From Dusk (IV)
The air was smoldering with heat from the pools of molten earth that had formed from the attack unleashed by the King of Heroes.
Saber could not believe the sheer difference in power between them. She had been beaten by him already once in the past, but she didn't fully grasp the gap that separated them. She understood that he was stronger, yes, but not to such a degree that even with the support of two powerful allies he still couldn't be bested.
No, it was worse than that. Even after having his Gate of Babylon countered by its imitation, he was still too powerful to be dealt with.
Down on one knee, Saber experienced a feeling of powerlessness and inferiority the likes of which was completely alien to her. She was one who fought for noble causes, but she was also a knight with pride in her own strength. And that pride had been just stripped away.
Yet all of that paled to the gravity of the wider situation. A Servant had been killed, which was the scenario they had been trying to avoid since the start. And that Servant was none other than Caster, the only one who could set up countermeasures and contain the Grail's operations.
Their entire strategy for the War was in shambles and they were now facing an unexpected opponent of staggering power whom they had no idea how to beat. Furthermore, the person who had been the driving force of their coalition was laying on the ground with his body torn to pieces.
He was not yet dead, but his injuries were grievous and his state of mind was probably even worse. In a few short minutes, all their plans had been crushed and the shadow of complete defeat materialized out of what had been a victory already in their grasp.
What recourse did they have? Retreating was not an option. The King of Heroes wouldn't let them leave if he didn't want to. They would just be exposing their back to him and risk getting taken out one by one.
And yet, how could they possibly win?
"Berserker, Rider! I will hold him here. Take the others and flee."
He was only interested in her. She could use that, even if it meant sacrificing herself.
"Saber! You can't!" Rin shouted.
"There is no other choice. I can't beat him but I can at least keep him here for a while. Release, Barrier of the Wind King!"
The invisible layer of air concealing the true appearance of Excalibur unraveled in a great gust of wind. Excalibur couldn't match the output of Gilgamesh's weapon in his hand, at least
not in this sealed state. However, that could change in certain circumstances, though this was not one of them.
Still, it could at least take the brunt off his attack and allow her companions to retreat.
She channeled Mana to Excalibur and it started to shine with a blinding light, but before she reached the point of no return, a figure stepped in front of her with his back turned.
"No," said Berserker. "My Noble Phantasm is more suited for this battle." "Berserker?"
"Demigod to demigod. I do not mind this challenge."
The King of Heroes was not impressed by any of this.
"Feh!" he scoffed. "None of you are permitted to flee after forcing me to draw forth Ea without being worthy of even gazing upon it. I will only allow Saber to live, so that I may bathe her in the mud of the Grail. Once she'll have gained a corporeal body like mine, I will take my sweet time breaking her."
"Hrrrm. I acknowledge your power, King of Heroes, but do not believe for a moment that your victory will be so easy or guaranteed."
Gilgamesh leveled Berserker a disdainful stare.
"You are not my opponent, Bastard of Zeus."
"We shall see about that."
Berserker slammed his sword into the ground and slowly cracked his knuckles with loud snapping sounds.
"Be prepared to retreat," he told Saber.
He grabbed his sword once more and brandished it over his head. "!"
He let out a superhuman roar and swung his sword down to the ground. The ground cracked as the shockwave rippled forward in the direction of the King of Heroes, and then he lept forward in a follow-through attack.
Saber saw this as her cue and turned around running to her Master. Behind her, the sound of the battle of demigods raged. Rider was right next to Saber, heading toward Shirou who was already picking himself up from the ground.
"Rin, quick! We must leave now."
"N-No way!" Rin exclaimed, but she wasn't answering Saber's statement. Instead, she was looking behind her.
Saber looked behind her shoulders and saw. Berserker's sword was an inch away from reaching Gilgamesh's head, but it could move no further than that.
From several openings of the Gate of Babylon, a new object emerged. A chain that wrapped itself around Berserker's body and restrained him, holding his arms apart. Now completely immobilized, the weapons in Gilgamesh's arsenal impaled him on every side.
"Berserker! NO!" Illya shouted.
Gilgamesh wasn't even looking at the bound demigod. He sidestepped the giant and advanced toward the rest of the group, with slow and measured steps. There was no urgency in his advance, he didn't worry that any of them could flee. His authority over the situation appeared absolute.
"Rider, get them out of here," Saber said, taking a defensive stance with her sword. "It's me that he wants. I should at least be able to distract him a little bit. Rin, use a Command Seal and-"
Whatever Saber wanted to say died in her throat, as another challenger came to the scene.
Like a shark smelling blood in the water, a predator came upon the battlefield. The same Shadow that they fought at Rin's place made its appearance once more, and it was heading straight for the bound Berserker.
[br]
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Although Shirou's eardrums were destroyed, he was acutely aware of the beating of his own heart. It was slow and illogically steady for a person in his condition, both physically and mentally.
Or perhaps, it was precisely because of it. His mind reeled back to that moment ten years before, when his own powerlessness had cursed him. It was something different from hopelessness and closer to hollowness. Like his chest had been ripped out and [Nothingness] was all that was left inside of him.
It was in that state of mind that he watched the short fight between the King of Heroes and Herakles if one could call it that.
Although the giant demigod displayed his legendary martial prowess and battered Gilgamesh's vast array of Noble Phantasms at bay, he soon found himself irrevocably trapped when those chains bound him. Then he could no longer defend himself, and his body was pierced from all sides.
"Berserker! NO!"
He wasn't supposed to hear anything, but Illya's voice somehow reached him, but it was as if he was hearing her voice through the end of a long, empty tunnel.
Yet, it was enough to stir him.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Come on. Say it. You know you want to.'
He did. He really did want to.
He raised his right arm, even though it was bent backward at the elbow, loosely pointing it at the man he so hated. And then he said words he never heard but knew all too well.
"Verg Avesta!"
The world inside his mind turned black.
[br]
When the Shadow came, Gilgamesh stopped his advance.
It wasn't because the appearance of that Shadow threatened him in any way, or because it was clearly set in consuming Berserker before he could succumb to his wounds.
The only thing that concerned him was the fact that if it devoured Berserker, it would sully Enkidu in the process.
"Don't you dare touch my friend," he said in a merciless voice.
He pulled it back, releasing the body of the dying giant, just as the Shadow started to consume him.
It was then that Berserker's darkened eye shone red again. "!"
Even though he should have already run out of all his lives, the Son of Zeus held up to his peerless legend by striking across the abyss of death. Ea came up to block the strike.
"You troublesome man," he said through gritted teeth.
And he wasn't the only one.
Seeing the opening, Saber charged at the King of Heroes as well.
"I've had enough of you, maggots."
It wouldn't be enough. As long as he held Ea in his hand, he could not be defeated. The Sword of Rupture shone red once more, declaring his absolute supremacy. But at the same time, another person didn't care about any of that.
Victory? That wasn't on his mind. He wasn't trying to save anyone, least of all himself. He didn't trade in anything other than retribution.
"Verg Avesta!"
Ea's activation had already happened, thus the explosion of primordial energy took place, but its wielder was struck midway through.
Several things happened at the same time. Berserker was knocked back and into the Shadow. The Shadow too was repelled, but not before the Servant was subsumed entirely.
Saber was similarly hurled back but managed to hold her ground just a bit.
Both of Gilgamesh's arms snapped as did one of his legs. His eardrums burst, shooting blood out of his ears.
Ea only managed to show a tiny portion of its power, inferior to even the first attack. It was still just enough to get all threats away from him. But even though Gilgamesh managed to evade the crisis, the recoil of his mightiest weapon was more than he could handle on a broken leg and as result, something ludicrous happened. Something that even in his all-seeing vision he would always refuse to accept as possible.
He dropped to one knee.
Time froze for the King of Heroes. Millions of seconds all contained into a single one.
He, Gilgamesh, the King of Heroes, the rightful owner of the world and ruler of mankind had been forced down to one knee.
That was such a ludicrous thing to even think about that he could be bothered with anything else. Not his wounds and certainly not Saber charging her Noble Phantasm. All those things were trivial. In a way, even the possibility of his current incarnation being destroyed was irrelevant.
He had been forced to kneel.
He knew perfectly well how it happened. The combination of factors that caused this outcome. He replayed them in his head over and over again. And yet even though he saw them with perfect clarity the cause didn't match the effect.
It didn't matter how extenuating were the circumstances. It made no logical sense that he would ever kneel. If the effect was impossible, then the cause had to be wrong.
Yes, there was a fundamental mistake. A glitch in the matrix. A rot in the very foundation of the world itself. Something so profound that no amount of corrections could possibly fix it.
It had to go. The world had to go, not just the people in it. The entire timeline needed to be purged, pruned, erased from history, and eradicated from the Root itself.
There could not exist a universe in which the King of Heroes knelt. Gilgamesh got up to his feet. Although one of his legs was still broken, it was
inconsequential. He would stand on no legs if he had to.
He raised his eyes and truly looked at the counterfeit for the first time. There was an order of priority to everything, after all.
"EX-"
"Everything you cherish, I will strip it from you piece by piece."
"-CALIBUR!"
Saber swung her Holy Sword and the light rushed at him, engulfing him completely.
[br]
When the King of Heroes got to his feet, Saber almost thought she wouldn't make it in time. Excalibur was powerful but required a few seconds to unleash its potential. When she finally swung it and released its power, she was surprised that he made no attempt at defending himself.
He was hit dead on and his figure disappeared into the light.
When it finally cleared, the only sign of his presence was the destruction left in the wake of their battle. The ground was still shattered, and now there was a gigantic slash that cut the park in half.
"Is he dead?" asked Rin.
"He's not," replied Illya in a somber voice. "He left, for now."
Being part of the Grail system, she would know better than anyone else. "Shirou! Shirou!"
Rider was calling her Master, but he was unresponsive. Whatever he had done that hurt Gilgamesh seemed to have exhausted the last of his strength and he was now completely limp in her arms.
His wounds were still healing, but he looked like a corpse.
"We need to leave before anything else happens," said Saber.
"My place is destroyed," said Rin. "It's either Emiya's or Illya's."
"My castle is too far away," Illya replied. She wasn't looking at anyone, just continuing to stare at the spot where Berserker had been consumed by the Shadow.
Saber put a hand on the homunculus' shoulder. She knew that this Master and Servant pair had been together for a long time. The Heroic Spirit had been more than just a familiar to Kiritsugu's daughter.
"Then Shirou's place will have to do," Rin said.
"No," Rider objected. "With Caster gone her protections are lost. It's too exposed. I know another place. Shirou showed me his safehouse before."
"Then take us there. We need to get him out of here, and decide what to do next."
So they did, leaving behind the destruction their battle had wrought, as well as the ruins of their best shot at preventing the Grail War from spiraling out of control.
[br]
The lights of the safehouse turned on the moment Saber flipped on the switch of the diesel generator. The water reservoir that had been converted into a shelter was bathed in electrical light.
Rin looked around the place but didn't comment. Instead, her eyes fell on the human figure floating inside a crystal container.
"Lancer's Master. So this is where they put her."
The hole in her chest was gone, for the most part. She should be able to survive like that.
Rider passed by her with Shirou in her arms and lowered him onto one of several beds. His wounds still weren't quite healed, but he didn't look like he was a corpse anymore at least.
"How is he?" she asked his last Servant. "He'll live. He is... very tough."
"Yeah," she replied.
She knew well how hard to kill he was, but she was far more worried about the wounds to his heart than to his body. Rin had never been particularly fond of Caster. She hadn't hated her or anything, but there were things she didn't like about the Witch of Betrayal. After all, their relationship had started on the wrong foot, to put it lightly.
But, she wasn't the least bit happy that Caster was dead, particularly because of what it meant to Shirou.
She had never seen him fight like that. She had never seen him truly want to kill someone. She didn't think he had it in him in the first place.
"He really did love her, didn't he?"
Rider did not reply. She just sat by her Master's bed and held his hand.
Rin turned and left the makeshift infirmary. She found Illya standing in front of Lancer's former Master, looking at her unconscious form.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"I'm fine," replied the snow-haired maiden. She was unusually subdued, and far less volatile than Rin thought she'd be.
'Right, she was sharing the burden of Madness Enhancement with Berserker, and now he's gone.'
Much of the woman's hostility probably came from that, and now that it was removed she was far less scathing. Also...
"He was your friend."
"Spare me your condolences, Tohsaka," she said, barely even shifting her eyes toward the other Magus. "Berserker knew he had been summoned to fight and then become a sacrifice to the Grail. We have already been together longer than we were supposed to."
Rin knew she was correct, but losing someone dear was still painful, no matter how expected it was. Still, there was no point pushing that conversation any further, and walked away. She and Illya weren't even remotely close to friends. They were barely allies.
Another testament to how hard a certain person had worked to bring them all together, against all odds. And the reward for all his efforts was losing the person he cherished the most?
Justice was truly nothing more than a fleeting dream in this world. "Rin, do you have a moment?" Saber called.
"Saber. Is everything okay?"
"I have checked the perimeter. This location is easily defensible."
Rin privately noted that Saber hadn't replied to her question. Then again, it had been rhetorical.
"What's on your mind?" she decided to ask instead. "We lost Caster and Berserker."
One had been the only Servant who could truly end the Grail War on their terms, and the other their mightiest ally.
"I know, I was there," she replied in dry humor. "All of our plans are unfeasible now."
Rin sighed.
"We can still destroy the Grail."
"It won't be so easy, nor without consequences," Saber objected. "It's the Grail War."
"Fair enough. Even then, we are going to need a well-defined course of action. We can't just improvise."
"Of course. But we are going to have to wait for Emiya to wake up before we can decide anything."
"Do you think he's going to be fine?" Saber asked. Rin could tell that her Servant was genuinely concerned for him. They were quite close, after all. All of them were. One way or another, Shirou had managed to ingratiate himself into all of their lives.
"They say time heals all wounds."
Saber nodded, but Rin could tell she didn't believe those words any more than she did herself. Time didn't heal wounds. People just grew numb to them.
"You should get some rest now, Rin. We don't know when we'll need to fight again. There are a few beds around."
"Yes, I'll grab some shut-eye. You'll keep watch, right?" "Of course. Don't worry about anything."
Rin smiled ruefully.
"That's a tall order, even for you."
Still, Saber was right. She needed to rest and recuperate for what was surely still to come. She looked for a bed and quickly found one, with some covers inside a watertight container at the foot of it. Shirou had really prepared thoroughly.
It was a pity that in the end, it was all for nothing.
[br]
The door to the Emiya household slid open and a solitary figure stepped inside.
Everything was perfectly still. It was almost as if it had been abandoned a long time ago. There was no trace of its occupants. No matter where the figure looked, she couldn't find anything that would point to their location.
"It's clear that they are not here, Master." Avenger materialized at Caren's side.
"Any idea where they might be hiding?" "You know perfectly well I don't," he replied.
Caren clenched her fists. When Shirou's allies had arrived on the scene she thought her job was done and had her Servant leave. She didn't think he could be of any further help, and in fact, hanging around would have only drawn unwanted attention to her Servant which would have led to all sorts of complications.
But when she later went back to investigate the aftermath, the destruction she found didn't match what she had expected. And then, upon arriving at his place, she found that all of the protections around the house were completely gone.
Something terribly wrong had happened. The Boundary Fields around the house had been put up not by any modern magus, but Caster herself, and for them to be gone meant she had to be dead.
Had she failed her mission? She had a rough understanding of Shirou's and Caster's relationship. Would the grief from her loss put him on the path that would turn him into the twisted shade of a Heroic Spirit that was her Servant?
She had experienced the Dream Cycle, and while she only got snippets of memories the impression that she got from them was an overwhelming feeling of grief and sadness. His identity and memory had only been the last in a terribly long list of things he had lost.
Was it already too late to save him?
At that moment, there was a noise at the door. Caren rushed to the entrance and found another person there.
He was bleeding profusely.
"He... Help me," he whispered.
"You are... Matou Shinji."
"Ugh!" he groaned and then toppled over.
Caren reached and grabbed him before he could fall to the ground.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
"P... Please... you've got to... you've got to tell Emiya. Sa... save Sakura... ohhh." His eyes closed and he passed out.
"Avenger. Give me a hand. We need to treat his wounds."
"As you wish, Master."
Together, they brought the wounded boy inside of the house. She was sure Emiya would not begrudge her that. However, she couldn't help but wonder what exactly had been going on, and if this was her chance to turn the tides of fate.
[XXX]