, the torrents of orange energy broke and fell back striking the rock walls, massacring mud creatures, or cutting wide sections of the platform.
But most of the attack was sent back to Angra Mainyu... the biggest target... The god in gestation vacillated and was pushed back against the opposite wall which he struck with a sound evoking a huge explosion.
For a brief moment, a relative silence arose. Only disturbed by the sounds of rocks falling and bouncing around them, and the tremors that shook the platform, fragmenting its ends that fell to the abyss piece by piece... The entire cave was about to collapse. However, Artoria was certainly not going to release the pressure now:
"All right. Let's finish this."
"Sheathed in the breath of the planet, a torrent of shining life."
"Feel its wrath."
"Excalibur!"
She lowered her arm and her flaming sword with incredible strength. The beam of golden light was now a tidal wave, a furious river swollen by floods and submerging all the dikes.
Angra Mainyu raised his hand to block the attack. Had his invocation been complete and Bazett Fragga McRemitz sacrificed, Avenger would have had his full power. He would have stopped the attack. But the balance of power was now reversed. The light enveloped him and his gigantic body crumbled under the formidable discharge of energy...
Within seconds he disappeared. His formidable cry of anger and despair resounded in the immense cave long after it had disintegrated.
A pillar of light, swirling and surrounded by golden fairies, was formed where Avenger had stood. Piercing the vault and the dozens of underground floors above, the energy of Excalibur rises to the open air in a dazzling pillar of light that gave back to the stars the power that had been lent to the Sacred Blade.
Saber struggled to stay standing. She was completely exhausted.
But the time had not yet come to rest.
Excalibur had annihilated Angra Mainyu and the portal to the Greater Grail as well as all the manifestations of All the World's Evil had disappeared with him...
Nevertheless, the cave was about to collapse.
"Lancer, go ahead, take Bazett the time has come to leave!"
Cù Chulainn looked at her for a moment and then shook his head:
"No, it's up to you to take care of Bazett, keep her safe. I'll stay... " With a sharp gesture of his spear, the Red Plains Dog pointed to Kirei as he rose, looking with amazement at the place where his god had stood. "I have a promise to honor. A promise of vengeance and for a Red Branch Knight there is no more sacred oath."
Artoria had a tired smile...
It seemed completely absurd to insist on a duel with his worst enemy even when the place in the throes of a cataclysm... But who said heroes are sensible people? If they had wanted to live a perfectly ordinary life, they would never have become heroes.
She finally agreed:
"Good luck!"
He replied with the smile of a hungry predator:
"You should wish Kotomine good luck."
Without further discussion, Artoria ran to the altar and lifted up Lancer's former Master. Without looking back, carrying the young woman still asleep, Saber rushed to the front door. The wall around the frame was already covered with cracks and one of the doors fell to the ground as she was passing through. The temple was now plagued by almost continuous tremors.
Four Noble Phantasms (or equivalent) in such rapid succession was way too much, especially in a confined place... Artoria would be lucky if she could reach the surface before everything collapsed.
Kirei Kotomine smiles relaxed, even allowing himself to cross his arms behind his back:
"Must you be suicidal to want to fight in the midst of the chaos triggered by the clash of my god and Saber." His hand described an arc of a circle enveloping the immense cavern in the process of collapsing and the platform shaken with tremors where cracks appeared more and more disturbing.
Cù Chulainn replied with a fierce smile. He had placed the staff of his spear on his shoulder and seemed perfectly relaxed:
"It doesn't take five minutes to crush a louse."
Kotomine raised an eyebrow:
"Oh? Those are very reckless words. You can't judge the strength of an enemy until you fight him, Lancer. Didn't they teach that to the warriors of green Ireland?"
Ireland's Son of Light swirled his spear and crouched like a wild beast ready to jump to the throat:
"Yes, I've been told... but that's true when you face a real warrior. But you and I don't play in the same category. I'm going to eliminate you all at once. Gae..."
But his sentence choked while he was spitting blood and bending in half. Inexplicably, the dark priest was now standing next to him. Lancer lowered his eyes towards his abdomen. Kirei Koromine's fist was embedded in his solar plexus.
Kirei had a cruel smile:
"You are no longer a Heroic Spirit, you are a mortal... just like me... and my faithfulness to my god has been rewarded. I received great powers."
There was a flash of violet light and Cù Chulainn was thrown back.
Kirei lifted up, a sardonic smile on his lips. He looked at his hand wrapped in a sort of dark violet glowing mist. A circle of strange inscriptions appeared wrapping around him.
Lancer was already up, he had been more surprised than wounded... his runic protections had played containing most of an attack that would have killed an ordinary person in one blow. In fact, the most violent blow had been to his ego. Under the effect of humiliation, his face turned into a bestial mask.
He rushed forward with all his speed.
Kirei made a gesture and a black dagger appeared in the air in front of him... before flying straight to Culann's Dog.
The evil weapon hit him in the face.
Despite his skill Protection from the Arrows (rank B) and the runes inscribed on his armor, Lancer stumbled and recoils. A bloody scar appeared on his forehead.
Cù Chulainn must have admitted that he had underestimated Kirei. That the dark priest may have touched him once was probably due to his own carelessness ... but this second injury was quite different. Lancer understood that this fight would be difficult and that he would have to fight with all his skill if he wanted to triumph.
As Kirei made two more black daggers appear, Cù accelerated and jumped several times, quickly changing his position to dodge the projectiles.
When he came near the dark priest, he kept himself out of the reach of his fists strengthened by some sort of spell and played with the upper extension offered to him by his spear to strike points. And Cù Chulainn smiled as he saw the priest on the defensive, blocking the attacks with his forearms. Each time the tip wrapped in Mana tore the clothes, causing the blood to flow.
The son of the god Lug had many faults, but he was not the most famous warrior of the Irish legends without reason. He only had to receive two blows from his opponent to understand that Kirei was an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and that his black daggers gave him the ability to attack from a long distance. He stayed a distance longer than Kirei's arm, but never let him get far enough away so that he could again resort to remote attacks. This ideal attack distance allowed him to carry out attacks to his enemy while remaining out of range of his counter-attacks... at least in theory.
Nevertheless, Kirei Kotomine was not an amateur, he had fought many battles while he was a member of the Assembly of the Height Sacraments killing heretics, sorcerers, to find and protect the holy relics of the Church. He had even fought Death Apostles. The use of feints was known to him.
The fight was going too fast for the eye of a normal man to follow the movements of the duelists.
They could be seen as blurred shapes appearing simultaneously at several points on the collapsing platform. They fought on the ground or in the air rushing towards each other like these two hereditary enemies, the dog and the wolf, eager to tear and bite each other.
Kirei leaped back raising his hand to invoke several black daggers.
As Lancer rushed forward, Kirei smiled... and leaped over Cù. His daggers fell vertically and the Dog of Culann was wounded again. Nevertheless, as Kirei fell to the ground, Cù threw himself on him, using Gae Bolg as a fighting stick to hit him on the hip. The dark priest blocked the blow but was thrown away bouncing several times.
Despite the blood on his face and shoulders, Lancer smiled:
"That crack was your ribs? How many did I break?"
Kirei must have been in terrible pain, but he merely invoked new daggers and threw them at Cù, while jumping. In the air, Kotomine looked like a big bat, his mantle slamming around him like dark wings.
Lancer swirled Gae Bolg and the daggers ricocheted off the obstacle. At the same time, he jumped sideways, dodging Kirei's fist which broke a slab of the ground. But the priest was already upright, his leg running through an arc of a circle, and Lancer only had time to block with his spear, shaking under the shock.
But Cù could also use his legs to attack, he mowed Kirei's feet and - as he was tipping over, he hit him with quick blows from the tip of his cursed weapon. With incredible reflexes, the priest twisted and raised his arms to protect his vital points.
As he fell to the ground and bounced, it was apparent that he had been seriously injured. Three wounds appeared on his chest and abdomen, and the sleeves were now torn and soaked in blood.
This did not prevent Kirei from straightening out and throwing three daggers. The projectiles arrived in well-calculated trajectories, two were fakes while Lancer deflected them with the staff of Gae Bolg, the third appeared in his back and stuck between his shoulder blades.
The blow would have been fatal... without the protection against the arrows of the Dog of Culann.
But he staggered, spitting blood, his eyes blurred.
Exactly the opportunity his enemy expected. Once again, Kirei jumped back and fell over Cù to kick him from top to bottom, aiming for the top of his head. But Lancer used Gae Bolg as a shield, blocking the assault.
Kirei fell to the ground, took distance, and launched three new daggers that Cù dodged by changing course rapidly.
But Kotomine had just faked it again. While Lancer expected him to continue to retreat, harassing him with these daggers, the latter accelerated to leap forward. His maximum speed even exceeded that of Lancer - much slower than during the Grail War- and he struck using his best Bajiquan technique: Six Grand Opening- Elbow Upthrust.
Grabbing Lancer's wrist, the priest pulled Gae Bolg aside, and then his elbow hit him very violently in the chest. As Cù arched and spit out a long stream of saliva, the body paralyzed by the shock, Kirei twirled, in a projection maneuver that threw his opponent to the ground.
While the Red Plains Dog was on the ground, Kotomine completed the sequence by striking his foot on Cù's chest. Kirei's heel, enveloped in violet light, struck with such violence that Lancer plunged into the slabs of the ground, many of which were ejected from the platform, literally reduced to shot-blasts by the shock wave.
The fits raised, panting, but ready to counter-attack, the dark priest looked at his enemy.
Lancer lay on the ground with his mouth open. His chest no longer lifted...
Kirei had a cold smile.
He turned and ran to the door.
But, feeling powerful magic behind him, Kirei stopped...
Lancer was standing. Gae Bolg had just described an arc of a circle in the ground, inscribing the runes Algiz, Nauthiz, Ansuz, and Ingwaz.
Ath nGabla was a Runic Magecraft typical of the Knights of the Red Branch, a challenge between two warriors... forbidding any retreat. Forcing the warriors to fight until one of them is defeated.
Despite his face turned into a blood mask and his many wounds, Cù Chulainn had a smile terrible to see:
"Congratulations, my heart stopped beating... I'm dead. But in my first life, I fought my last battle holding my intestines in one hand... if the simple fact of having no heart were enough to stop me, I would never have become a Hero."
Thanks to his Battle Continuation skill, Lancer could continue to fight even on the brink of death.
But Kirei smiled, well aware that the platform would not last a minute longer. The cave lived its last moments:
"Then I'll end it quickly."
The goal was no longer to defeat.
The goal was no longer even to survive.
The hatred between the two men had reached such a height that only one thing could satisfy them: to stand above the corpse of their worst enemy... even if it were to be the last thing they would do.
Artoria Pendragon emerged in the open, her hair covered with the dust of the underground. Behind her in a long crack, the entrance lintel broke and the ground collapsed. Running through the night, she turned away from the entrance to the catacombs. Around her, the ruins of the ancient city finished collapsing as the ground was slowly trimmed.
The moon was shining quietly... the Day of the Black Sun had passed and Angra Mainyu had not been resurrected.
Finally becoming aware of the spectacle revealed by the full moon, Saber discovered a fantastic spectacle. Everywhere around her, men would run. In the midst of panic, the Redguards resembled ants circling round in their ripped-open anthill. They were chased by horsemen carrying the Menevian tabard. Trumpets sounded triumphant.
Turning her head, she discovered a troop of knights contemplating the pursuit of the defeated invasion army.
On horseback at the standard-bearer, the commander of the army withdrew his helmet, and Artoria recognized King Eadwyre by his crown and his long white beard.
Around her, the horsemen and infantrymen wearing the white tabard adorned with three yellow roses shouted with enthusiasm and praised her courage and determination. Once again, the legendary King Arthur had proven himself to be an authentic hero protector of humanity.
However, the King of knights felt no joy. She turned around.
There remained only a tangle of broken slabs and earth there was the entrance to the underpass. No one could leave the underground temple, all the galleries were collapsed. Yet the tremors continued even gaining strength. The main cave would survive only a few minutes...
Saber suddenly felt a deep sadness.
Her instincts had never deceived her... and she felt that Lancer was fighting his last battle.
Kirei Kotomine and Cù Chulainn rushed towards each other for the final round of their fight.
But suddenly, just before making contact, Gael Bolg was thrown into the ground. Gripping his weapon like a point of support, he struck his enemy in the chest with both legs.
Leaving his spear there, he pursued Kirei and overtook him to hit him with an overturned kick and sent him back in the opposite direction.
And like a pinball game where Kotomine was the ball, the dark priest bounces back in all directions...
"Come on!"
Cù Chulainn held out his hand and the red bone spear obeyed, plucking itself from the ground to lodge in his palm.
As Kirei collapsed, covered in blood and bruises, Lancer squatted while his famous spear wrapped itself in a bloody aura:
"Gae Bolg!"
He could have killed his enemy with a single spear stroke, but that would not have sufficed to satisfy the fury that devoured him.
The red ray that came out of the cursed weapon flew towards the ground but, arriving at one meter from Kirei, the light ray retreated... as if time reversed its course.
At a certain point in the race, the ray resumed its advance but changed direction. This time, nothing stopped it and the ray pierced the black heart of the monster called Kirei Kotomine. Shaken in all directions by the force of the attack, the body was rejected beyond what remained of the platform, before ending swallowed by emptiness and night, precipitated to the depths' end.
Cù Chulainn trembled and spit a flood of blood before falling to his knees. He dropped his spear... then raised a trembling finger to draw a luminous rune in the air.
"Bazett..."
At this moment in a final rumble, what remained of the platform broke in two, precipitating the Hero into the void, following his victim.
On the surface, the last rune of Lancer appeared above the sleeping face of Bazett Fraga McRemitz. From under her lowered eyelids appeared two tears that rolled over her cheeks.
In her sleep she waved and murmured:
"Sétanta."
Artoria stood up, looking at the depression that was digging into the ground, where the ancient Direnni's city once stood. The cave had finally collapsed completely.
She joined her hands in a gesture of prayer:
"Farewell Son of Light, your last feat will never be forgotten."
(1) In 2004 (the year of the events of Fate Stay/ Night) it was the highest statue in the world (120 meters high, counting its base)... coincidentally, it represents a Buddhist deity adored by the Japanese.
Author's note: This 47th chapter of Fate/ Dragoncrown is very special. When I wrote chapter 1, I wrote a synopsis with the roles of the different characters and a brief summary of the action. And this story ended with the failure of the resurrection of Angra Mainyu... this episode. We can say that these 47 chapters form cycle 1 of Dragoncrown and that it is finished. If you have read all 47 chapters, you have read a complete history. (Feel free to give your impressions).
Before you criticize the clash between Cù and Kirei, remember that we are no longer in Fate stay Night. I have already explained what has changed with the reincarnation of the characters. Consider also the following facts:
a) Lancer is already exhausted by a long fight while the dark priest has been content until now to play the spectators.
b) Lancer widely underestimates Kirei giving the dark priest twice the opportunity to hit him
c) Kirei's daggers are equivalent to a B+ Noble Phantasm
d) Kirei has the protection of Angra Mainyu (equivalent to a "Luck" skill at rank B+)
Fate Dragoncrown is not finished yet, there is at least another cycle to come. Angra Mainyu is defeated, but Gilgamesh is still out there... and yes, he's the villain of the second cycle.