Day 7: Shirou — That Which Comes Later Cuts First
Shirou and Rin were sitting at Shirou's kitchen table discussing strategy when Red Archer's voice, tinged with urgency, suddenly interrupted them.
"A flying Servant is approaching the house at high speed." he said. "Should I attempt to snipe it?"
"Do it." Rin said immediately.
"Wait just a moment–" Shirou began.
"Don't even start." Rin said. "I know there's no longer any point in trying to win the Grail, but we still have to defend ourselves when attacked. You might not want to kill anyone, but the other Masters don't have your reservations."
"The enemy appears to be a Caster-class; it is deflecting my projectiles with powerful thaumaturgy." Red Archer said. "I cannot prevent it from reaching the house; I recommend you prepare your Sabers for combat."
Before Shirou could even respond, Saber had already leapt to her feet and materialized her armor. Crow took physical form as well, coalescing out of the air next to Shirou.
"C'mon, kid; now's no time to be hesitating." Crow said. "When the enemy attacks head-on, you've got no choice but to charge out and meet them."
Shirou felt a tingling sensation on his skin. It took a few moments for him to recognize it as the sensation of the old bounded field surrounding his house being breached by an uninvited magus – it was a security measure he'd long regarded as pointless, since he'd never truly expected to even come to the attention of other mages, let alone be attacked in his own home by one.
"They've crossed the bounded field at the front gate." Shirou informed everyone.
"Archers, to me." Rin said. "Saber, you have the highest Magic Resistance, so you should go first. Crow, stay by Shirou and keep him safe."
"I can take care of myself." Shirou said. "Trace, on."
Swords appeared in his hands, copies of the Kanshou and Bakuya carried by Red Archer. They were pretty poor imitations, having been visualized and constructed in a hurry without proper attention to detail, but Shirou's structural grasp told him that they would function adequately.
"I figured you'd do that." Rin said. "I meant he should keep you safe from your own stupidity. You have four Servants protecting you; try and let them actually do their jobs for once instead of throwing yourself into danger."
With Saber in the lead, the group burst out the front door of Shirou's house, prepared for combat. However, no attacks flew at them. Rather, the two intruders were kneeling on the path to the house, their hands in the air.
"Luviagelita Edelfelt!" Rin shouted. "You treacherous hyena, I knew you'd–"
"Wait-wait-wait!" Luvia shouted. "I'm not here to fight! I surrender! I'm not even a Master anymore – look, my Command spells are gone! Please, we're in danger and I need your help!"
The panic in her voice seemed genuine. Shirou recalled the disdain she'd shown towards the Tohsaka family during his previous meeting with her, her insistence that she could never lower herself to making such an alliance; and since the hatred seemed mutual on Tohsaka's part, he couldn't imagine her asking for help as part of a ploy. Only great desperation could have driven her to kneel before her nemesis. All of Shirou's instincts were that this plea for aid was genuine.
"Hold off." Shirou told his Servants.
"A likely story!" Rin said. "How can you claim not to be a Master when you have a Servant with you?"
"Hey, I'm nobody's Servant." False Caster snapped. "I can provide my own prana. I'm just helping Luvia as thanks for a favor she did me."
"Shirou, you don't know the Edelfelts like I do." Rin said. "This is definitely some sort of trick. We should finish them off now."
"This is my house, and I'm extending my hospitality." Shirou said firmly. "I can't attack someone who's pleading for help."
He opened his hands, letting the swords he had projected dematerialize back into sparks of magical energy, then extended one to Luvia and assisted her to her feet.
"Come inside, and tell us what's happened." he said.
Rin shot Shirou a dirty look, but gestured for her Servants to stand down for the moment. Luvia began hurriedly babbling her story the moment she was inside: fighting False Berserker in the park, False Lancer Rei being ambushed and corrupted by the black chains, and her and False Caster Lina fleeing to Shirou's house with the Dark Rider in hot pursuit in the desperate hope that he'd help.
"Red Archer, did you see any other Servant pursuing Luvia?" Rin asked.
"I did not." Red Archer said. "However, I must note that Caster Lina was in physical form because of the need to carry Luvia. The pursuing Rider could have shifted to spiritual form, which would make it much more difficult to spot from a distance."
"It can't have crossed the bounded field around the house, though." Rin said dubiously. "Perhaps a weak and stealthy Servant like Assassin might infiltrate undetected; but the last time we saw Rider, it was blazing with so much cursed energy that not even a novice like Shirou could possibly fail to notice its intrusion. If it was really pursuing them as closely as they claim, where is it?"
"Shirou told me you two fought the Rider once before and forced it to retreat." Luvia said. "Rather than attack again on its own, it's probably waiting to join back up with False Berserker and Rei – it was outpacing them during the chase, but it won't take them long to catch back up. They could attack at any moment!"
"Pardon my intrusion."
Bazett Fraga McRemitz walked into the room, a bamboo tube slung over her shoulder and a stern expression on her face.
"A security concern has arisen." Bazett said. "I took the liberty of using runic magic to set up my own intruder alert system around the property. I don't wish to cast aspersions on the quality of your own bounded field, Shirou, but as a combat magus I have learned that establishing my own bounded fields rather than relying on those of others can mean the difference between life and death. A short time ago, my runic wards were triggered; there is a possibility we may be facing hostile intruders. I would have alerted you immediately, but I was preparing to sleep when it went off and needed to arm myself."
Shirou realized that, although he had welcomed Luvia onto his property, he had forgotten to inform Bazett. If she had her own bounded field, separate from his, Luvia would have set that one off as well.
"Oh, don't worry." Shirou said. "This is Luviagelita Edelfelt and her Caster, Lina Inverse. They're not enemies; I've invited them in as guests. If I'd known you had your own security system, I would have warned you..."
But Bazett was shaking her head.
"I was not referring to them." she said. "Rather, my wards have detected a powerfu curse encircling the house. It has not yet crossed the confines of your bounded field, but there is no mistaking that we are the focal point of a pending attack. Furthermore, I have been alerted to multiple Servants approaching this house. I suspect that they have underestimated the extent of my surveillance and believe they are still currently out of detection range."
Luvia leapt to her feet.
"False Avenger's chains." she said breathlessly. "That must be the curse you're detecting. It's not just going to send its Servants in to attack us; it's calling up chains in order to steal and enslave them just like it did to Rei."
At that moment, the wall exploded.
Rei's Noble Phantasm, the Lance of Longinues, smashed the wall into rubble as it punched into the room. The debris was swept along in its wake, caught on the edge of the shockwave it produced when traveling at supersonic speed. An anti-soul weapon capable of piercing any defense, it could not be blocked; and at such tremendous velocity, not even the reflexes of a Servant were enough to dodge it.
But even before the wall had been blown apart, Saber had already been in motion. She possessed the Instinct ability at rank A, denoting combat reflexes that had been honed to the level of a sixth sense, and her body had begun reacting to the incoming attack before she was even consciously aware of it. She dispelled her armor to produce a prana burst, a massive shockwave of wind that erupted out from her and flung everyone in the room aside. The lance hurtled through empty space where Shirou had been standing just a moment before and buried itself in the floor.
"Rune Breaker!"
Lina flung five needle-like strands of hair into the floor around the lance. However, the weapon was already drawing itself back out, trying to return to the hand of its owner. By the time lines of red light flashed between the needles, the lance was halfway out of the pentagram, and it flew unimpeded back through the gaping hole it had made in Shirou's house.
"The seal didn't fully take this time." Lina warned. "I don't think it'll be able to accelerate that quickly again for a bit, but it still has its powers as a Noble Phantasm – one hit and you're done for."
Climbing back to his feet, Shirou looked out the hole in his wall and saw the enemy Servants. No longer trying to conceal themselves, they strode boldly across Shirou's lawn towards the house. A long-haired woman in a blindfold and right tube skirt: True Rider. A muscular man, his face disfigured by a large X-shaped scar: False Berserker. And a girl with doll-like features, her formerly white bodysuit now stained ink-black: False Lancer. All of them walking forwards with identical robotic motions, like puppets on strings, and radiating darkness and malevolence. And writhing across the shadowed ground around their feet, twisting like snakes in the grass, the source of their corruption: the wicked chains of False Avenger.
Rin accessed the opposition with a single glance and then began barking orders.
"Saber, take the Lancer." she said. "Red Archer, you've got the Berserker. Crow, you get Rider. Black Archer, you're on overwatch – protect them from those chains while they fight. And Lina, you protect us – cast some defensive spell so the chains can't hit us while our Servants are busy fighting. Now, move!"
The Masters and Servants marched out through the hole in the wall as a group. Once they were outside, Shirou, Rin, Luvia, and Bazett came to a stop while Saber, Crow, and Red Archer charged forwards to meet their designated opponents. Black Archer materialized her black bow and leapt up onto the roof of the house, while Lina position herself in the middle of the Masters and then knelt down to press one hand against the ground. As she spoke words of power in a steady but fast-paced voice, white light spread across the ground to form a hexagram that covered the area surrounding the humans. She then seamlessly shifted her cant to a new pattern, which caused a bubble-like transparent barrier to drop over them like a dome.
"I've set up two wards, one against magical interference and one against physical attacks." Lina said. "They should be able to withstand even a direct attack... for a little while, anyway. I'll need to concentrate to keep them active, though, so I can't cast anything else to help your Servants out while maintaining the shields. Sorry."
Shirou watched nervously as a couple of the False Avenger's chains slithered up to the edge of the protective barrier. He held as breath as the chains thrust their barbed heads forwards, but to his relief they were instantly repelled. A moment later, purple streaks of light curved down from Black Archer's position on the roof and smashed the chains to dust.
With their position secure, at least for the moment, Shirou turned his attention towards the desperate battle the Servants were entering.
==Interlude: Luviagelita Edelfelt==
Huddled within the protective barriers being generated by Lina, Luvia could only watch helplessly as Emiya's female Saber engaged Rei in combat. To Luvia's surprise, the female swordsman had not re-summoned the magical armor which she had dispelled in the first moments of the attack. After watching the fight for a few moments, however, Luvia began to see the reasoning behind her actions. Simple armor would provide no defense against the terrifying soul-destroying power of Rei's lance; it would only serve to encumber the Saber and limit her movement in a situation where mobility was the only possible defense. Therefore, she chose to forego physical protection in favor of maximizing her agility, relying on her keen senses and honed reflexes to dodge or parry each strike.
It was a strategy that seemed to be paying off. Unlike Saber's invisible sword, which she used with such speed and deftness that it seemed almost an extension of her body, Rei's lance was bulky, ill-balanced, and generally unwieldy. Rei, relying on brute strength to swing and thrust the weapon, could not match the finesse of Saber's movements. Each time she thrust the point forwards to impale Saber, the swordsman nimbly stepped out of the way; and each time she swept it like a polearm, Saber had no difficulty using her smaller and lighter weapon to adroitly knock the spear aside. It struck Luvia that Rei, never elegant in her movements, seemed even clumsier than usual. Luvia could only assume that it was a side-effect of the cursed chain which had impaled her: perhaps being controlled like a puppet introduced a delay in her movements, or perhaps the overwhelming dark energy twisting and seething within her body was dulling her reflexes.
Perhaps, some part of Luvia hoped, it was an indication that some part of the old Rei still existed and was struggling to resist.
But as effective as Saber was proving at dodging and deflecting Rei's attacks, neither could she make any headway of her own. Rei's lagging movements and the awkward size of her weapon meant that each failed attack left her wide open for multiple counterstrikes from Saber's sword; but each time the woman tried taking advantage of such an opportunity, Rei would activate her other Noble Phantasm: the AT Field. Again and again, the orange barrier flashed into existence between Rei's body and a thrust or sweep of Saber's sword; and again and again, the invisible blade would be repelled in a showed of sparks. Saber tried placing all her strength behind single mighty swings, but the blazing barrier would not yield a single inch; Saber tried swift lunges at unexpected moments, but the barrier always appeared between them before her sword could cover the full distance to Rei's body. Saber even attempted timing a strike at the exact moment Rei thrust at her, combining her dodge and strike in a single movement, but the AT Field spread between them regardless – Rei's thrusting lance passing through the boundary as if it wasn't there, while Saber's own sword was turned away as surely as always. Of course it would be so, Luvia thought; the AT Field's nature as a Noble Phantasm was to embody the boundary of the soul as a barrier, and the Lance of Longinus's nature was to pierce souls. Thus, it was only natural that Rei's lance would be able to pass through the barrier she generated.
If this remained a battle of attrition, Saber was certain to eventually lose. Lina had once again bound the lance's power, to prevent it from accelerating to supersonic speed under its own power if Rei threw it; but the seal had only been partially effective, and wouldn't even last as long as it had the previous time. Saber, with her supernatural combat instinct, might once again be able to dodge a full-speed throw from the lance – but of course, Rei wouldn't aim at her. She would send it flying for Lina, who was protecting the Masters; and Luvia was not certain that the young Caster had either the speed to dodge it nor the magical strength to create a barrier capable of blocking it.
But thinking back to Rei's explanation of the nature of her Noble Phantasms had made Luvia recall something else. The AT Field, Rei had said, was a zone of absolute isolation; one which blocked out interference not only from the enemy, but also her own Master. She couldn't keep it active indefinitely because it blocked the connection which allowed the vital transfer of prana between Master and Servant. It was even strong enough to block the power of Command Spells. And perhaps, Luvia desperately hoped, it was strong enough to block the influence of the curse flowing through the chain.
Rei was using her AT Field more frequently in this battle than she ever had before. Each time the barrier went up, it must be interrupting the flow of cursed energy that False Avenger was sending through the chain. If the corruption was incomplete, if anything of Rei's original personality remained, now was the best chance Luvia had of reaching it.
She had to at least try. Anything was better than just watching helplessly.
"Rei!" Luvia shouted. "I don't know what Avenger did to you, but you have to fight it! Your AT Field is up – the curse can't reach you anymore – so break free! Return to the way you were!"
Rei remained focused on Saber, continuing her attacks without pause, but she spoke in response to Luvia's words.
"Go back?" Rei asked. "Return to the way I was? What makes you think that I'd want that?"
"You were a hero." Luvia said. "A savior of the Earth! False Avenger has made you into a puppet, is forcing you to destroy what you once fought to protect! Don't let it do that to you!"
Rei began to laugh. It was a jarring, dissonant sound coming from the emotionless girl who had never so much as smiled during the time she'd been Luvia's Servant.
"You really don't understand at all." Rei said. "Is that what you think I am, a puppet? A marionette of meat dancing on the end of a chain? You're so, so wrong. I serve my new Master, my God, of my own will! For the first time in my life, I am free!"
"How can you say that?" Luvia asked. "Look at what you've become!"
"I have become what I've always desired." Rei said. "I once served as a defender of Earth, as a hero; but it was not of my own will. I was merely a tool, acting out the will of the man who wielded me; being a hero was simply a duty I was used to fulfill for a time. My true desire, the true wish of my heart, was to become as one with another. To be able to lower my AT Field and wholly open my soul to him, so we could become a complete whole and never suffer the pain of loneliness again. That boy and I, we could have become God together – a perfect and eternal being. But he betrayed me! He rejected me! Refused our Instrumentality! AT Fields were restored, sundering the God we had made and restoring me to a life of pain and isolation and loneliness. A cast-off tool with no purpose, a broken puppet with no strings. My soul sacrificed to the World as a Servant, I was called to fight in this meaningless battle on this irrelevant world – once more an instrument to serve the ends of others. I lost all hope of attaining my own desire. But that's when God found me. And look at me now!"
Dark energy coursed down the chain connecting to Rei, and her body seemed to burn with an aura of darkness. The lines of red energy that spread across her body from the embedded chain swelled and pulsed like arteries throbbing in time to a heartbeat.
"Do you see?" Rei shouted. "I have finally found it! My Instrumentality! Perfect union with my soulmate! This chain isn't a shackle or a puppet string – it's a bond. An unbreakable covenant between myself and God, of whom I have become a part. The two of us have joined our souls, opened the truest depths of our hearts to one another and let all barriers fall away. There is no separation, no loneliness, for my AT Field does not divide us – I am at last complete!"
And at last, Luvia finally understood what Rei was saying. Even as Saber hammered on Rei's AT Field, curses continued flowing down Rei's chain uninterrupted. The chain passed straight through the perimeter of Rei's AT Field as if the boundary wasn't there – because for False Avenger, it wasn't. Rei had given herself over to her new dark god so much more fully than she ever had to Luvia, willingly surrendering herself to the cursed power in her despair, and there was no way for her to be brought back to Luvia's side. Her former Servant was now, without doubt, forevermore her enemy.
A cold chill ran down Luvia's spine as she comprehended this revelation's impact on their tactical situation. If False Avenger was now capable of providing Rei with as much energy as she needed even when the barrier was up, and if Rei's own weapon could pass through the barrier without impediment while nothing else could, then Rei need not lower her AT Field again – ever. Luvia had thought that Rei was lowering and raising her AT Field with perfect timing to intercept Saber's attempted attacks, but the truth was that it was already constantly active – it simply only flashed with visible light when one of Saber's sword blows was reflected off of it. She could spend the rest of the Holy Grail War safely encased in her own portable impenetrable fortress, picking off her enemies one by one with an unstoppable spear that would return to her hand after each throw.
As if in response to Luvia's thoughts, there was a snapping sound from the end of the Lance of Longinus. The two prongs on the front end, which had been stuck together since the spear penetrated the house, now sprung apart and uncoiled. The seal placed upon the weapon by Lina had expired, and its full power was once more at Rei's command. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop her from using it.
"We're done for." Luvia breathed.
"Is it do or die time already?" Lina asked. "Just so happens, last desperate gambles are my specialty. I have a spell which I think can break through that barrier – but it'll use up all my magic energy for a while, meaning I won't be able to maintain the protective spells on you any longer. Should I go for it?"
"Yes." Luvia said immediately. "Do it. Do it now."
Lina crossed her arms in front of her chest and began a cant, intoning words of power which made the gemstone amulets she wore glow white with pent-up energy.
"Lord of darkness of the four worlds, I call upon you. Grant me all the power you possess..."
Luvia glanced back at Rei to see what she was doing. Seeing Rei readying the Lance of Logninus for throwing, Saber had intensified her attacks. Knowing that her sword stood no chance of reaching Rei's body, Saber aimed all her blows at the lance itself – jarring it in Rei's grasp, knocking it side to side, and preventing the corrupted Servant from steadying herself to properly aim a throw.
Lord of the dreams that terrify
Sword of cold and darkness
Free yourself from the heaven's bonds
Become one with my power, one with my body
And let us walk the path of destruction together
Power that can smash even the souls of the gods!
Lina's chanting had risen to a fever pitch. The hexagram of light that she had created around the Masters, the dome-like barrier she had raised above them – both collapsed inwards and vanished, their energy sucked into a ball of absolute darkness that was growing between Lina's hands. A howling wind grew around them and a deep chill began to seep into Luvia's bones, and she realized that the void Lina had summoned was consuming all matter and energy within its reach – devouring light and heat and air.
And if it was allowed to reach them, it would eat their souls as well. As soon as Luvia had comprehended the spell's nature, she knew this in her gut with a cold certainty. Rei's AT Field was a boundary of the soul, and so Lina had delved deep into the blackest and most forbidden arcane lore of her world of origin, a place where power that made Earth's most powerful thaumaturgy seem like mere charlatan's tricks, and conjured a soul-destroying magic. A power that could smash even the souls of the gods...
Caught up in her thoughts, it didn't occur to Luvia that she should be putting as much distance between herself and Lina as possible until she felt a hand grab the back of her collar and begin dragging her backwards. Bazett had seized her and begun pulling her back to the relative safety of the house with rune-enhanced strength; Rin and Shirou were already back inside, crouching behind the damaged wall while peering with rapt fascination through the hole.
A shout and thud made Luvia turn her attention back to Saber. Rei had expanded her AT Field to cover a larger area, in the process knocking Saber over backwards into the dirt. Saber quickly got back to her feet and began shoving her sword against the unyielding wall of energy, but to clearly no effect. The unreachable area within was now large enough to contain the full length of the Lance of Longinus, preventing Saber from interfering as Rei assumed a throwing stance and drew her arm back. The lance's tines twisted back together into a deadly point, and Luvia unconsciously held her breath as she waited for the fatal strike.
"RAGNA BLADE!"
Completing her incantation, Lina raised her arms to the heavens. A black lightning bolt fell from the sky and struck the sphere of deathly magic which hovered between Lina's hands. There was a thunderclap which seemed to shake the earth itself, and Lina's hands closed around the hilt of a sword. The sword was pitch-black and perfectly seamless, as though it were the shadow of a sword rather than an actual object. Luvia felt her eyes watering just looking at it, unable to bring it into proper focus no matter how she strained. Then, like an optical illusion suddenly resolving itself before her, she realized that it was not a sword, but a sword-shaped absence, a void in space. Lina now stood at the focal point middle of a miniature cyclone, frost spreading over the ground around her feet, holding the edges of a sword-shaped hole in the very fabric of creation. Lina's teeth were clenched and her eyes half-closed; and though she was at the center of the cold emanating from the sword, her face was beaded with sweat. She had said that casting the spell would take all of her magical energy, and Luvia know understood what she had truly meant – the insatiable void was rapidly leeching magic energy from Lina's body, and once that was exhausted would in short order move on to her flesh and soul. Lina would only be able to maintain the blade for a matter of seconds, any further and she would surely be consumed by the dark energies she has summoned.
Lina flung herself forwards, more a headlong leap than a charge, that terrible, devouring blade angled in front of her. Saber rolled out of the way as Lina barreled past her, driving the tip of the blade into Rei's AT Field. There was a horrible ripping sound as the sword tore through the barrier, drinking in the glowing orange energy as though it were nothing but water being poured upon parched sand. Rei gave a strangled sound of horror at seeing the very light of her soul being consumed by darkness, and thrust forwards the Lance of Longinus. The deadly lance leapt forwards – but at the same moment, Lina's body trembled and her grip slackened, and the weakening of her restraint caused the sword to double in size. The onrushing lance struck the expanding edge of the black blade – and recoiled. The Lance of Longinus bucked like a thing alive, jerking backwards and tearing itself from Rei's grip. It tumbled backwards, end over end, vibrating as though trying to give voice to an unceasing silent scream; then it launched itself upwards into the night sky, blasting away towards the glowing disc of the moon until it became nothing more than a dark speck and finally vanished altogether.
Rei looked in mute incomprehension at her now-empty hand, and then at Lina. Lina gave a sickened grin, managed a half-step forwards, then collapsed face-first on the ground. The black sword tore itself free from her grasp and became once more a black lightning bolt, which shot into the sky and vanished in a teeth-rattling thunderclap. As Lina lay unmoving in the grass, her chestnut-colored hair faded to snow-white in color. Rei showed no interest in her helpless fallen opponent; she had retreated several steps and was desperately trying to re-kindle the vanished light of her AT Field. She managed to bring a flickering pane of orange light back into existence just in time to block a sword thrust from Saber. The new barrier seemed far thinner than the previous one, and Rei's face was twisted with exertion, but it managed to hold back Saber's blade.
But though Rei was preoccupied with Saber, Lina's collapse had not gone unnoticed by the enemy. Cursed chains immediately leapt from the shadows, hurtling towards her prone body. Drained of energy, apparently unconscious, there was nothing she could do to defend herself. Fortunately, she had allies to watch her back. Even as the chains surged towards her, a rain of purple arrows fell from the sky. They perfectly intercepted each and every chain which approached Lina, Black Archer never once missing a target. The blazing projectiles blasted out a perfect ring of destruction around Lina, a circle that no chain could cross intact.
"Is she okay?" Luvia called. "She's not going to disappear, is she?"
Saber paused her ineffectual strikes against Rei's AT Field in order to kneel down and press one hand against Lina's chest.
"She's okay; merely exhausted." Saber said. "Her prana was almost completely depleted, but her Noble Phantasm is providing her with the inflow of additional prana she needs to maintain her existence in this world. She will make a full recovery once her reserves have been refilled; and though that will likely not be until after this fight has concluded, her noble act has ensured our victory. With that spell, she both eliminated the enemy's most potent Noble Phantasm and rendered Dark Lancer unarmed, effectively removing her from the battle. I can now assume the responsibility of protecting you, or else go to the aid of any ally who is in need; whichever you think best, Rin. I place full trust in your tactical decisions."
"Not so fast." Rei said, her voice cracking with anger. "Don't count me out yet."
She swept her arm through the air in a slashing motion. A ripple of hazy distortion crossed the space between Rei and Saber, then Saber cried out and collapsed on top of Lina. When she dragged herself back to her feet, there was a deep bleeding gash in her back.
"Did you think I'd told Luvia all the secrets of my soul?" Rei asked. "There is another way to use the AT Field – as a sword rather than a shield. I can still fight. Your Caster friend accomplished nothing – nothing!"
But it took only a heartbeat for Luvia to see through her former Servant's bluff.
"You used your AT Field offensively against False Berserker, and that's when the chains got you." Luvia said. "Your AT Field can be used to attack or to defend – but only in one such manner at any given time. When you use your AT Field to attack, you render yourself defenseless – and Saber has an opportunity to finish you off for good!"
Saber materialized her armor again at last, covering her wound, then stood. She picked up Lina's prone body, then flung it through the air towards the house. Luvia managed to catch Lina's body in her arms; but despite the Caster's frail build, the force of the impact was still enough to knock Luvia over backwards. Luvia set Lina down on the floor as gently as she could, then got up to observe what was happening outside.
Saber and Rei were now locked in a standoff. Saber could not attack through Rei's defensive AT Field; but without her lance, neither could Rei attack while the barrier was up. If Rei switched her AT Field to attack, then Saber's counterattack would likely strike the corrupted Servant's head from her shoulders. Rei could not afford to risk attempting such an attack while Saber's attention remained focused on her; but neither could Saber shift to assisting elsewhere in the battle without leaving Rei open to launch an attack without risk of reprisal. The two Servants were stuck in a stalemate.
Bazett then gently pulled Luvia a few steps back away from the hole in the wall so that she could make a few marks on the floor in front of the gap.
"I've set up a runic barrier." the combat magus said. "Far weaker than Caster's defenses were, of course, but it's the best I can manage."
Luvia nodded absently; there was nothing that could be done, so she just had to accept it. With the fight between Saber and Rei having ground to a standstill, she let her eyes wander to other areas of the fight, to see how the other Servants were faring...
==Interlude Out==
==Interlude: True Archer==
Archer strode towards his opponent, False Berserker, and considered how best to fight.
Normally, this would be a simple enemy to defeat. The Berserker's combat ability, including its Noble Phantasm, were apparently limited to melee range. Thus, under normal circumstances, Archer would have retreated to a distant sniping position and taken the Berserker out with a long-range attack before it was even aware of his presence. Circumstances, however, were far from ideal. There was no telling how many cursed chains were lurking in the darkness of the night, waiting for an unwary Servant to shamble into their grasp. Homura was doing her best to destroy any chain that trespassed on the property surrounding the house, but her range was limited; if he wished to remain safe from potential corruption, he would need to remain at close quarters with his adversary.
The second problem was likely related: since the battle had begun, the amount of prana Archer was receiving from Rin had drastically decreased. Homura, it seemed, was expending a great deal of energy in repelling the chains. It only made sense: since the chains could appear within any shadow and attack at any time from any direction, the only way Homura could possible intercept them all was through repeated use of her time-stopping Noble Phantasm. But unlike Saber's Invisible Air or Crow's blood-blades, which were constantly-active Noble Phantasms that required relatively little prana to maintain, Homura's ability apparently required a significant toll to activate – with her using it so frequently, even a naturally gifted magus like Rin didn't have enough magical energy left over for Archer to fight at full strength at the same time.
Archer manifested his swords: the twin blades Kanshou and Bakuya. Though he may have been summoned into the Archer class, his natural affinity was with swords. Of course, it would be foolish to get within range of the enemy's destroying right arm; but even using swords, Archer could still fight as range. His weapons were not unique items of legend, but rather infinitely replaceable replicas; thus, he could fling them away with a careless disregard that any other Heroic Spirit would find appalling. Keeping his distance from the enemy, Archer threw one of his twin swords and sent it spinning through the air on a path straight towards False Berserker's neck.
Berserker didn't flinch in the slightest, refusing to yield so much as an inch of ground. Though his face was seared by curses and twisted with madness, his eyes followed the path of the whirling blade with a cold precision entirely at odds with the wild rage expressed by his body. At the last moment, he thrust out his right hand, wreathed in red sparks that flowed from the magic circle tattooed on his arm; and the sword Archer had thrown exploded into a cloud of smoke and shards.
Archer frowned. He had been concerned that this might be the case. When Luvia had recounted her interaction with the False Berserker, she had mentioned that the rogue Servant's Noble Phantasm was only able to destroy objects of mundane origin – Noble Phantasms, being crystallizations of Divine Mysteries that lay beyond humanity's grasp, were immune to his destructive thaumaturgy. But Archer's strength, that he could produce a limitless number of reproductions of the Noble Phantasms he possessed rather than being forced to rely on a single original copy, was in this case also his weakness: the swords he created were nothing more than cheap replicas, flawed reproductions. The original Noble Phantasms might well have been legendary objects beyond False Berserker's capacity to destroy; but his copies had been created by the hand of man, and so could be destroyed by the hand of man.
Archer began rapidly producing blades, flinging them one after another. Dozens of copies of Kanshou and Bakuya sliced through the air between them. The False Berserker exploded into motion, lashing out with his right hand to destroy as many of the approaching blades as he could while dodging out of the way of the others. Because the paired blades Kanshou and Bakuya exerted a magnetic pull on one another, those swords which False Berserker allowed to slip past him without being destroyed quickly reversed course and came shooting once more towards his back; yet False Berserker was not caught by surprise, continuing to dodge with remarkable ease. He was soon wrapped in a whirlwind of spinning blades, yet continued to dance through the gaps between them with athletic grace as he methodically annihilated them with his right hand. Archer was somewhat impressed despite himself. Clearly, this False Berserker had once been a highly skilled warrior with impeccable combat instincts before going mad, and still retained that ability despite his current state. It was possible that, in dominating his mind, False Avenger's curse had actually improved his capacity for rational thought – suppressing the mental disarray normally caused by Mad Enhancement by providing a guiding will that could direct and focus what would otherwise be wantonly destructive madness.
...Even so, it would not be enough to best Archer. He ceased his rapid-fire barrage and held onto the latest pair of Kanshou and Bakuya he had materialized in his hands, focusing more magical energy into them rather than throwing them immediately. He applied Reinforcement magic to increase their strength, enhancing their structure and magical potency. The short swords grew in size within his hands, expanding to the length of longswords and sprouting feather-like splinters.
"Kanshou and Bakuya – Overedge." Archer intoned.
He flung the two enlarged swords at False Berserker, who was just finishing off the last of the previously thrown swords. The Dark Servant's attention immediately snapped to the new threat, and he quickly twisted out of the way of one of the oncoming blades while raising his hand to destroy the other.
"Break." Archer ordered.
Broken Phantasm – a technique by which all of a Noble Phantasm's energy is released at once in a single explosive moment, greatly amplifying its strength but destroying it in the process. For any ordinary Heroic Spirit, the very thought of it would be anathema – their Noble Phantasms were the embodiments of their legends, the deeds and accomplishments which qualified them to be heroes. But Archer's weapons were only replicas in the first place: easily replaceable, and casually disposable. And so, without the slightest pang of loss, he made the Overedge blades explode. False Berserker had not even the slightest moment to draw back before the sword he'd been reaching for with his right hand exploded in a tremendous ball of light and fire. The other sword, which he'd dodged, did likewise; blast waves swept over him from both directions as he was sandwiched between two expanding conflagrations that consumed him as they merged into a single hazy field of smoke and flame.
Archer's keen eyes pierced the shroud of smoke and he noted to his satisfaction that False Berserker's body had been severely damaged by the blasts. Large portions of his skin had burned away, exposing the charred muscle beneath; the pressure of the blast had ruptured his eyeballs; and his right hand, the source of his Noble Phantasm, had been reduced to a bloody stump. In such condition, finishing him off would be no difficulty at all. Archer's pleasure vanished, however, when dark energy surged down the chain connected to False Berserker's heart, and the Servant began to heal before his eyes. It seemed False Avenger was indeed powerful enough to not only sustain and control three Servants at once, but to provide such a bountiful surplus of prana as to accelerate their healing as well. Perhaps, as Ilyasviel has feared, the False Avenger maintained some connection to the Great Grail which allowed it to directly draw upon the Grail's limitless energy; Archer could see no other explanation for the incalculable reserves of prana it seemed to possess.
Interestingly, even as its body regenerated, the Berserker's composure frayed; Archer could feel a surge of bloodlust as it lost the tranquility it had maintained while dodging his attacks and return to the mindless frenzy typical of its class. Damage to the Dark Servants might quickly heal, but it seemed to weaken the False Avenger's control over their minds for at least a short time. That was useful tactical information; the False Berserker had only been able to survive this long because False Avenger's control had imposed a level of calm and restraint to counteract its madness. Now that it had reverted to a state of blind, seething, frothing rage, he had the opportunity to land a fatal strike. The enemy might have enhanced healing, but not even a Servant could recover from a pulverized head or a burst heart.
Instead of materializing more swords, Archer created his bow. Even though the distance to his opponent was so small that the Dark Servant could reach him in a single dash, before he could possibly line up a proper shot, Archer pulled the string calmly; leisurely, as if he had all the time in the world. It was an obvious provocation; and though the False Berserker had not yet regenerated its eyes, its keen instincts could not fail to sense Archer's contempt. Losing all restraint, it let out a mad howl and leapt at him. It thrust forwards its right hand, focusing all its prana into restoring its Noble Phantasm so that it could pulp his flesh and crush his bones. And just before it would have reached him, Archer jumped.
He pushed all his energy into his legs, launching himself into the air as though he had been fired from a cannon. The False Berserker stumbled, off-balance, as its grasping hand encountered only empty air. And Archer, reaching the apex of his leap, had all the time he needed to prepare his bow. He flipped upside-down as he pointed it straight beneath him, lining up a perfect shot on False Berserker's head. Producing the arrow was a simple matter, almost instantaneous – for Caladbolg II was not a proper arrow at all, but a sword which he had modified to make it suitable for firing from a bow. Though his thaumaturgy was laughably amateurish compared to what a Servant of the Caster class was capable of, the one area in which he absolutely could not fail was the creation of swords. This one was a Noble Phantasm considerably more potent than Kanshou and Bakuya. Even if the False Berserker's admittedly impressive instincts and reflexes allowed it to avoid a direct hit, the energy released when Archer detonated it as a Broken Phantasm would blow the entire house away. False Berserker would certainly be vaporized. The two Sabers might perish in the blast as well, but that was no concern of his. Kiyomasa Senji was nobody to him, and Arturia... once, long ago, in a different lifetime, he may have held feelings for her that would have stayed his hand; but he had long since hardened his heart against the eventual necessity of her death. Human warmth and compassion could not exist within a mind made out of swords.
Then Archer noticed that the protective wards which Lina had been producing had vanished, and that did make him hesitate. Even Rin, his own Master, was an acceptable sacrifice in the pursuit of his goal; since he had no intention of winning the War in any case, it did not matter if he lost his source of prana and eventually disappeared, so long as he was able to fulfill his wish with his own hands. The problem was the boy – without protective magic to shield him, he would certainly die in the arrow's explosion as well. Shirou Emiya. Killing him was the sole remaining goal of Archer's pointless existence, the only end he strove for, but it could not happen like this. Caught in some random explosion, killed in an instant without ever knowing why or by whom – that was not the death Archer needed to deliver him to. The boy would die still clinging to his useless, foolish, wrongheaded ideals – die believing he was right. That wouldn't be victory at all. Shirou would walk straight into hell without even a second glance, never even doubting his path. To truly win, Archer needed to show him the emptiness of his ideals, to confront him with his falsity and break him, to make him renounce the path that would lead him to the hill of swords, and to eternity within the Throne of Heroes. Shirou couldn't die now, not in this way; and so, Archer would not use the arrow he had prepared as a Broken Phantasm.
Archer had begun to fall; he had no more time to think. He let Caladbolg II fly, a needle of light striking downwards towards where False Berserker stood. The Servant would never have managed to dodge on its own, but it had assistance: the chain connected to it suddenly drew taut, yanking it out of the way at the last moment. It still wouldn't have been enough had Archer been willing to detonate the arrow as he'd originally planned, but he simply allowed the shot to bury itself in the ground. He did a flip in the air, getting his feet back underneath him, and landed smoothly.
False Berserker was fully healed now, and apparently back under False Avenger's control. Archer dispelled his bow; he wouldn't get another opportunity to use it now, and it wasn't really his style anyway. A single decisive attack with a unique and special Noble Phantasm? That was a tactic for heroes with pride in themselves and their weapons. Archer's swords were nothing more than hollow imitations, unworthy of being used with pride or honor; his strength lay not in quality but in quantity.
"I am the bone of my sword."
Archer spoke the words of his spell, his single magic. When he was young, he had striven to change the world. As he had matured, he had realized that was impossible; the only thing in the world he was truly capable of changing was himself. And so his magic was to invert the world within himself, to express it externally and impose it upon reality. To force the world to become what he thought it should be. He currently wasn't receiving enough prana from Rin to fully deploy his Reality Marble, the Unlimited Blade Works, but against an opponent of this caliber it would be enough to merely access the contents. From the world of infinite swords that existed within his soul, he drew forth a hundred blades. They materialized floating in the air behind him, tips pointed towards the enemy. Each was nothing more than a weak, trifling sword; a degraded imitation of some superior weapon Archer had seen during his long existence. But taken in sum, they formed a wall of magically reinforced steel in the air.
"Full volley, fire."
Bladed missiles rained upon False Berserker. The enemy lashed out with his Noble Phantasm, shattering each incoming sword his hand so much as grazed; but there were far, far too many incoming weapons for him to block them all. Dodging was likewise impossible; no safe space existed in the heart of this storm of steel. All the False Berserker could do was focus on defending his two vital areas, his head and his heart. His limbs and his abdomen were skewered through a dozen times over, but his enhanced healing and the weakness of these weapons meant that such wounds could not kill him. The barrage finally ended, and False Berserker still stood defiant–
Only to see another hundred blades floating in the air behind Archer. The same hundred swords, drawn once again from the eternal battlefield in Archer's mind and already readied to be fired once more.
"It seems my firepower is enough to outpace your healing, mad warrior." Archer said. "Still, it might take thousands and thousands of such strikes before you become too heavily injured to protect your vital points. So, we'd best get started immediately."
He unleashed the second volley while readying the third, and the air was once again filled with the shrieking of flying swords and the crashing of shattering metal.
==Interlude Out==
==Interlude: False Archer Homura Akemi==
Homura Akemi moved through a world of frozen time. This was the power of the first of her three Noble Phantasms – Faust Buckler: Let The Moment Linger. To turn a single moment into a frozen eternity, through which she and she alone could move. No matter how fast the False Avenger's chains moved, no matter how numerous they were, they were utterly helpless before her in this everlasting moment. She could take as much time as she pleased lining up her shots, setting a prana arrow hanging in the air above each and every chain, ready to transform into a streak of annihilating light as soon as she twisted her buckler and restored the flow of time. Servants might have the reflexes to twist out of the path of even an arrow which appeared unexpectedly at close range, or the constitution to shrug off even a direct hit; but these cursed chains did not have such agility nor durability. Homura would restart the flow of time and watch them be blown apart, then once more halt the progression of time and set about hunting the chains that appeared anew.
Of course, repeated and prolonged usage of her Noble Phantasm consumed a tremendous amount of prana. Homura's fighting would be putting a terrible burden on the body and soul of her Master – particularly since the arrogant girl was foolishly trying to support two Servants at once, a challenge that on its own would be beyond any ordinary mage even without factoring in heavy Noble Phantasm usage. But then, that wasn't Homura's concern. From the very beginning, she'd never cared about this farce of a Holy Grail War; and according to Shirou Emiya, her suspicions about it had been confirmed. As always, the promise of an omnipotent wish-granting device was nothing but a deception, a honeyed lie concealing darkness and corruption beneath. And so, there was no point at all to this fighting. And she was tired, so tired, of her life of endless conflict, of waging meaningless battles where victory only delayed the inevitable.
Only one thing kept her going: the promise she'd made to the one she loved, and the promise she'd received in return. Madoka Kaname: her love, her goddess, and her only light in the darkness. Madoka had promised that Homura need never despair: that upon her death, the two would inevitably be reunited. It was guaranteed by the Law of Cycles; a fundamental principle of the Universe, as certain as entropy. Sometimes, the temptation was very strong, to simply stop fighting and accept death, and so hasten their promised reunion. But Madoka, who had loved the world and had fought to defend it, had asked Homura to continue fighting in her place for as long as she could; and Homura would not betray that promise. Even as a Servant summoned to this strange alternate world, she would do her best to protect innocence and destroy evil.
It was a harder task than Madoka could have imagined, for whenever Homura looked out upon the world, she was nothing but evil. It was only Madoka who had been capable of looking out on the sick, sad world she inhabited and seeing anything worth saving, anything worth protecting. For Homura, no matter where she looked, there was nothing but pain and blight and sorrow to be found. And yet, she was certain: had Madoka been here, she would have been able to find beauty in a world even as bleak and miserable as this one, and would have desired to defend it. Even if Homura could not herself find anything worth protecting, she would honor Madoka's wish; and, at least in this case, the adversary was clear. Those cursed chains, which twisted and corrupted whoever they touched, were a definite evil. If beauty and innocence were to exist in this world, then the chains were the type of thing which would deliberately seek it out in order to blemish and pervert it.
And so she fought on...
==Interlude Out==
==Interlude: False Saber Kiyomasa Senji==
To an outside observer, it might appear that Crow's fight against the Dark Rider was going quite poorly. Each stab he made with the straight blood-sword extending from the stump of his missing arm and each sweeping slash he performed with the curved blood-blade stretching from his remaining arm were resoundingly repelled by his opponent. Meanwhile, every stab and thrust of her nail-daggers invariably ripped a new gash into his already-ragged body. The evident difference in their strength seemed insurmountable: his blows could not budge her, while her strikes easily smashed through his defense. It seemed like it could only be a matter of time before Crow lost the last of his ebbing strength and collapsed under her punishing attacks. Indeed, to her it must have seemed madness that Crow was not only struggling to continue fighting, but remaining on the offensive. He was not trying to fall back from the Dark Rider's strikes, or even assuming a more defensive stance, but continually flinging himself headlong into the whirling death of her nail-daggers. The enemy must have been thinking that he'd lost his mind, descended into a mindless frenzy more fitting a Berserker than a Saber.
Actually, Crow had her right where he wanted her.
There were two ways of fighting a battle: with your muscles or with your mind. Most people took one look at Crow and instantly sorted him into the category of a fighter who was all brawn and no brains. Admittedly, the loss of one eye and one arm did not suggest a history of particularly wise choices; but if anyone actually asked, he'd be able to make a convincing argument for extenuating circumstances on those. More importantly, before he'd become Crow the prison gladiator, he'd been Kiyomasa Senji the police detective; and he hadn't lost his analytical mind. Oh, he'd never been the smartest man on the force, certainly no Sherlock Holmes, but he knew when you could just wade in and bust heads and when you had to hold back to set up a trap.
Dark Rider was faster than him and stronger than him. There was no shame in admitting that; not every fight was fair, and sometimes you found yourself facing someone of a higher weight class. There was no point complaining about it, you just had to deal. And so, during the fight in the school when he'd been getting thrashed, Crow had been studying his enemy's fighting style and thinking of ways to win the rematch. Dark Rider, on the other hand, clearly had dismissed Crow as an unworthy adversary and hadn't bothered thinking about him at all. If she'd paid closer attention, she might have noticed something was different this time. Specifically, his blood.
Using his Noble Phantasm Crow Claw, Crow could exert control over any of his blood which was still in some way connected to his body, crystallizing and reshaping it in order to suit his needs. In addition to the obvious application of creating blades, Crow could also use his power to quickly form a crystal scab over any wound in order to minimize his blood loss. Bleeding wasn't as life-threatening for Servants as for humans, but having the ability to close wounds this way made Crow heal a lot quicker while using less prana from his Master, thus greatly increasing his endurance. In this fight, however, Crow hadn't used his power to seal any of the slashes Dark Rider had inflicted on him with her nail-daggers. He kept the blood flowing freely, large quantities of crimson life spraying from each wound. In fact, had Dark Rider been less confident in her strength and his weakness, he might have noticed that he was taking injuries he didn't have to: letting himself by gouged by strikes he could have deflected. He was also circling around Dark Rider, as though trying to get behind her. She simply turned to keep facing him as she thought, never wondering if there was a deeper strategy to his seemingly futile maneuvering.
Finally, Crow judged that it was time.
"I have a confession to make." Crow said. "I haven't been fighting at full strength. I'd apologize, but that's just the way fights between Servants are: always holding a few tricks in reserve, in case you need them later. You're doing it too, right? I've noticed that you haven't used your Noble Phantasm yet. You probably think you don't need it to defeat a weakling like me. Thing is, with all that cursed energy burning you up from inside, you don't seem to be thinking too clearly. Otherwise, you would have seen this coming."
He thrust the straight blade from his arm stump into the ground. By suppressing his healing ability, he'd gotten his body punched through with more holes than a sieve and soaked the ground with a huge quantity of his blood. His Noble Phantasm only affected blood which was in contact with his body; once it splashed on the ground, it was indistinguishable from ordinary blood. But as soon as he came back into contact with, such as by thrusting one of his blood-blades into the blood-soaked mud, his power once more surged through it and placed it back under his control. Back where he was from, bleeding was a sign not of weakness but of strength: the more of your own blood you were willing to shed, the greater the power you were capable of unleashing. A shame Servants here didn't think that way, or Dark Rider might have saved herself some serious pain.
The blood he had poured into the soil instantly crystallized and reformed itself into blades which thrust up through the ground. Dark Rider immediately tried to jump backwards, away from the attack, but Crow had circled around her for the duration of the fight in order to ensure the entire area surrounding her was affected. Giant bloody spikes closed around her like a giant bear-trap, impaling her in a dozen places. She whipped one of her nail-blades around in an arc to shatter the spear-like crystals and free herself, but her body had sustained heavy damage. To top it off, Crow drew some of the blood back into his body, rapidly restoring his own vitality.
"What do you think, darling?" Crow asked. "Ready to take me serious now?"
The Dark Rider drew herself up straight, and began radiating energy as she charged her Noble Phantasm. Crow grinned; now things were really starting to get good.
==Interlude Out==
A wave of giddy exultation flowed through Shirou as he saw how Crow had turned the tables on his opponent.
"I think we're winning!" Shirou said.
"Don't celebrate too soon." Rin warned. "Saber's managed to stalemate Dark Lancer, and Archer's whittling down False Berserker, but the Rider isn't beaten yet. She's still got her trump card – her Noble Phantasm. For a Rider-class Servant, that's usually their mount. Particularly famous mounts can be so powerful that they themselves are on the same level as Servants. Depending on what she summons, we could still be in danger."
Having failed to defeat Crow on her own, it was obvious that the Dark Rider was preparing to call her mount. A massive aura of power had begun to build around her, causing her long hair to billow as though in an unseen wind. Warily, Crow drew back and assumed a defensive position; he wouldn't know how to face this foe until he was able to see what he was up against.
"Bellerophon."
With the name of the Noble Phantasm echoing in the air, Dark Rider thrust one of her nail-daggers through her own neck. The blood that sprayed forth hung suspended in the air, then formed itself into a magic circle. Then, it blew apart in a blinding flash of light, and the Pegasus strode forth: a mighty white stallion with an enormous pair of wings emerging from its sides. The magical energy that blazed within its body made it seem to glow with a radiant light. This was no mere animal, but the offspring of Medusa and Poseidon; a Divine Beast from the age when gods still walked the earth and magic was to modern thaumaturgy as steel is to clay. It was a creature to which no still-living beast was equal. And as its reigns were grasped by the Dark Rider whose true name was Medusa – for other than the heroes Perseus and Bellerophon, none but the divine horse's own mother could be capable of summoning it – the chains of the False Avenger began to rise from the darkness around it.
Black Archer released a salvo of arrows, at the chains, releasing the purple missiles from the bow one after another at a speed no human could match. They sought out the rising chains like guided missiles, smashing the barbed heads and scattering the links to ash whenever they struck. But new chains kept arising from the numerous shadows, seemingly without end; and Medusa began lashing out with her nail-daggers, striking some of the incoming arrows from the air and giving a few of the chains a chance to approach.
The Pegasus sensed danger – perhaps it felt the cursed barb approaching, sensed that its mother had been tainted with a malevolent curse; or perhaps it simply thought that it was under attack by Black Archer. Whatever the case, its attempt to flee was in vain; Medusa dropped one of her nail-daggers in order to tightly grab the reins and hold it from fleeing as a chain sped out of the darkness, targeting its heart. The pointed head punched through Pegasus's pale white skin, embedding itself in the divine beast's heart, and darkness began to flow down the chain. Black Archer bombarded the chain with arrows, ignoring all of the other chains and directing every one of the attacks against the one that had penetrated Pegasus, but to no effect: while she could destroy unanchored chains, the bond formed when the curse seized hold of a heart was beyond her power to break. Corruption spread like ink across the Pegasus's skin, a mass of darkness embedded with pulsing red veins that swamped the mount's former radiance. It gave a whinny that rose to an unholy roar, a bestial scream unlike any sound a natural animal would make; then it flapped its wings and shot into the sky, bearing Medusa aloft upon its back.
Pegasus's flight was more akin to a rocket than a bird. Its magic aura, now tainted red by the burning curses which had poisoned it, stretched out behind it like a jet contrail or a comet tail as it ascended high into the night sky. The magical energy it gave off outshone the moon, bathing Shirou's yard in an unholy red light. Then, having reached the apex of its flight, it turned about and began to plummet back down towards the combatants below.
A dozen lines of purple light appeared from nowhere as Black Archer used her time-stop to launch an entire volley of arrows in a single instant; but her prana could not compare to the strength of a Divine Beast, and the projectiles splashed harmlessly off of Pegasus's aura. Red Archer began to turn several of his weapons away from False Berserker, but the Dark Rider's descent was far too fast – it was clear that there was no way he would be able to intercept her before she struck. The Pegasus had become a cannonball, a missile; one which would strike with enough force to completely obliterate Shirou's house and all of the humans within. It seemed there was nothing anyone could do to stop it – and then Bazett stepped forwards.
"Fragarach!" Bazett shouted.
The bamboo tube which she often carried slung over her shoulder, and which she had carelessly discarded on the ground when the fight began, suddenly burst open as a shining metal sphere rocketed out from its depths and flew towards Bazett. Shirou's brain caught fire at the sight of it; for despite its shape, his intuitive structural grasp magecraft instantly identified it as a type of sword. And not a mere mortal construct, but the tool of a god – a Conceptual Weapon, a Noble Phantasm. Fragarach, Gouging Sword of the War God; known also as Answerer and the Sword of Retrograde. As it flew in front of Bazett, she drew back one black-gloved hand and then punched it; and with a crackle of electrical discharge, the sword assumed its true form. A blade stretched from the front of the sphere as it accelerated upwards, leaving a trail that glowed with unnatural color – an afterimage created as it sliced backwards through time. Red Archer's weapons could not catch Pegasus in time to interrupt its dive, but Fragarach could, because it was not bound by the limits of causality. The moment before Bazett had yelled the sword's name, it had already pierced Pegasus's chest. A perfect cylinder was punched through Pegasus's body; completely vaporizing the Divine Beast's heart, and the cursed chain along with it. The blazing aura which had surrounded Pegasus vanished in an instant, and the descending body crumbled into a fine ash. Medusa, suddenly unmounted, plummeted to the ground and struck with enough force to leave a crater. Her limbs snapped and were twisted at odd angles; though the energy flowing through her chain had began healing her within moments, she seemed shaken by the loss of her mount – the demeanor of ruthless implacability with which she had previously fought now wavering. As she pulled herself back to her feet, her movements seemed less mechanical and far more human; and though the amount of cursed energy flowing into her through her chain had increased, it almost seemed to Shirou as if the corruption on her body receded a little. It looked, in fact, as though the tainted energy was being drawn away from uninjured portions of the body and focused in the damaged parts, being expended to accelerate the healing process. The corruption wouldn't run out, nor with the chain continually pumping more into her body, but she was currently in the weakest condition Shirou had ever seen her.
"Crow, now!" Shirou said. "Take her out while she's defense-"
He bit his lip in the middle of the last word as an involuntary shudder ran through him. Was he really ordering his Servant to attack someone defenseless? Even though she was an enemy, a hero of justice should try to save, not kill. It wasn't the Servant's fault she was attacking them – she was being controlled by the cursed chains of False Avenger. It felt so wrong, Shirou felt bile rising in his throat at the very thought of what he'd just ordered.
"Understood." Crow said. "I personally prefer straight-up fights to executions, and really dislike having to kill a wounded woman, but you have to put that kind of thing aside when you're fighting a War."
It felt wrong. Shirou knew it was necessary, that he should turn his mind to steel and accept it as a necessary sacrifice for becoming a hero, but he couldn't shake the sensation that it was a betrayal of his ideals. Rider Medusa probably couldn't be saved – Luvia's failed attempt at reaching Rei, who had been her close ally, suggested there was no hope of breaking False Avenger's control over this Servant who had already been their enemy. And yet, to give up even trying felt like surrendering some vital portion of himself.
Kiritsugu had said, a hero can't save everyone.
Saber had said, Shirou should strive to surpass Kiritsugu.
The conflict raged within him. An impossible ideal, a cruel reality. Images flashed before his eyes: a dying woman lying on the corpse-strewn battlefield of Camlann, and a dying man standing atop a hill of swords beneath a sky of grinding gears. Two people sacrificing both their lives and their afterlives to the eternal pursuit of their ideals. And, Shirou knew he couldn't do it; he couldn't turn his back on someone in need of saving, even if it was an enemy.
"No, wait!" he shouted at Crow. "Just disable her!"
Shirou only had two Command Spells left. He didn't want to have to waste one on something so trivial as this, countermanding an order he himself had given just moments before. Nevertheless, he was prepared to, should it prove necessary. Still, he hoped that it wouldn't – that Crow, though a Servant and a warrior, was a decent enough person that he would be willing to stop on his own.
"Are you kidding me?" Crow shouted back. "Now's no time to be going easy!"
He sounded incredulous, but at least he was talking instead of attacking.
"That Rider isn't the real enemy." Shirou said. "The False Avenger controlling her is. That's who we should be trying to kill – not her victims."
"You're a real piece of work, kid." Crow sighed. "But fine. I probably wouldn't have been able to get a lethal shot in, anyway; her Master just would've pulled her away to vanish into the shadows like last time. I don't know why the Dark Servants aren't pulling out yet; it should be obvious that this battle's going against them."
It certainly looked that way. Medusa was badly weakened; though the energy flowing into her through her chain was causing her injuries to heal, they were so numerous and so severe that it seemed impossible she'd recover quickly enough to prevent Crow from overpowering her and delivering a finishing blow. The False Berserker was likewise in dire straits: crouched down beneath the unrelenting barrage of swords being fired by Red Archer, the destructive energy of his right hand only capable of destroying enough of them to defend his head and his heart while the rest of his body was gradually but unceasingly being carved away faster than it could regenerate. The only enemy Servant not in danger was Rei, due to her impenetrable AT Field; but without her weapon, she was helpless to do anything to assist the other Dark Servants, as any lapse in her defense would result in a swift demise upon Saber's sword. And though False Avenger's chains continued to manifest from darkness, each one was instantly blown apart by a purple arrow fired from Black Archer's bow as she rapidly blinked across the battlefield, never staying in one location long enough to be targeted herself.
"The False Avenger has been trying to corrupt and enslave Servants; it wouldn't just sacrifice them all for nothing." Shirou said. "It must have some plan, some trick left, some..."
He felt a strange buzzing beneath his skin – the sensation of a magus crossing the bounded field around the house. He had only a moment to realize the implications – the cursed chains had tried striking at them as well as their Servants, therefore the False Avenger had the ability to chain and corrupt not merely Heroic Spirits but also humans. Rei had been Luvia's Servant, and False Berserker had appeared with no bond to any Master, but Medusa was the True Rider. She had been summoned by a magus – and if she had fallen prey to False Avenger, then it was possible that the magus had as well. And while Masters competing in the Grail War were normally weakened due to having to spend the majority of their prana supporting their Servant, those chained by False Avenger received effectively limitless energy straight from the grail. So the strength of the magecraft of a Master who had been caught by the chains would be...
Shirou had just begun to shout a warning when the newly arrived enemy magus struck. The shadows suddenly seemed to come alive and lash out at everyone at once. Thick tentacles of shadows twisted around Shirou, Rin, Bazett, and Luvia, thoroughly entangling their limbs. The bands of shadow seemed insubstantial, yet constricted with undeniable force. Shirou was bound so tightly that he could barely move. Twisting his head to look at the battlefield, he saw that even the Servants, with their superhuman reflexes, had not been able to dodge the attacks which had come from every direction at once. They too were bound tightly; not even Black Archer's time-stop could allow her to escape, as the shadows had wrapped her up as though in a straightjacket. Even Lina, still unconscious, had shadowy manacles bound to her hands and feet.
Unlike the humans, the Servants didn't appear to have been rendered entirely helpless. A curtain of swords still hung in the air above Red Archer; they had stopped shooting at False Berserker, but still appeared to be under Red Archer's full control despite his arms being bound. Likewise, when Shirou looked at Saber, he saw her eyes were full of concern; but for him, not herself. Having seen the light of the golden sword Excalibur, Shirou was confident that Saber could easily burn away the tendrils of darkness binding her if she dispelled Invisible Air and released the true radiance of her Noble Phantasm. The reason the Servants had stopped fighting was not because they had been defeated, but because their Masters were being held hostage. Though she shadowy magic clinging to his body was currently only immobilizing him, he strongly suspected that it could be used to kill as well.
"Rin, any idea what this stuff is?" Shirou asked.
"Impossible..." Rin whispered. "Hollow. The Imaginary Numbers Element. This is thaumaturgy of Zouken Matou!"
"But he's not the only one who knows it." a strangely familiar voice spoke from within the deepest, thickest mass of undulated shadows. "The Matou family magecraft was naturally passed down to his successor. Of course, Kariya, Byakuya, and Shinji all proved entirely insufficient; so he was forced to adopt a heir to receive the secrets of the Matou magecraft... me."
The sea of shadows parted like a curtain, and the enemy magus stepped forwards, making no effort to conceal the chain which dragging on the ground behind her. Shirou barely even noticed that, so quickly were his eyes drawn straight to those familiar features. Shirou found himself staring into the curse-stained face of none other than Sakura Matou.
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