Day 6: Shirou — Bloodfort Andromeda
Rin Tohsaka was not a morning person. Even on the best of days, she woke up grumpy and ornery. Today, as she stepped into the dining room for breakfast, Shirou thought she seemed in a particularly foul mood, above and beyond her ordinary disgruntlement.
"Is everything okay?" Shirou asked.
"A thief broke into my house last night." Rin said. "It's way to early to be woken up to that kind of news."
"That's terrible!" Shirou said "Do you think it might have been another Master, trying to attack you in your home?"
"That seems likely." Rin agreed. "My house was warded with bounded fields that only a magus would've been able to disarm. The culprit must have sensed that there were no Servants present, and broke in on the off chance that I'd been stupid enough to send my Servants away rather than going along with them. As if! Denied the chance to eliminate me, they apparently decided to use the opportunity to help themselves to my cache of magic gemstones. That's not so bad, since I brought all my most powerful ones with me when I moved in here. No, what really pisses me off is, they stole a police car and blew it up in front of my house! We can't have the civilian authorities getting involved in the Grail War, so I had no choice but to ask that shitty fake priest to cover it up. Any time of day is too early for a talk with him."
Her mood was greatly improved when Shirou served breakfast. However, Bazett did not join them to eat, preferring to take her meal alone. Her self-imposed isolation emphasized the fact that, while they were giving her shelter, she was not exactly an ally or friend. Saber commentated that she would be keeping a close eye on Bazett while Shirou was at school. Shirou personally didn't think there was a need to go quite so far in suspicion towards the magus, but Saber was still annoyed about not being permitted to go to school with Shirou for his protection, and Shirou thought it would be good for her mood to have an actual task to perform rather than simply being asked to sit idly at the house until he and Rin returned.
After breakfast, Shirou and Rin departed for school, accompanied by Crow and the two Archers in spiritual form. However, after they had walked a few blocks, Red Archer spoke.
"There's a potential problem." he said. "Do you recall yesterday when I informed you that I could sense an enemy Servant lurking near the house? I can still feel its presence. However, it does not seem to be following us. I believe it intends to continue staking out the house while we're gone."
Rin stopped and thought.
"It can sense that we're bringing three Servants with us, so it knows better than to attack us." Rin said. "But if we leave just Bazett and Saber at the house..."
"It may feel confident enough to strike." Red Archer said. "Given that the strength of our alliance is based on having multiple Heroic Spirits to support one another, it would be tempting to try and pick off Saber while she is alone and unsupported."
"In that case, I think you should go back to the house and stand guard along with Saber." Rin told Red Archer. A two-to-one advantage should discourage the enemy from attacking. Shirou and I will also be safe so long as we stick together with both Crow and Black Archer protecting us."
"I believe the overall safest course would be to skip school altogether and focus entirely on preparing for the War." Red Archer said. "Trying for some half-assed approach where you both fight in the War and continue to try attending school as normal puts you in much greater danger than fully committing to your role as a Master would."
"I wouldn't go if I didn't think it was important." Rin said. "We've already confirmed that there have been enemies active at the school — Shinji Matou and Servant Rider, for one, and whichever Servant placed that bounded field. If Shinji was right and the bounded field was the work of the Caster at Ryuudou Temple, then it should have broken down now that the Caster is dead. If it's still active, then that means Shinji was either lying to us or deceived — but either way, there would still be an enemy presence at the school. We must investigate and determine the situation at the school."
"Understood." Red Archer said. "I will return to the house and maintain my vigilance."
Shirou felt the Servant's presence vanish, and he and Rin resumed walking to school. However, they had only progressed a short distance before Rin suddenly drew to a halt again.
"Today is already shaping up to be an unpleasant day." Rin muttered under her breath.
"Is something wrong?" Shirou asked.
"Possibly." Rin said. "You see that bird?"
She made an oblique hand gesture, and it took Shirou a few moments to figure out which direction she was indicating. His eyes finally settled on an ordinary-looking pigeon sitting atop a telephone pole, starting down at them with black beady eyes.
"Um... yes?" Shirou said.
"It's not really a bird." Rin said. "It's a familiar, a construct sent by some other magus to spy on us. A Master is probably watching us through its eyes right now."
Shirou looked back at the bird and flinched a little. Its blank face was unsettling now that he could picture a hostile intelligence staring out at him from behind those dark, unblinking eyes.
"The same Master who has their Servant staking out the house?" Shirou asked.
"Could be." Rin said. "Or it could be unrelated. Saber lit up the whole sky when she fired Excalibur off the top of that mountain; it wouldn't surprising if more than one Master took notice and decided to put us under surveillance."
"Would you like me to eliminate it?" Black Archer asked, her voice coming from seemingly empty air behind Rin.
"We probably should." Rin said. "It'd actually be better if we could capture it — that way I could trace the spiritual connection back to it's Master and find out where they're hiding. But a ritual like that would take time to prepare, and the familiar would be broadcasting information back to its Master the entire time. I don't see any way to do it without giving away more information than I'd get. So we'd better just eliminate it."
There was a brief pause, then Black Archer's voice spoke again.
"I believe I can capture and hold it in such a way as its Master cannot use it to track us, until you are ready to use it to track them." she said. "Would that be preferable?"
"If you think you can do it, then go ahead and try." Rin said. "I'm not one to turn down an advantage."
"Very well." Black Archer said.
There was a long silence. Then Black Archer suddenly materialized on the telephone pole, crouching over the pigeon. It immediately tried to take flight, but Black Archer grabbed it around the neck with lightning-fast reflexes and slid it behind the shield on her arm. When she drew her hand back a moment later, it was empty. Black Archer then returned to spiritual form. The entire sequence of events occurred so quickly that Shirou was barely able to follow it even though his attention had been focused on the pigeon; there was no chance that any casual observer had managed to see her in action. Black Archer's voice spoke from the air behind Rin again.
"I have imprisoned the familiar within the extradimensional storage space inside my Faust Buckler." Black Archer said. "Time is frozen for all items within that space, so the familiar will be trapped in stasis until I withdraw it. In its present state, it cannot transmit what it sees to its Master, nor can its Master use it as a tracking device."
"That's a pretty good trick." Rin said. "You know, I get the feeling you've been holding out on me, Black Archer."
"What do you mean?" the Servant asked cooly.
"I don't think you're giving it all when you fight." Rin said. "When you fully activate that Noble Phantasm, Faust Buckler, you can freeze time outside the storage space, not merely within it, correct?"
"Correct." Black Archer said.
"Then you should be able to beat any Servant!" Rin said. "Just stop time, then blast their head off while they're frozen!"
"Unfortunately, that's impossible." Black Archer said. "When I stop time, any projectiles I fire freeze as well. I must unfreeze time for them to strike the target, and Servants have sufficient reflexes to block or dodge even close-range attacks. If I tried to directly strike them, making physical contact would draw them into the frozen time with me and allow them to counterattack. My normal strategy is to utilize the frozen time to plant explosives around the target; but that is ineffective against Servants, who are spiritual rather than physical beings."
"It'd still work on Masters, though." Rin countered. "I know you've been squirreling away grenades and stuff. They might not harm Servants, but a human would definitely die."
"True." Homura said. "But only if I could locate the Master. The prana cost of maintaining Faust Buckler grows exponentially the longer it remains active; with you supporting Red Archer as well, I can only freeze time for short periods. I can't just go on a leisurely stroll looking for enemies while keeping time stopped the whole while."
"There are some Masters who go to battle beside their Servants." Rin pressed. "Ilyasviel von Einzbern, for instance."
Shirou felt a sudden drop in temperature and realized that it was a wave of hostility radiating from the invisible Servant.
"I thought I already told you." Black Archer said. "I will not assassinate that poor, tragic girl. I am not such a monster as to ruthlessly crush the hopes and lives of little girls in selfish pursuit of my own desires. And if you are the type of person who would order such a thing of me, then you are not worthy to be my Master."
There was a long, tense moment, then Rin sighed.
"Fine." she said. "I won't order you to kill Ilyasviel."
"Those kinds of tactics are best suited for an Assassin, anyway." Crow contributed cheerfully. "I prefer an honest straightforward brawl to the death any day. If your opponent's stronger than you, that just means you have to fight that much harder to make up the difference!"
"You are so lucky." Rin told Shirou. "Saber Crow may be weak in terms of ability, but his personality is a million times better than either of my Servants. Black Archer is a slacker with no passion for anything, and Red Archer cares more about when he'll get to break our alliance and fight you than any of the opponents we're supposed to be fighting together. How could an amateur like you get so lucky? It pisses me off!"
Shirou could only shrug. Rin made a disgusted noise and resumed walking. They managed to make it the rest of the way to the school without incident — but no farther. As soon as Shirou stepped past the front gate, he felt a sickening feeling come over him. The air seemed to be filled with a toxic miasma that pressed in on him from all directions, driving him to his knees. After a few moments, the feeling relented, but he could still sense it in the background: a constant dull hum of dark magic at the edges of his awareness.
"The bounded field hasn't disappeared." Shirou said.
"No." Rin agreed.
Since she was more skilled of a magus than Shirou and more sensitive to magical energy, the odious magic surrounding them must have assaulted her even more severely than it had him, but she had managed to maintain her composure.
"You have to know what this means, Shirou." Rin said. "Shinji Matou lied to you when he said it was the Caster at Ryuudou Temple creating the bounded field. It was probably to trick you into taking out an enemy that he wasn't strong enough to eliminate himself... but we can't ignore the possibility that he pointed you towards that Caster to disguise the fact that it was in fact his own Servant creating the bounded field all along."
"But Shinji's Servant is of the Rider class." Shirou protested. "A large magical field like the one around the school definitely makes sense for a Caster, but is it really something that a Rider could do?"
"For an old enough Heroic Spirit, most certainly." Rin said. "The greatest Riders, who use Phantasmal Beasts as mounts, lived during the Age of Legends when magic was more plentiful and far more powerful than the magecraft of the modern world. Such a Rider might easily possess a Noble Phantasm capable of creating this bounded field."
"I understand." Shirou said. "I'll stay on guard and keep a lookout for Shinji. Normally I'd think that there's no way he'd try attacking us in the middle of school; but since he's been lying to me, I guess I don't know him as well as I thought. I wonder if I ever really knew him. I always tried as hard as I could to be his friend..."
Rin slapped Shirou across the back of the head; relatively gently by her standards, but enough to completely derail his train of thought.
"Don't waste time letting that scum make you feel bad." Rin said. "You're a thousand times the person Shinji Matou is. Now, try and find him between classes, and get him to order his Servant to take down the bounded field. I'll be on the lookout for other Servants, on the slim chance that Shinji isn't creating the bounded field himself and was simply mistaken as to the identity of the Servant who was. We mustn't forget that there are two of each Servant class in this War — it's still possible that the bounded field is the work of a Caster, but a different one than the one that was at the temple. We'll reconvene on the roof at lunch to compare notes."
Shirou spent the first half of the day looking for Shinji, but without success; he apparently hadn't come into school that day. Normally, Shirou would have asked Sakura if she knew anything, but she hadn't come to school either — apparently still staying home due to illness. However, neither of the Matous were the most-discussed mysterious absence at school. That position fell to Kuzki-sensei, who had failed to show up to teach class that day. He had not even called in beforehand to allow the school administration time to arrange for a substitute teacher, something unheard of from the extremely punctilious Souchirou Kuzuki. Rumors were already flying over the reason for his disappearance.
Shirou, of course, knew the truth: Kuzuki had been struck down by the same Assassin which had slain Bazett's Lancer. He had seen the man's corpse with his own eyes. What he didn't understand was why everybody else was treating it like a mysterious disappearance. Surely the monks who lived at the temple would have discovered the body in their courtyard when they woke in the morning; and Shirou's friend Issei, as a fellow student, should have been able to immediately identify the body as Kuzuki. However, Issei was in class as usual, and seemed just as confused about Kuzuki's absence as everybody else. When Shirou tentatively asked Issei if he had seen Kuzuki that morning, Issei replied that he had not, and it was common for Kuzuki to wake early and depart before anyone else. He didn't mention noticing anything out of the ordinary, and Shirou felt he could safely assume the discovery of a corpse on the temple grounds would be very much noteworthy. He could only conclude that, some time after he had left the temple but before the monks had awoken, Kuzuki's body had been in some manner removed or hidden.
As soon as the lunch bell rang, Shirou hurried to the roof and met with Rin, who had somehow managed to get there before him yet didn't seem at all disheveled or out of breath. He explained Shinji's absence to her.
"Not surprising." Rin said. "He must be the one responsible for the bounded field, and he realized that we'd figure that out as soon as we discovered the field still active after the Ryuudou Temple Caster's death. He's probably holed up somewhere trying to think of his next move."
Shirou then brought up the mysterious disappearance of Kuzuki-sensei's corpse, and how everyone at school believed he was merely absent instead of dead.
"Ah." Rin said. "Actually, I have to claim responsibility for that. As a magus, it is my responsibility to conceal all evidence of the Holy Grail War from ordinary humans. When we discovered the body that night, before leaving the temple grounds, I cast a spell to incinerate his corpse without a trace."
"But why didn't you tell me?" Shirou asked.
"I thought you might get upset." Rin said. "I know how sensitive you are about people dying, and I didn't want to get into an argument right then."
"I don't need you to shelter me like that." Shirou said, offended that Rin still considered him a kid in need of coddling. "I may not be as experienced as you, but I am a magus – and a competitor in this Holy Grail War as well. Not some helpless bystander that needs to be shielded from the unpleasant necessities of the War."
"Well, feel free to go ahead and take care of the next mangled corpse yourself, if you feel that strongly about it." Rin said. "I was only trying to be respectful of your naive sensibilities, but if you think you're ready to handle–"
"Master." Black Archer urgently interrupted. "A Servant is approaching."
"Are you certain?" Rin asked, her body tensing.
"Yes." Black Archer said. "The bounded field obstructed my sense of the area beyond its perimeter; but now that the Servant has crossed onto the school grounds, I can feel it quite clearly. The amount of prana it is using is unusually high; either it is an epic spirit on the level of Berserker Heracles, or else its Master has used one or more Command Spells to bolster its strength."
"And since Command Spells work best on immediate actions rather than delayed or prolonged ones, they'd only do that if they intended to begin a battle right here, right now." Rin said. "Can you tell if it's in physical or spiritual form?"
"Physical." Black Archer said.
"Damn!" Rin cursed. "Better materialize. You too, Crow: your Master is in mortal peril."
"No need to tell me that." Crow said, materializing just behind Shirou and adopting a defensive stance. "I'm only missing one eye, not blind — I can sense the burning aura of killing intent being projected by the intruder."
"This shouldn't be happening." Shirou said. "A battle between Servants, here, now? In the middle of the day, in a public place with dozens of innocent bystanders in the line of fire? I thought the Holy Grail War was supposed to carried out in private and secret!"
"Well, if they manage to kill us, at least we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that shitty fake priest will take them down afterwards for breaking the rules." Rin said. "Not that we're going to let it get that far, of course. With a two-to-one advantage, we have a good shot of beating that Servant."
"We need to evacuate the students and teachers so they don't get hurt in the crossfire." Shirou said. "Maybe if I pull the fire alarm—"
At that moment, the world convulsed. Crimson strands of energy enveloped the school, forming a dome that seemed like a giant, malevolent spider web hanging over the grounds. The air suddenly grew thick and difficult to breathe, and Shirou felt as though a great weight were pressing down on him.
"The bounded field just activated!" Rin shouted in alarm.
"How long do we have?" Shirou asked.
"The magical energy in our bodies will protect us for some time." Rin said. "But the other students and teachers... they're probably already unconscious, and they'll be dead within minutes."
"We can't let that happen!" Shirou said. "We have to get them out of the building somehow!"
"Shirou, there's no time!" Rin said. "The bounded field extends over the entirety of the school grounds, all the way to the gate. By the time we carry even a few of the students that distance, the rest will have died."
"Then... Black Archer's Noble Phantasm!" Shirou said. "Archer, you showed us on the way over that you can safely store living beings within your buckler inside a bounded field where no time passes. Anyone you placed in there would be safe, right?"
"Possibly." Black Archer said. "I have never before experimented with using Faust Buckler for such a purpose. But even if it may work, the incoming enemy is unlikely to allow us the opportunity to try."
"Hey, the enemy is the one responsible for this bounded field, right?" Crow asked. "In that case, the solution is obvious: all we have to do to is kill it, and the effects of its Noble Phantasm will end."
"That sounds like the best and fastest option." Rin said. "Any idea where it is?"
"Somewhere in the school, now, still growing nearer." Black Archer said.
"Let's go!" Shirou said.
"Don't go rushing off yet!" Rin said. "If the enemy intends to come to us, it might be better to wait and let it. Up here, there's enough open space for both of our Servants to engage the enemy simultaneously. If we go down into the school's hallways, we'll be forced to attack from only one direction; and when Crow enters melee, he'll obstruct Black Archer's line of fire."
"We can't just sit back and do nothing!" Shirou said. "Every second we wait, all the civilians in the bounded field grow closer to death."
"It won't do them any good if we're killed, too." Rin said. "We can't let our emotions overcome our reason. The enemy wants to engage: if it intended to simply wait for the bounded field to kill everyone, it would have maintained its distance instead of approaching. The fact that it's attacking despite our numerical advantage means that it's confident in its strength, and we're going to need a better strategy than rushing in blindly."
"But–" Shirou began.
"Hey, I have a question." Crow suddenly asked. "Does the enemy know where, specifically, we are, here on the roof?"
"Possibly." Rin said. "That depends on its Class. Different Servants have different methods of tracking enemies; for instance, Archers mainly rely on their keen eyesight, while Casters are more likely to have means of clairvoyant perception."
"I only ask because, the four of us standing here on the roof waiting for it to come to us makes for a pretty obvious ambush." Crow said. "You'd have to be either really strong or really stupid to just walk through the roof door knowing that your enemy is waiting for you. But if it can sense our position better than we can track it, and it has some means of ranged attack – well, I'm a man of action. Hunkering down like this doesn't make me feel like an ambusher so much as a sitting duck."
Rin frowned.
"Where's the enemy now?" she asked Black Archer.
"Very close." Black Archer said. "But as you mentioned, the Archer class's strongest sense is vision; I can feel a powerful presence nearby, but I cannot pinpoint the distance or determine the direction without line of sight."
"It should have arrived by now if it was coming directly." Rin said. "It must be up to something. You're right, Crow, Shirou; we need to go on the offensive. Let's–"
At that moment, a nail-like dagger on the end of a chain erupted through the concrete floor of the school roof and pierced Shirou's right leg at a steep angle. He had barely even begun to scream when an area of ground around him collapsed, dropping him on a pile of rubble in a hallway on the floor below.
The entire time they had been talking, Shirou realized, the enemy had been directly beneath his feet: eavesdropping on their conversation and preparing to cut away the ground he stood upon. When it heard they were going to move, it realized that its opportunity was about to close, and so it had struck.
Another flash of pain tore through Shirou as the chain connected to the nail-dagger embedded in his leg grew taut and began dragging him off the pile of rubble and across the ground. Like a fish being reeled in, he was being pulled to his enemy. His eyes blurry from the pain, he could not focus on his assailant, but caught the glint of a second upraised nail-dagger preparing to slice downwards and pierce his heart.
"Crow Claw!" Crow's voice shouted from the roof above.
A jet of blood sprayed between Shirou and the oncoming nail-dagger, then crystalized into a solid blade. The nail-dagger then struck the blade, sending cracks through its length but being deflected in turn. That bought enough time for Crow to jump down between Shirou and his assailant. Crow's damaged blade turned back into blood, which flowed back into the wound which it had made in the stump of Crow's severed arm with its violent expulsion. At the same time, a new blade was sliding out of a gash on the forearm of Crow's other limb, becoming solid and ready to swing within seconds. The enemy leapt backwards, but Crow's slash wasn't aimed at her: he targeted the chain she held which connected to the nail-dagger in Shirou's leg. The weapon was only a tool, not a Noble Phantasm like Crow Claw, so Crow's blade easily snapped the chain. Shirou grabbed the nail-dagger and yanked it out of his leg. There was a momentary surge in pain when the nail came out, as though his flesh were being pierced from within by countless swords, but the pain then quickly faded entirely. Now, freed from that agony, he was at last able to get a good look at his assailant.
The enemy was unmistakably Shinji's Servant, Rider. Bazett, who had seen her during her own abortive attempt at negotiating an alliance with Shinji, had provided Shirou a description of her: a pale-skinned woman with long purple hair and a blindfold covering her eyes. However, there was something about her that Bazett hadn't mentioned: a black chain, sunk into her chest above her heart. An ink-link stain spread from that point, darkening the nearby skin and clothing alike, and vein-like threads of red energy spread through her body as though her skin were cracking open to reveal some hellish internal light. A dark aura burned the air around the Servant; it expanded and contracted to a regular throbbing beat, matched by a brightening and dimming of the red lines on her skin. Both seemed mediated by the pulsing flow of energy carried by the chain.
The chain must have been a new development: Shirou could see no reason otherwise for Bazett to leave it out of her briefing on the enemy Servants. He tried looking behind her to see where the chain led, but it seemed to fade into darkness a few feet behind the Servant.
"Striking from the shadows like a coward, huh?" Crow taunted. "Aiming for my Master like a lowly Assassin? Maybe you're not so tough after all. Let's see what you're really made of!"
He began charging down the hallway, sweeping two blood-blades before him. Rider made no response to his verbal challenge, but shifted into a defensive stance and raised her nail-dagger. The blades seemed pitifully short compared to the great broadswords Crow had conjured from her blood – but when she leapt into action, it was with frightening speed and precision. Each mighty swing Crow made at her was blocked or deflected by a swift, sharp movement of her nail-daggers; and though her weapons were not strong enough to shatter Crow's crystallized blood, neither did they show any signs of accumulating damage themselves. Crow had snapped the chain connected to Shirou's leg easily enough, but the dark aura tainting Rider's body seemed to be flowing into the blades of the nail-daggers and giving them the strength to withstand Crow's strikes.
Crow hesitated for a moment after an exchange of blows, and that was all the opening Rider needed. She performed a backflipping kick which caught Crow under the jaw. His head snapped back and he staggered backwards, clearly dazed.
"No fair." he mumbled. "You can't expect me to fight a busty woman in such provocative attire. Who the hell does a snap-kick while wearing a tube dress, anyway?"
Rider, it seemed, cared nothing of modesty or chivalry. Without responding to Crow or giving him time to recover, she stepped forward with the intent of pressing her attack. After only a few steps, however, she abruptly stopped and raised her nail-daggers to a guard position. From the hole in the ceiling came one of Black Archer's arrows, shot from on top of the roof and tracing out a sinuous, snake-like curve as she manipulated its prana to follow a path that would be impossible for any ordinary projectile. The arrow accelerated as it thrust the final distance down the hall towards Rider, but Rider's reflexes were faster still: she swung one of her nail-daggers into intercept position at the last possible moment, causing the arrow to be deflected and to explode against a wall before Black Archer could correct its course.
Though Black Archer's attack had been ineffective, it had bought Crow time to regain his composure. Small jets of blood burst up from beneath his skin all across his body, then solidified into small but wickedly sharp dagger-like blades. These spiky thorns adorned his arm, legs, chest, back, and head. If Rider were to try kicking him again, no matter the location she chose to target, she'd end up impaling her own foot. Furthermore, the blades might be small now, but they could be extended if Crow put more of his blood into them. The next time Crow attacked, Rider might block the blades extending from his left arm and the stump of his right, only to be skewered mercilessly by a dozen more growing forward from his chest and abdomen.
Rider seemed to realize the risk of this as well. She shifted her grip on her nail-daggers from the hilt to the connected chain, wielding her weapons now like flails rather than daggers. With their reach extended, she could use them to hold Crow at a distance. As soon as he began to approach, she swung of weighted chains at him.
Crow, however, seemed to have anticipated this strategy. He raised his left arm as if to block with the curved blood-blade; but the moment the nail-dagger struck it, he turned it to liquid. Then, as the nail-dagger began to pass through, he made it solid once more. Rider's nail-dagger was now embedded within the solid structure of the scythe-like blade. Grinning ferociously, Crow swung that arm backwards, stretching the chain attached to the nail-dagger to its maximum length. He then began lengthening the blade, slowly dragging Rider towards him, and pointed the straight blade extending from the stump of his right arm for her heart. Rider would have to relinquish her hold on her weapon or else be dragged onto that blade and impaled.
But Rider did not release her hold. Instead, she seemed to draw on previously untapped reserves of strength. Her muscles swelled, the fiery glow of the tainted veins spreading from her heart becoming brighter, and the dark aura surrounding her grew more intense. No matter how much Crow strained, he could not pull her forwards another inch. Then, with contemptuous ease, she pumped the chain up and down as though cracking a whip. Crow, bound to the nail-dagger, was picked up off his feet and slammed into the ceiling, then dropped down and smashed into the floor. His blades turned back to liquid blood upon impact, painting the floor crimson and allowing Rider to reclaim her nail-blade. Now empowered with the full measure of her monstrous strength, she resumed marching down the hallway towards Crow and Shirou.
The hallway's windows suddenly blew in as arrows of purple prana punched through them. Black Archer was firing more shots from the roof; but this time, instead of sending them through the hole in the ceiling straight towards the enemy's face, she was launching them in great curving loops that sent them through windows to the side of and behind Rider. But despite the blindfold covering her eyes, the enemy's senses were in no way dulled. Feeling the approaching projectiles, she spun about blocked the attacks with her nail-daggers, deflecting one arrow after another to explode harmlessly against the hallway's walls. She seemed to dance as she spun about in one direction and then another, swinging her nail-daggers through precise curves which never failed to strike an incoming arrow aside, not letting a single attack through. All Black Archer could do was buy Crow time to once more pull himself off the ground and prepare to once more rejoin the battle.
"Shirou!" Rin called.
She jumped down through the hole from the roof, landing on one knee by Shirou's side.
"Let me have a look at your leg." she said, the winced when she saw the hole Rider's nail-dagger had left. "I can't believe you're still conscious. At this rate, blood loss will probably finish you off before the bounded field even gets a start on you. Fortunately, knowing your propensity throwing yourself into danger and getting injured in absolutely bone-headed ways, I've made sure to carry a gem loaded with healing magic at all times."
She held a pendant with a dangling red gemstone over the hole in Shirou's knee, and muttered a complicated incantation that fell beyond Shirou's very limited understanding of magecraft. A moment later, the gem hanging from the pendant began to glow bright red. The pain in Shirou's leg intensified, but the bleeding began to slow and then came to a complete stop.
"So it really was Shinji's Servant all along who was responsible for the bounded field." Shirou said. "I can't believe I trusted him when he said it was Caster..."
"Rider may have started as Shinji's Servant, but there's no way he's still her Master now." Rin said. "Have you checked the enemy's parameters yet?"
"Ah, no." Shirou said. "Just a moment."
He pulled the magical tome Rin had given him at the beginning of the war out of his backpack and opened it up, focusing on Rider. A block of text quickly became legible:
Servant Rider (True)
Master: Shinji Matou (?) / Unknown
True Name: ?
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Parameters
STR: A
END: C
AGI: B
MGI: EX
LCK: E
N.P.: A+
Noble Phantasms
Bloodfort Andromeda (Others Sealing Blood Temple): B rank Anti-Army Noble Phantasm
A barrier of blood. It melts the people within it. The melted people become red blood, and are absorbed by the user of the barrier. Its primary use is to absorb magical energy.
"What does 'EX' mean?" Shirou asked.
"Off-the-charts." Rin replied. "The enemy is somehow being supplied with an immeasurable amount of magical energy. Even I couldn't sustain that level of prana consumption; there's no way an untalented amateur like Shinji could manage it."
"That chain has to have something to do with it." Shirou said. "Crow, try cutting the chain!"
"Gee – that – never – occurred to me." Crow grunted in between blows. "I – can't – reach!"
The enemy's nail-daggers were small compared to the great curving blades Crow formed out of his solidified blood, but the long, flexible chains they were attached to gave Rider superior reach. She whipped them about like flails, more often striking Crow with the blunt length of chain than the sharp blade at the end, but with sufficient force to leave punishing bruises. Whenever Crow tried to press forward, she would wrap her chains around his blades and attempt to fling him about with her superior physical strength; again and again, Crow was forced to dissolve his blades and draw back lest she knock him off his feet. The school's hallway was painted red by hastily discarded blood which the pace of the battle had not given Crow time to reabsorb.
"Black Archer!" Rin called.
Black Archer nodded, then placed a hand on her shield.
"Faust Buckler." she intoned.
She vanished, instantly reappearing behind Rider with her bow drawn: aiming not at Rider's back, but at the pulsing cursed chain which slid across the ground, anchored in the enemy Servant's heart. She released a point-blank shot, which created an eruption of purple light when the arrow exploded against the chain. When the flash faded, however, the length of chain lay undamaged in the crater Black Archer had blown in the floor.
"No good." Black Archer said. "The chain is composed of pure magic energy, and its strength exceeds my own."
"Can you try tracing the chain back to Rider's Master, attack them while they're undefended?" Rin asked.
"I thought of that and checked." Black Archer said. "The chain is only physical for a short distance before fading into spiritual form. I cannot track it in that state."
"Damn it!" Shirou said.
He extended his hand and closed his eyes, focusing on the mental image of a sword. The first that came to mind were Red Archer's twin swords, Kanshou and Bakuya, but Shirou wasn't certain they'd be strong enough. He concentrated on a more powerful sword: the shining golden sword that Saber had revealed at Ryuudou Temple. Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory.
"Trace, on." he said.
"What do you think you're doing, idiot?" Rin asked. "You wouldn't last a second in combat against that Servant at your best; as it is, I doubt you can even stand on that leg."
"We're running out of time!" Shirou snapped. "If we don't do something fast, everyone in the school is going to die! If I can project a powerful enough sword, I might be able to cut the chain connected to the Rider's heart while she's distracted."
"We aren't even certain if that'll do anything!" Rin said. "We don't know what the chain is; breaking it might not affect the enemy at all."
"It's better than doing nothing!" Shirou said. "I won't just sit idly and let people die!"
He gritted his teeth and tried to focus, but the image of the sword kept wavering in his mind as other thoughts intruded. Taiga, Issei, and other teachers and students, lying prone on the ground with the flesh sloughing from their bones as Bloodfort Andromeda devoured their souls. A burning city beneath a black sun, the screams of the dying assaulting him from every direction as they begged in vain for a salvation that would never come. A man atop a hill of swords, his body pierced by countless weapons, pledging his life and his afterlife to a world that would never stop betraying him. A sword in a stone, so very similar to Saber's Excalibur, but subtly yet unmistakably different in shape and nature. Fire and blood roared in his ears. He couldn't maintain his focus. His magic circuits flared impotently, unable to form a stable Projection.
"Well, well." an unfamiliar voice said. "Looks like you could use some help."
Shirou turned to face the new arrival. A Servant was casually walking up the stairs from the floor below, regarding them all with a malicious smirk. He wore only a skirt-like garment of ragged red cloth, and his exposed chest and limbs were covered with a massive intricate tattoo.
"Greetings to you all." he said. "I am Servant Avenger. I may not be one of the regular seven Classes, but I am a participant in this Grail War, and I have come to join this battle."
So this was the Avenger that had so unnerved Ilyasviel von Einzbern that she had felt it necessary to warn Shirou of his summoning. He didn't seem that impressive, but Shirou vowed not to underestimate him. If he truly was the villainous monster that Ilyasviel had claimed, then he had very likely come as an enemy. With both Crow and Black Archer needing to work together to hold Rider back, it would fall to him and Rin to face the enemy.
"To begin with, I'd like to make one thing very clear." Avenger said. "I am not a hero, but a villain. I'm the most evil bastard ever to have lived: a complete monster, the vilest of scum, rotten to the core. Under other circumstances, it would be my sincere pleasure to simply sit back and watch you die; then I'd desecrate your corpses as much as I could manage before the bounded field melted them. On this specific occasion, however, my Master has ordered me to assist you. So, it seems we'll be allies for this fight, and I'll just have to kill you later. Understand?"
Avenger seemed to take Shirou and Rin's stunned silence for assent. He turned towards Rider and clenched his hands, and weapons appeared within his grasp: two daggers with a bestial design, sporting numerous fang-like projections. Shirou's head buzzed as his structural grasp magecraft instinctively analyzed the weapons' form, composition, and history. Tawrich and Zarich, he thought. Demon fangs of hunger and ageing. But their structure seemed unusually weak, for a Servant's weapons. Even the swords Kanshou and Bakuya, which Red Archer took no pride in and treated as disposable, were better crafted than these awkward and unwieldy weapons.
Avenger hefted his weapons and charged Rider. Rider immediately swung one of her nail-daggers at him in an overhead arc at the end of a length of chain, attempting to strike him before he could get in close range. Avenger, however, easily caught the nail-dagger between two of the fang-like prongs of Tawrich. He continued his forward dash, swinging Zarich in a move intended to gut Rider. Rider quickly swung her other nail-dagger in a parry – and it caught Avenger's weapon at a weak point, shearing right through Zarich's inferior material. She immediately capitalized on the unexpected advantage by pivoting and delivering a forceful kick to Avenger's midsection. The blow lifted him off his feet and sent him flying back the length of the hallway to crash on the ground near Rin and Shirou.
"Ah, right." Avenger said. "The other thing you should know is that I am the weakest Servant. Absolutely worthless. When it comes to killing humans, I'm one of the most skillful in the world – only that vampire spider-thing ORT and wolf beast-creature Primate Murder surpass me in that regard. But in a fight between Servants, there is not a single opponent I can defeat. So, when I offered to help you, it was with the unspoken assumption that you'd back me up. Now, I'm going to attack again; and this time, when she starts kicking my ass, try capitalizing on that opening, alright?"
Avenger got to his feet again and rematerialized Zarich in his right hand – it seemed that despite its fearsome appearance, it was only a common tool rather than an irreplaceable Noble Phantasm. Thus rearmed, he once more began running down the length of the hallway, charging towards Rider. Now knowing the fragility of his weapons, Rider abandoned her defensive stance and rushed forwards to meet him. She thrust her nail-daggers forward with all of her unnatural strength, and they didn't even slow as they smashed through Avenger's weapons and impaled both of his hands through the palms.
"Verg Avesta!" Avenger shouted.
That declaration could be nothing else but the activating phrase of a Noble Phantasm. The intricate pattern traced by the tattoos on Avenger's body blazed with red light. At the same time, lines of red light shone on Rider's skin, superimposing the same pattern on her body. The pattern covering Rider darkened and sank into her body, disappearing beneath her skin – with one exception. On her hands, the pattern did not sink beneath the surface of her skin but writhed and twisted and formed into peculiarly shaped tattoos on the backs and palms of her hands – tattoos which appeared to exactly mimic the irregular shapes of the holes that had been gouged through Avenger's hands by the nail-daggers. A moment after forming, the tattoos burned with bright red light. Rider let out a gasp of pain and flinched; her hands reflexively jerking open and letting her nail-daggers fall to the ground.
Shirou had only a very limited education in magecraft; but to his surprise, he was able to recognize the nature of this technique. Kiritsugu had told him that among the simplest classes of curses was the Primal Wound-Sharing Curse, which reflected one's injuries back onto one's attacker. Avenger seemed to be using a particularly weak form of the curse, as it had not truly duplicated the injuries but seemed only to be reflecting the pain. Still, even such a minor advantage gave them a chance. With the enemy surprised and momentarily disarmed, the time to attack was –
"Now!" Rin shouted.
"Faust Buckler!" Black Archer called.
She vanished and reappeared directly in front of Rider, her bow drawn back and the tip of the blazing arrow pressed against the hollow of Rider's throat. It would have been suicidal to get so close to the enemy had she still been armed; with her nail-daggers in hand, she could have deflected the shot with one and slain Black Archer with the other. Unarmed, however, Rider had only one option for defending herself. As Black Archer loosed her arrow, Rider brought both her hands up to her throat and clasped them around the blazing shaft's head.
An instant later, the arrow exploded, the blast taking both of Rider's hands off at the wrists. Rider's head snapped back, but she had managed to muffle the blast enough to prevent it from severing her neck. But before she could recover, Black Archer was already jumping away; and into the opening lunged Crow, blade of blood stretching from the stump of his severed arm to pierce Rider's chest.
Rider let out a bestial scream of pain and inhuman rage as Crow ran her through. Crow did not relent for a moment, instead pouring more of his blood into the impaling blade. Spiky, serrated teeth grew along its edges, ripping apart Rider's body from within, stretching for her heart.
But before he could inflict a mortal wound, Rider's Master evidently decided that she'd had enough. The cursed chain sunken into Rider's heart suddenly drew taut, yanking Rider backwards. The jagged teeth of Crow's sword inflicted grievous additional damage, sawing through Rider's bones and organs as she was pulled off the blood-blade, but her head and her heart remained intact. The retracting chain dragged Rider's mangled body across the ground like a broken marionette before pulling it into a shadow where it vanished. A pursuing arrow launched by Black Archer struck only the school wall. The enemy had vanished – but her Noble Phantasm, the Bloodfort Andromeda, remained active over the school, continuing to leech the life from those within.
"We can't let her escape!" Shirou said. "We need to track her down and destroy her, or else everyone in the school will..."
"Oh, no need to worry about that." Avenger said. "My Master had previously noticed the bounded field being established around this building, and set about constructing a means to counteract it. She's cutting things a bit close, I admit, but I have faith in her abilities and am certain she'll have things sorted out any moment now..."
There was a momentary pause, then the world convulsed once more. The sourceless ruddy red light which had permeated the interior of the bounded field was in an instant swept away by a wave of pure white light. It passed over Shirou in a flash, and he found himself capable of breathing easily once more: no longer did he feel the pressure of the malign energy's assault on his body. The enemy's Noble Phantasm had been dispelled.
"That wasn't any kind of ordinary magecraft." Rin said. "That was a Holy Sacrament – the thaumaturgy of the Church. Wait – were you lying when you said your Master was a woman? Don't tell me you actually serve that shitty fake priest, Kirie Kotomine!"
"Of course not." Avenger said. "Kotomine wouldn't have lifted a finger to stop the deaths of everyone in this building. Which, as it so happens, is why my Master has come to Fuyuki City for the War. There are those in the Church who believe that Kotomine is no longer fit to hold his position as Overseer. The way he has continued conducting this War despite the alarming irregularities in the summonings... and that he has withheld from you the truth of the forbidden eighth class, Avenger. These are things you should definitely be interested in having a word with him about. As for me, I should be returning to my Master to report what happened here..."
"Not so fast." Rin said. "First, I want to know what exactly kind of spell she cast. I'm glad she saved everyone from the enemy's bounded field, but if all she's done is replace it with one of her own that she has control over, everyone in school would still be living with a sword hanging over their heads. We're not going to let this happen a second time."
"No need to fret." Avenger said. "The Sacrament used by my Master was nothing more than a sanctification. This building is now blessed as though it were a church: standing on holy ground, and imbued with divine protection against evil spirits. The bounded field has been completely exorcized, and from now on Servants of Evil alignment will find it considerably more difficult to intrude. Which is another reason I must depart post-haste; if I spend any longer on holy ground, I'm likely to spontaneously combust."
The Avenger gave a final, mocking wave of his hand, then vanished into spiritual form.