Chapter 196
"The leylines here and here need to be checked."
"Do we have enough cell phones?"
"We'll have to get someone to guard the place and our injured."
The safehouse was bustling with activity as the Clocktower's mages planned and prepared.
Several diagrams were drawn with chalk on the floor, stretching from the dining room to the living room, while a map of Fuyuki laid on the able, complete with a number of pins and strings stretching across it.
Scratching the stubble on his chin, the professor surreptitiously reached for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket, only to be arrested by the presence of a twin-tailed magus walking into the room. Griping to himself silently, he removed his hand and settled for rubbing his fingers together, missing the texture of paper and tobacco between them. Still, he'd rather go cold turkey than risk another confrontation with the Tohsaka magus, whose Servant had almost taken his head off after he'd started smoking indoors. Somehow, she'd caught a whiff and thought they were under a chemical attack.
He couldn't fault her, given the scent of his particular brand was notorious even amongst other smokers.
Rubbing his neck, he eyed the girl as she approached him, a stack of papers in her hands.
"Here's the documents you asked for. Everything you need to know about the leylines, the cavern and ritual sites, along with a list of places and people of interest."
The stack of papers was transferred to his hands, the sheer weight making him stagger slightly. He glanced at her hands, wondering if she had been reinforcing herself while carrying them.
"Thanks for these. I'll look them over while you go investigate the areas you were assigned to."
To cover ground more efficiently and save time, they had split into two groups, mainly with Gray, Assassin and Org in one group, and Tohsaka, Archer and Svin in the other. The rest of the mages would stay behind, along with El-Melloi.
She nodded, heading for the door with her Servant materializing next to her. Just as she was about to leave, she stopped at the doorway.
"By the way, I think you might want to get some rest after this."
With that, she left, a swift wind blowing through the door as her Servant carried her off, the other passenger letting out a cry of joy that quickly faded away in the wind.
She was right though, he definitely needed to get some sleep, but hopefully after the situation at their base was dealt with. There was still something he needed to do, after all.
Right after Tohsaka's group left, Gray's group soon followed, leaving the house empty of Servants.
Now all we can do is wait.
Sitting at the cluttered table, he let out a yawn as he stretched. It felt good when his joints popped, and the lines on his face softened slightly. When he was done, he turned to the papers Tohsaka had given him and started perusing their contents one by one, acting like the diligent professor he was supposed to be.
Perched on the ceiling, the multi-faceted compound eyes of a fly stared down at the living room. It had been perched there, unmoving, for more than a day, and still continued to stay there as if petrified. For a moment, it's antenna twitched.
Thousands squirmed in the soil beneath the house, churning the moist soil clinging to their bodies.
One among the spider's six eyes twitched as the spider web trembled, it's home on the top of a tall building in the Shinto district shaking as it was disturbed by the passage of a red clothed man carrying two people over his shoulders like sacks of potatoes.
In the distant west part of the city, a cockroach scuttled past the feet of a gray-hooded girl, entering the sewers nearby as a man stretched out his hand, reciting words in a foreign language.
Back at their safehouse, the fly finally detached from the ceiling as its wings whirred incessantly, but it was just far enough away to prevent the professor from hearing it. While he flipped the pages of the documents in his hands, it traveled to the other rooms one by one.
One in the toilet, one in the basement, one in the bedrooms upstairs and one more in the makeshift infirmary. Along with the professor, that made five in total.
In the bedroom, a young woman sat up on the bed.
"Ayaka, you're awake!"
The straw–haired boy rushed to her side, carefully supporting her back.
"Does it hurt? Do you need water? Are you hungry?"
His rapid-fire questions were more likely to annoy than assist her, but her face remained blank.
"A-ayaka?"
The next moment, her fist was buried in his stomach.
He crumpled to the floor, curled up in a ball.
Stowing the crow feather into her pocket, her head rotated slowly to the door, then her hands lifted the covers. Occasionally, a tic or spasm would rock her joints, and as she stood up her feet were uncoordinated and moved slowly.
The door slid open smoothly with a twist of the handle, allowing her entry to the corridor. Her eyes slid to the left upper corner of the hallway, and with one smooth motion a feather left her right hand and plunged into a crystal embedded in the wall, dislodging it.
After entering a few more rooms and dislodging more crystals, a slight buzzing feeling pulsed through the area. The Bounded Fields had fallen.
Hearing footsteps from the stairs, El-Melloi looked over to see her holding the stair rails, unsteadily descending one step at a time.
He didn't approach to help her, not even when she tripped and went tumbling down the stairs, sprawling onto to the floor. Silently, she picked herself up, not even a single whimper of pain coming from her mouth.
"It seems you are competent enough to recognize an enemy in front of you."
The vocal cords sounded like they were unceremoniously plucked to create sound, her voice grating on his ears.
"Not competent enough to protect yourself though."
The professors entire body was trembling, but it wasn't from fear. Beneath his feet, the wooden planks shifted and creaked as it was displaced from below. Through the cracks, an outpouring of sinuous gray bodies invaded the house, covering the floor in a wiggling gray carpet.
They automatically parted for the girl advanced towards him, having nothing to fear from them.
"The other members will be dead, but you? You would be easy to control."
Kneeling down, she took worm into her palm, a slit-like opening oozing clear fluid as it opened and close, almost like it as panting. Behind, a slender tail writhed, wagging back and forth.
"It's obvious you're barely even a Count, just what was the Clock Tower thinking to send you here?"
"I'm actually officially a Fes."
His words surprised her, pausing momentarily while the worm slid around in her hands.
Stiffly, she arched her eyebrows in an expression of dubious suspicion.
"Fes?"
"Professor El-Melloi is a Fes, not because of the quality of his circuits or his family, but because of his talent as a magus and a mentor."
She turned, seeing the boy she had stabbed earlier walk down the stairs with no problem.
In his hands, a metallic cylinder hummed quietly, a thin tendril of electricity snapping to his hand every now and then.
"We're all ready Professor."
"Good."
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes the twin-tailed Master had so hated, lighting it with practiced ease and taking a puff.
With deft strokes born of practice, he traced a few lines in the air with the cigarette, the lines of smoke hanging in the air instead of dispersing.
A swarm of insects slithered, buzzed and crawled towards to the stairs, while the rest colored the floor black in an attempt to reach El-Melloi.
Tendrils of green tinged electricity lept from the battery in Caules hand, on becoming two, two becoming four, four becoming eight until there was a hundreds of individual forks, like the roots of an infinitely old tree spreading through the earth. As if that wasn't enough, the moment one of the insects was touched, slender arcs connected to the nearest ones, exponentially multiplying the web of energy. In a flash, the first hundred or so familiars were twitching on the ground, with the others finding their way blocked by an ever-expanding net of lightning.
As for El-Melloi, all he did was hold out a ruby.
"Stop, or I'll burn all of us with Tohsaka's gem!"
The humming yellow kitchen lights glinted off the ruby, revealing the sigil carved in the center of it's largest face.
They hovered in the air, beady eyes twitching, while their master's obsidian orbs stared into El-Melloi's velvet ones.
"We have a deal for you."
Seizing the opportunity, he pushed forward, well aware that he was on the verge of being attacked at any moment.
"What are you offering?"
"We can assist your recovery."
Motioning with the gem, he listed off their observations.
"We know you've been siphoning energy from civilians all over Fuyuki and from what little we've been able to surveil from then Matou mansion, you haven't returned for some time. Your Servant also hasn't appeared, and it's unlikely that you have one at this point."
Waving the cigarette butt in his hands as he spoke, he gestured at Zouken's stand-in.
"If you need energy, we can give it to you,"
Then he pointed to himself.
"And we can also give you a better chance at the Grail."
For a moment, only the dry clicking of insects filled the air.
"Then what would you demand of me?"
Taking a deep drag on the cigarette, he blew out a cloud of smoke.
"All we need is for you to give us the identities of the remaining Master."
Though he was already leaning forward by virtue of being hunchbacked, the old man somehow managed to lean forward even more.
"You are yet young, and your inexperience shows Lord El-melloi."
The buzzing of grew louder as the legions resumed their advance, intent on burying him alive.
"Why don't you use cicadas?"
El-melloi's sudden question halted the advancing swarm. Staring back at him, the old man's face creased in a rare moment of confusion.
"Cicadas?"
"Yes, wouldn't the hosting process be smoother through the usage of cicadas as a vessel? Or failing that, perhaps butterflies would also suffice, and they would be easier to produce as well with shorter preparation times."
He gestured at the other magus, his cigarette leaving a hazy trail of smoke in the wake of his movements.
"Locusts devour and consume, tearing apart the crops and devastating the lands. One is not even worthy of a glance, but nations tremble in the face of a horde. It's association with plagues and natural disasters is strongest, with numerous uses in magecraft, such as in the fields of curses, shamanism and hexes."
The ruby glinted in his hand while he paused to take another drag, the end of the cigarette emitting coils of smoke that curled around his face.
"In your case though, using it as a host body for possession seems sub-optimal."
A strange gleam entered Zouken's pure black eyes, the obsidian orbs disappearing behind his leathery skin as he narrowed his eyes at the lord.
"Oh, sub-optimal is it? Please, enlighten me." his lips curled into a grin that seemed full of malice, at odds with his curiosity filled words.
"I'd hazard a guess that you tried to use butterflies at the start didn't you?"
He continued without receiving a response.
"The butterfly already holds meaning as a personification of the soul, and as a symbol of rebirth. However, you realized that simply using butterflies as the catalyst wasn't enough. The life cycle of a butterfly involves four steps, the egg, larvae, pupa and adult. To be reborn, is to shed the old self and return to a state of infancy, losing everything else in the process. Instead, you wanted to maintain your strength and memories in a constant manner, rather than waxing and waning in a loop."
He glanced outside the window, before returning his gaze to Zouken.
"In addition, there would be periods of vulnerability with this method. The timing could be set to sync with the Holy Grail Wars, but I imagine that it would be difficult to achieve for sixty years, and time for preparation would be lost during your periods of inactivity. The longest living butterfly would be the brimstone butterfly, and even then it's mature state has at best a year of life expectancy. The cycle would leave you vulnerable for at least a month or so."
Kneeling down, he picked up one of the charred insects on the ground.
"Unless, you substituted the butterfly with something else."
He tapped his cigarette on the body.
"Fore and hind wings, and an ear between the wing and the femur, with serrated tibia. Though it's form is distorted, the base form was undoubtedly a locust."
Shaking his head, he dropped the insect on the floor.
"Using locusts as a host certainly is convenient in the short-term, but in the long-term it will only accelerate the the deterioration of the soul. Your cross breeding of the two has certainly corrected some of the flaws, but in the end it wasn't enough to sustain a true inheritance of the self."
Red hair flashed through his mind as he thought of someone who had successfully done so, but he quickly shook the thought of the that pe"rson. If she were here though, she could have taught Zouken a thing or two.
Zouken merely smiled back at him as he laid bare his deductions, shifting the cane in his hands as he walked forward.
"It seems your reputation was well-deserved. Crossing paths twice has already allowed you to uncover the mechanisms behind my magecraft, but that alone isn't enough to…"
Holding up his hand, El-Melloi stopped him.
"Something doesn't add up though. If it were really a cross-bred familiar, then why would it have worm form? Neither butterflies nor locusts go through a stage in their life cycle as worms, unless…you mixed in something else? Perhaps, tube worms?"
At this, Zouken stopped in his tracks, staring at El-Melloi with his beady eyes.
"It makes sense, the nature of locusts and worms completing the cycle, one as a an avatar of destruction, the other a renewal of the soil, providing life. This constant break down and regeneration of your physical self is supplemented by the two, granting a way to survive without being severely oppressed by the world, since your existence isn't inconsistent due it being constantly destroyed and worn away."
"You would still need an anchor though, to keep your soul within this realm. I doubt you would be brave enough to split your essence across the massive swarm, and it would be safer this way, as you could be easily defeated if enough bodies are destroyed."
"Die."
The buzzing of the wings increased to a roar that rivaled the Niagara Falls, the old man's body falling apart into countless worms that slithered forward to consume the lord in front of them.
It was all for nothing, as a sudden high pitched screech robbed them of the ability to move.
The screech steadily built up in volume, becoming a banshee's shriek that pierced their insectoid brains and shook their bodies to the core. El-Melloi knelt in front of them, staring at their twitching bodies.
"That was a close one."
Caules spoke from nearby, the ancient battery in his hands simmering down as the light faded to a dull gleam.
Standing up, his professor glanced outside. There, beyond the edge of the estate, a figure waved at him.
"Wow, it felt like I was in slime bath, it felt so good!"
Flat came down from the stairs looking none the worse besides the copious amounts of clear fluid clinging to his clothes. Picking up the girl slumped on the ground, he carefully placed her on a chair.
"So, did we get him?"
"Play Ball"
Flat drew his left index and middle finger together and swiped once horizontally, then vertically, before repeatedly pinching his thumb and index finger together and expanding them.
"Game set. Yep, looks like he isn't here anymore. At least, not anywhere within 10 kilometers."
Taking a deep drag of his cigarette, the professor sighed in relief as he breathed out a cloud of smoke, sitting back on the chair as his shoes crushed a few inert worms on the floor.
Sitting down with him, Caules voiced his doubts.
"If what you said was true though, then he should still be alive somewhere, since his anchor most likely wasn't present for this invasion."
"Yes, it's likely that for his own safety he wouldn't carelessly bring his anchor, or perhaps his main body, anywhere near a fight. However, we managed to deprive him of a large number of familiars, and with that he will be less of a threat. More importantly, we know how to permanently be rid of him now, and all we need to do is find the host worm that anchors his soul. It might take a while though, but we can start by investigating the Matou house first."
"Oh, I think I found him."
Both of them turned to stare at Flat, but then the door burst open as a lolita pranced into the house.
"Yayay, we beat the big bad worm!"
While making peace signs at the trio, she struck various poses.
"Professooorrrr, lets celebrate this victory with a kiss!"
Puckered lips and outstretched hands chased the professor as he ran around the house, to the amusement of his two other students.
In the bowels of a cavern, the face of a girl eerily similar to Saber's split into a wide grin.
"The old worm's panicking. Now's the time."
Emerging from a sea of mud, her nude body was swiftly encased in flowing sheets of mud, the surface a deep umber tinged with a grotesque shade of bruised purple. Solidifying, it turned into a set of light armor, the breast plates barely covering her chest, greave and gauntlets sporting sharpened edges and points meant for maiming. A dark mahogany strip of loin cloth fluttered between her legs, and similar strips of fabrics adorned her limbs and neck, with a dark tattoos coiling their way through the skin beneath them.
In front of her, the mud bubble and boiled as a sword slowly rose through the surface, mud sloughing off it's surface as it was dragged out like a stubborn mule. A clawed metal hand grabbed the handle and pulled it all the way out, swinging the blade in an arc which sent the rest of the mud flying off the blade, the simple act shooting out a blast of air that could send an elephant flying.
"Oi Priest, go get old man Z warmed up for me, got it?"
Without waiting for a reply, she disappeared with movement that bordered on teleportation. Seconds later, a sonic boom rang out in the hollow space.
Kirei stepped out of the shadows in his church, the sunlight illuminating his face among the empty pews.
As he left, a pair of striking red eyes followed him from within the shadows in the building.
"Perhaps, I should go out and take a walk."
Setting down the glass of wine in his hands, the first king of mankind stood up.
"Do entertain me, mongrels."