Altrouge smiled and Arcueid had less than a second to react before the claws on her other hand sliced through her throat. Still that was plenty of time for the empowered True Ancestor and she let go of the Eclipse Princess' arm swivelled her body to dodge the incoming attack and kicked her roughly in the stomach causing to go skidding back half a dozen metres. The two stared at each other and the air thrummed with tension between the pair.
"I like what you've done with your hair," Altrouge said with a complete lack of sincerity in her voice. "It was that teleporter wasn't it. Damn."
"For the first time in my life, I'm using my full power," Arcueid said every word falling like a guillotine on the remnants of Altrouge's life. "I'm going to kill you now."
Apparently the words were enough warning as the ninth of the Dead Apostle Ancestor instantly dodged to the left avoiding the incoming punch. A loud crack signified the sound barrier shattering and the surrounding wind speed reached hundreds of knots instantly causing the remaining debris to be blown away.
Altrouge ducked to the floor and lashed out with a kick that connected onto her ankle and Arcueid stumbled minutely before she lashed out with a kick that punted her sister across the ruins of the house. Scrambling to her feet Altrouge used her Noble Phantasm to lift the earth under the True Ancestor causing Arcueid to fly over her by a few metres. However Arcueid didn't slow down as she twisted her body mid-air and launched herself at the back of her enemy.
She never made it, as partway through her leap a tremendously hard object impacted on her side and she flew off to the side tumbling into the dirt. Swivelling to look at the missile, she saw the image of Satsuki covered in a blackish carapace with cracks along the running through its whole length. Apparently it was strong enough to take at least one hit from the Beast of Gaia.
"Hey Gransurg," Altrouge said and her voice carried over clearly over the sounds of Aoko's and Strout's continuing fight. Ishtar had paused in her fight, keeping her guard up against the lupine monstrosity and Rin was standing very still trying not to draw attention to her person.
"While completing the Aylesbury is my goal, you're delusional if you think that I will stand against the Golden Princess, especially to save your life," Gransurg said, his polite tone conveying hateful words.
"Actually I'm cursed with reasonable expectations," Altrouge said calmly. Without warning the world flashed with light and a simultaneous resounding crack of thunder announced the presence of a lightning strike. The scorched ground surrounding the Black Wing Lord indicated the exact location of the strike and the surrounding crowd watched as his charred and tattered clothes revealed metallic limbs that spasmed uncontrollably.
"Sorry Bird Vader," Altrouge said, not sounding sorry in the least. "It's the end of the line for you. Primy enjoy your dinner."
The Beast of Gaia seemed happy to oblige, disregarding the trained bow of Ishtar he focused on the sixteenth Dead Apostle Ancestor. It was a pitiful sight as the formerly formidable Ancestor struggled to stand, and then struggled to speak and then just struggled. The fury in his eyes faded into resignation and his eyes closed a split second before the jaws of the first Dead Apostle Ancestor made sure he would never open them again.
"And now, young Blackmore… you will die," Altrouge said staring at the spot where her former associate stood a few moments ago.
"So was he meant to be Anakin or Luke," Satsuki said standing up from her position on top of Arcueid. "You're really butchering these quotes; this is exactly what dealing with an evil Shirou would be like."
"You're stalling for time," Altrouge said scanning the battlefield. "The red-headed one isn't here meaning he's either recovering or setting up a plan to beat me. I'm not going to allow that to happen. Primy destroy the grail."
The Beast of Gaia finished chewing up his meal and jerked his head towards the crystalline egg. His mouth opened and a dazzling light illuminated the night. Enduring the arrows that dissipated against his blackened flesh and bone he fired out another beam of white light that collided with the crystalline sphere causing cracks to form along the area.
"Damn," Arcueid said contemplating her next action. For almost the entirety of the war she had engaged the enormous canine in lieu of anybody else. Shirou had encouraged her opposition to the beast; reasoning that she was the only person that he was certain wouldn't be killed by it.
Countless bolts of light shaved flesh off the beast as Ishtar stepped up her firing rate but the wolf shrugged it off and Satsuki looked apologetically at Arcueid before charging towards the creature in order to stall any further attacks.
"Well will you look at that," Altrouge said. "That's a pretty sturdy structure to stand up to a blast from Primy." She looked like she was about to speak, but she lost the opportunity as in the next second she was forced to block one of Arcueid's strikes. Her flesh tore and her bones fractured slightly but she wasn't forced backwards this time.
"I see," she said and a smile crossed her face before she lashed out at Arcueid's face with her claws. The True Ancestor retaliated with a blow that she rolled with forcing her backwards. "You've somehow exorcised your link to Crimson Moon," she said as Arcueid was forced to jump back to avoid another lightning strike. "By doing that you've completely eliminated the vampiric impulses that his remnant gives." Arcueid leapt forward launching hundreds of blows and Altrouge met her blow for blow and being driven back only slightly. "Therefore you're able to use one hundred percent of your power. Right now you're far stronger than you've ever been." Arcueid broke the deadlock with a head-butt that cracked her skull but even then she still stood. "It's really too bad for you that I am also," she said catching the fist of Arcueid and crushing it. "The power of the Aylesbury ritual is lost to you now," Altrouge said, looking very sinister. "But don't worry. Your big sister will show it to you."
Altrouge jumped backwards raising her hands and a second later Arcueid leapt after her. She didn't manage to reach, her ears exploded and her organs felt like they were torn and shredded as she found herself face down on the floor. Trying to get her bearings as her body regenerated, Arcueid was treated to the sight of Altrouge staring down at her with a look of condescension and engaging in a soundless monologue.
"…powerful enough to circle the Earth four times, but you were probably slept through it, didn't you," Altrouge said finishing her mini-lecture as Arcueid's ears finished regenerating. "Oh, crap you didn't hear any of that did you," she said pouting. "Well I'm not going to repeat myself." She turned eying up the crystal and Arcueid noticed with some minor panic that the crystal cracks had widened and multiplied. Altrouge clapped her hands but this time Arcueid was ready creating a vacuum and containing the sound-wave. Leaping up from the floor she regarded Altrouge with wariness as befitted a predator of her stature.
Altrouge chanced another glance at the last grail, still prioritising the destruction of the last grail over putting down Arcueid and the True Ancestor took advantage. The ground cratered under the sheer force of Arcueid's charge and Altrouge had no time to react before one hundred and sixty pounds of angry True Ancestor punched her in the face. A horrific cracking sound and suddenly Altrouge's head was looking one hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction. Arcueid didn't slow down and devastated the off-guard Dead Apostles body with a series of blows that broke and disfigured her body causing her to collapse boneless to the ground.
As soon as she touched the ground, a very pissed off bark announced that there was at least one person who didn't appreciate the manoeuvre. Fifteen metres tall with red-eyes that told of unspeakable bloodlust; Primate Murder rocketed towards Arcueid with the speed of a bullet train and the inertia of a country. Arcueid tried braced for impact, but the anticipated collision didn't happen. Halfway through his charge an explosion of red light from the ground dissolved its arm into nothingness causing the beast to leap to the side to try and prevent the destruction of its entire body.
Arcueid blinked and barely refrained from rubbing her eyes. Standing there, exposed from its previous position buried under rubble, like the worlds absolutely worst nail, stood the weapon that Shirou had taken from Gilgamesh. The rotation of the chambers slowed down as she watched, leading to an almost fatal mistake.
Only a slight whisper in the wind and Arcueid's excellent instinct allowed her to avoid the certain death contained in the sword. Her quick reflexes allowed her to save her head, by sacrificing her arm. Instantly thousands of curses entered her form attacking her mind body and soul and Arcueid grimaced as she realised that while the vast majority were automatically disrupted by her innate magic resistance, there were still over a hundred that managed to bypass her immense magic resistance. Strout lashed out with a second blow that she barely avoided and Arcueid had no time to worry about Aoko as she tried to avoid her impending death.
Her death was averted as he turned suddenly and arrows bounced off his sword causing him to stumble back from the unexpected attack. The arrows were inherently different from that wielded by Ishtar but Arcueid didn't have any time to analyse them as the curses ravaged her body. Without losing any more time she tore her infected arm off her body and destroyed it. Immediately she felt some of the curses start to fade but a good portion weren't affected and she felt her sight start to blacken, her head start to feel fuzzy and her limbs to feel heavy. Every move caused her joints to grind in pain but she forced herself to move.
Altrouge had recovered from her savage beating and she stood up twisting her head back in place. She spoke but the words were fuzzy and indistinct to Arcueid's ears. She lunged forward and Altrouge answered her blow for blow. The difference immediately showed between the two of them at the moment. Where before Arcueid was overwhelming her, now the advantage ran the other way, and more and more blows fell upon her cursed body.
Pushing forward through the pain Arcueid summoned up her Noble Phantasm and was met with an equal response. The world clashed, and nature warped unnaturally as the two remaining users of Marble Phantasm clashed. But Arcueid was reluctant to leave it all up to her Marble Phantasm. The darkening in her vision informed her that there was a clear time limit to how long she could fight before she fell. If she fell and left both Primate Murder and Altrouge Brunestud to the others, then they would lose. Satsuki and Ishtar could barely stand up to Primate Murder and she had no idea what happened to Arcueid. There newest archer could not be relied upon and poor Rin was a bit out of her weight class. If she lost here than Shirou would arrive to this disastrous situation, by then they may have even finished the ritual. She would not let Shirou down.
Filled with determination Arcueid stormed through the convulsions of nature, catching Altrouge off guard and landing a blow that tore through the body of her opponent. Every fibre of her body hurt, but if she stopped now her body would stop altogether and therefore she didn't. She launched punch after punch at the Dead Apostle Ancestor, refusing to let her escape her grasp. Hundreds of strokes came together in a manner as Arcueid pulled combo after combo on her opponent reducing the Vampire Princess of the Dead Apostle Ancestors to a ragdoll. Even as her bones shattered, her organs ruptured and her skin tore open releasing her vital fluids, Arcueid still did not relinquish her attack.
Finally after what seemed like an eternity, but probably only took less than a minute, Arcueid felt her power run out. Her muscles were flayed, her hands were bloody, every bit of flesh ached and her body had stopped responding properly. Only then did Arcueid allow Altrouge to leave her grasp and only then did she make her fatal mistake. Whether by divine intervention from an evil god or the subconscious wishes of the ninth Dead Apostle Ancestor or even just plain bad luck Altrouge had been manoeuvred into a position that lined up with the grail.
By the worst fortune possible when Arcueid punched her away, she launched her directly towards the crystal sphere. Even worse was that ultimately Altrouge became the straw that snapped the camels spine. The sphere that Shirou had constructed from fragments of ORT's being, reached its limit and broke into fragments.
Altrouge Brunestud, the ninth Dead Apostle Ancestor, one of the two beings that could possibly succeed Crimson Moon stared in wonder at the last grail in front of her. He brain had haemorrhaged, there was less than a litre of blood still in her carcass of a body, her nerves had been shredded by the continuous punches. Any doctor in the world would pronounce her dead; any magus would pronounce her deader.
Still with a brain that didn't fire and a body that didn't work she looked at it with a silent plea to the world, and the world responded. Air pressure superheated and ionised to form plasma tore through the last grail shredding apart the delicate runes and magecraft. And with that all six grails had been destroyed. The vampires had won. The ritual commenced just as the failsafe of the last grail was enacted and the air turned to acid.
xxx
She screamed in her hell, or she would have if her lungs had not melted away. Her skin, muscles, nerves, bones were burnt away. The pain was so intense that not even blissful unconsciousness could take her. Scattered and broken thoughts were all that remained of her existence in this eternity that burnt away everything.
Time lacked any hard meaning in that place, but slowly and surely her mind stitched itself together. Her bones grew stronger, resisting that acid that corroded them. Her nerves burnt themselves into existence in a way that felt worse than any pain before and yet better than any time she had indulged in pleasure. Her organs formed from the infinite mana surrounding her in defiance of the impossible conditions. Her flesh formed around these organs and then was encased by unbreakable skin. Some of that flesh turned into impossibly strong muscles and her body twitched as the nerves occupied themselves with reining over them. She licked her lips as they formed with her newly created tongue. She breathed in the impossibly strong poison and found it lacking. Nails formed and she smiled at the sensation with her new-fangled teeth. Lastly black hair erupted from her head and she opened golden eyes.
With a smile Altrouge Brunestud stepped through the impossibly acidic, corrosive, poisonous mist and into the start of a new world.
Author Note: Writing a story gets far harder the longer it gets. You have to worry so much about continuity and all the different story threads.
Mister BLINK: Thanks for asking a question that I had to genuinely wiki the hell out of. This is absolutely non-canon and my best guess. Humans in the ancient times; Babylonia, Rome, Egypt would be weaker than servants, about Bazett or Kirei's level.
Indra Uzumaki: I've always thought of it like this. A bad author has no idea of the mistakes they make. A good author knows the mistakes while or after they write it down. A great author doesn't realize the mistakes because they solved them ten chapters ago. I'd like to think I'm a good author if that doesn't sound to prideful. Realistically i have no idea how I could have implemented it in bits and pieces, due to the fact that Shirou's dreams were also implemented in bits and pieces and she gets far less screen time.
DPSS: That's good to. Having a villain that the reader wants to see die is a sign I succeeded.
Please Read and Review