Chapter 6
The searing heat and scorching sunlight forced Illya to crack open her eyes. The first thing she saw were the two suns in the sky, which instantly blinded her. Blinking in confusion, she turned her head to the side while raising an arm to block the sunlight, only to realize she was lying on sand. Slowly, she got up and surveyed her surroundings. And realized she was in the middle of a dessert with not one, but two suns blazing down on her. There were sand dunes stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction, with absolutely no sign of civilization at all.
Keeping calm, she decided to try activating her Magic Circuits. She visualized a white strand of thread piercing through the eye of the needle, her mental trigger. Yet nothing happened. She tried two more times, but the results were the same. However, she was still aware of their presence in her body, she just couldn't use them.
"Since I can't use magecraft at all, I need to find somewhere with shade and water before I die from exposure or dehydration." She had woken up wearing her regular clothing, and the layers were already making her sweat, with dark patches appearing on her purple shirt.
With that in mind, she started walking in a random direction, hoping that she could find someone or something to help her in this barren desert.
Barely had she taken a few steps when her wish was granted. Far off in front of her, a cloud of dust was being kicked up, and rapidly approaching her. She strained her eyes trying to spot what was in front of her, and when she finally managed to see it's true form past the twin sun's glare, her jaw dropped.
There were two people riding on a vehicle that she had never seen or even heard of before. It resembled the motorcycles her mother had used to drive on the Einzberns estate, but it had no wheels. It was simply hovering in the air, without a single part visibly touching the ground. Two long rods with metal plates attached at the end made up the front of the vehicle, while the main body looked quite close to that of a motorcycle, but more streamlined.
The two people riding the bike both wore large ponchos and headwraps stained yellow by the sand, with goggles completely hiding their faces along with the headwraps. However, she could tell from their body features that they were most likely male, with the person seated behind the driver most likely younger due to his smaller size.
Despite their mysterious appearance and alien vehicle, she wasn't going to let what was possibly her only chance to be saved pass by her, so she ran directly towards them while waving her arms and yelling, doing her best to attract their attention. That was when she noticed that there was another speck kicking up dust behind them, a black dot on the horizon. It looked they were being pursued.
Within moments, the black dot grew larger, it's speed seemingly surpassing the bike, kicking up and even larger pillar of cloud. The moment she saw who it was, her jaw dropped even further, almost touching the ground.
It was her servant, Berserker, but wearing completely different clothes. Sh was clad in black themed armor with- no actually it didn't really look that protective at all. Instead, it would be more accurate to call it a bodysuit with pieces of metal attached in different patterns to make it look like armor. She had no idea where she had gotten the futuristic tights from. Her coat was now replaced with a long billowing cloak, and her entire ensemble had red highlights throughout, creating an imposing visage like a menacing S*th Lord. In a remote corner of Illya's mind, she wondered if Berserker was one of those "cosplayers" she'd heard of.
In spite of her questionable choice of attire, there was no denying the fact that she was fast, incredibly so. If she hadn't seen her parameters earlier, she would've thought Berserker was at least A- rank in agility.
Gradually, the speeder got closer to Illya, and Berserker caught up to the speeder bit by bit. At this point, Illya realized she was most likely in a dream about her Servants' past. Masters of past Grail Wars had also experienced such dreams, and the Einzbern Masters of the past had records of having such visions in the archives of her family. Still, being able to experience the heat of the desert in a dream wasn't something mentioned in those very archives she had studied day and night.
There wasn't much she could do it as an observer of the past, so she decided to just sit and watch.
Within a minute, just several dozen meters away from Illya, Berserker finally managed to get within a few meters of the "bike". Her right hand blurred as she unsheathed her, sword? If swords glowed red and were round cylinders of energy. Wait no, Illya remembered seeing these in a movie she'd watched a long time ago with her parents, one of the fond memories she had of them that she cherished to this day. It was definitely a l*ghtsaber. The red energy blade hummed and spat as it ate the grains of dust swirling in Berserker's wake. She raised her left hand at the same time and blasted red lightning at her targets. The crimson energy lanced through the air, reaching the bike in a blink of an eye. Without even looking back, the driver reached under his poncho with his left hand and pulled out a large sword from his scabbard, reverse holding the sword in the optimal position to block the lightning with perfect timing. There was no wasted movement from the moment of unsheathing, and even when the blade's edge almost touched the passenger, and with the vehicles shaking, the blade remained steady.
As the crimson lightning coiled around the golden sword, Berserker lifted up her leg smashed her foot into the ground at speeds only a Servant could achieve, raising a billowing cloud of sand that obscured both her quarry and Berserker herself. Not a moment later, the "bike" flew out of the cloud, careening wildly with part of the back half sliced off. Both of the riders leaped off the vehicle and somersaulted in the air, landing perfectly on the ground with their weapons drawn. Bursting out of the dissipating cloud of sand, Berserker charged straight at the older man in one leap, swinging her lightsaber down in an overhead arc. The man blocked it at the last possible second, completely withstanding the formidable amount of kinetic energy she had, with his feet sinking several centimeters into the sand. They held a stalemate for a moment, then Berserker launched a flurry of attacks at the man while mid-air.
*Clash* *Vuon vuon* *Clang* *Zusha!*
Every blow was executed with a speed that far surpassed even the most athletic modern human. For all Illya knew, they could have exchanged ten to fifty blows in the span of those few seconds. Her eyes just watered looking at them, struggling to catch up to their movements in vain.
Berserker suddenly hopped backwards, disengaging to put some distance between them. The man remained on guard, holding his sword with both hands in front of him, the blade pointing upwards at an angle. Berserker gestured with her left hand, forming a claw with her palms skyward, and raised her hand as if lifting something heavy. Slowly, large clumps of sand balled up together tightly rose from the ground, with around half a dozen balls or so. She thrust her hand towards her opponent, and the sand balls flew at him with the speed of a professionally pitched baseball. The man simply opted to cleave them apart, but the moment his blade came into contact with the first ball, it exploded into individual grains of sand, clouding his immediate surroundings. The remaining sand balls impacted on the ground near him one by one, maintaining the cloud. Several heartbeats passed as the man within the cloud stood motionless, waiting for Berserker to make a move. A thick bolt of red lightning courses towards him barely a meter from his face, appearing without warning from the dense cloud of sand surrounding him. He instantly intercepted it, but a bolt of that size couldn't be completely blocked, and some stray currents surged into his body, but the man didn't react at all to the pain. Almost at the same time as the lightning bolt, the ground beneath him erupted as multiple gouts of sand were pulled up by Berserker in an effort to unbalance him. He jumped straight up into the air, straight towards Berserker with his sword swinging around to attack her.
Before he could even reach her, she raised her hand and made a choking gesture, which instantly stopped him in his tracks mid-air.
"Kuh!"
This was the first sound Illya had heard the man make since the fight started. He struggled with all his might to break free of Berserker's telekinetic grip as she slowly approached him with lightsaber in hand. His body twitched and spasmed, but try as he might, he couldn't seem to break through. Berserker walked until she was a meter away from him and stopped. Slowly, she raised her blade until the tip was pointing at the head of the man floating in the air. Illya saw her turn a knob on her lightsaber, and the blade lengthened until it was almost half longer than it was before. As soon as her blade fully extended, she swung at him.
*Zashin!*
Before Illya could register what happened, the man broke free of Berserker's grip and slid under the blade, making his upper body parallel to the blade and the ground while his legs remained firmly planted in the sand. As soon as the blade passed him, he dug one hand into the ground and used it as a focal point to launch himself towards Berserker at a low height, his entire body crouched forward while barely skimming across the ground. His sword pointed upwards, ready to pierce her torso, but she was able to bring her blade back around to deflect it to the side. She wasn't able to follow up for the kick that came afterwards, and was blown backwards after the man's right leg sunk deep into her stomach. Her small frame tumbled and bounced across the sand until she came to a somewhat controlled stop tens of meters away.
"Kah, kuh! You're certainly not easy prey." Berserker said her first words in the dream, coughing between every other word while she did so.
"I was known as the strongest of the Round Table for a reason, the ideal knight of the Dark R.O.U.N.D.S.. You of all people should know that well." The man's voice sounded relaxed, but his vigilant posture never changed.
Berserker merely stood back up, undeterred.
"It seems that I will have to fight seriously to defeat you. Prepare yourself, Lancelot."
With that, she deactivated her lightsaber. She held it with both hands and closed her eyes, focusing and channeling energy into the hilt. The lightsaber hilt shrank, the crossguard melting into the grip, while the pommel disappeared, growing longer on each side. Like liquid mercury, it lengthened, becoming more of a cylinder than a traditional sword hilt. It eventually stopped, becoming a lightsaber with diametrically parallel designs. A thin metal cylinder the size of the toilet paper roll with several buttons on it, tapering off in a cone towards the emitter that was a disc set at the end of the hilt. Several grooves circled the hilt, allowing for secure gripping. The moment she activated it, two blades extended from both ends. A double-bladed lightsaber, also known as a saberstaff or lightstaff.
She wasted no time at all after activating it, jumping straight at Lancelot to unleash a flurry of attacks even faster than before. Her movements were completely different as well, her whole body spinning and pivoting frequently, while her hands spun the saberstaff as well, allowing her to make as many as ten consecutive slashes at Lancelot in under a second. Lancelot on the other hand remained calm, deflecting each strike with precision, even with the increased rate of slashes. However, he was being forced to stay on the defensive, unable to attack at all.
Suddenly, from the side a flare shot up straight into the sky, smoke trailing after it. It went high, creating a signal anyone could see for miles. The fight between the two continued unabated, but Illya stared at the boy who had fired the flare. He'd spectated their fight like her up until now, but after a device on his belt beeped he'd fired the flare. Was he signaling someone?
She received her answer soon, in the form of noise resembling airplane engines, yet less noisy and more focused. Turning around, she spotted the source of the noise. It was a flying craft, completely unlike anything she'd heard or seen of except in movies she'd watched when she was young. It was saucer shaped, with two front mandibles and a conical cockpit tucked at the side, and some type of propulsors at the back emitting blue light. At this point Illya was no longer surprised, and simply accepted that her Servant was possibly not from Earth at all.
Even when the spacecraft stopped above the two combatants, they still didn't stop fighting. If anything, the fighting turned even fierce, with Berserker speeding up more and more, her slashes almost weaving the space around her into a cage of light, while her body twisted and spun like a ballerina on steroids. Sand went flying everywhere, and there were many furrows in the ground where the sand had turned into glass from being superheated by her lightsaber. Yet Lancelot still wasn't overwhelmed, exhibiting remarkable skill and flexibility by weaving through her slashes with seemingly impossible movements while combining them with swordsmanship that freely switched between one-handed and two-handed sword wielding, even switching grip styles mid-flip. Despite the myriad blows raining down on him, his poncho remained untouched except for a few singe marks from when he had blocked the bolt of lightning.
It all came to a sudden halt when laser beams lanced down from the spaceship hovering in the air. The boy had climbed up a ladder dropped from a ramp that led onto the ship, and was now in a lower gun turret shooting at the two of them, mainly aiming at Berserker. The two of them were forced to disengage, jumping back several meters away from each other. But as soon as they stopped, Lancelot jumped straight up, snagging the ladder with his free hand. The ship had already begun to move before he even grabbed it, and it rapidly picked up speed. As they left Berserker behind, Lancelot called out to her.
"I'm sorry my liege, but I must take my leave from the Round Table now. With your return, the Dark Rounds are in good hands. Also, I wanted to have some famil-." His words were cut off as they left Illya's range of hearing.
But Berserker still had one last trick up her sleeve. With her ornate sword hilt in her right hand and her other sword in her left, she burst into a sprint towards the rapidly shrinking back of the spaceship. The ground in front of her trembled, and then balls of sand similar to the ones from before rose into the air, forming a stairway into the sky. This time when she jumped on them, they held their shape instead of exploding. She rapidly jumped until the last ball where she visibly exerted all her strength possible and jumped as hard as she could. At the same time, she activated the lightsaber in her left hand and caused energy to overflow from it in a manner similar to Mana Burst, boosting her to even greater speeds. When she reached maximum momentum, she lifted her right arm and chucked the golden lightsaber hilt in the direction of the spaceship. Illya had no way of knowing, but with Berserker's enhanced eyesight she could just barely tell that the hilt had landed and embedded itself on the hull of the spaceship. With any luck, it would stay there for a little while.
Berserker walked back to where Illya was watching, near the area she had fought in, which was now covered in pits, furrows, streaks of glass and the smell of ozone from her lightsaber. She stopped right next to Illya and pulled out a small rectangular device with few features, consisting of smooth flat surfaces with a few small indentations and buttons on the sides and on both faces. She put her index finger to the back of the device for her moment, and then an artificial voice said "Device unlocked.", after which she started tapping and pressing on the device.
"I hope the GPS(Galaxy Positioning System) I installed on my "Wicked Holy Sword Necrocalibur" in case I lost it still works."
Illya watched as she fiddled with the device, before darkness washed her vision and true sleep claimed her consciousness once more.