21: As always, the two clash (Lancer Side).
Gae Bolg is returned to my grasp. I had added runes to return stolen property to my hand on the second damn day of this mess of a war, after Archer pulled out Fergus's sword for the first time.
"Kind of a long shot, but the potential payoff is definitely worth it." - that's what I figured at the time.
And, well, I was right! Even if I end up dying like a chump, the look of shock on the bastard's face as I snatch one of his own weapons from his Reality Marble is absolutely priceless.
Of course, there's still every other weapon in this place to contend with.
What faint light is present in this dark, rusted world is obscured as an uncountable number of blades rain down on me. And so, with my staff in my right hand, and my spear in my left, I charge. After all, facing down an army's worth of swords, with nothing but my wits and my spear..!
"Something like this, is just business as usual!"
Archer's world of infinite swords may look impressive, but it's really no big deal as far as someone like me is concerned. The vast majority - something like seventy percent - of the assorted weapons raining down on me are just nameless, everyday swords. They aren't even worth a second thought; my [Protection From Arrows] will allow me to dodge or deflect them without even noticing.
No, the real problem here is that other thirty percent - the Noble Phantasms. The exceptional weapons that may have the ability to bypass my Protection. And so, even as I run towards Archer, my eyes and ears are straining themselves to their limits to pick out the proverbial needles in the haystack, the weapons that are an actual threat.
Caladbolg. Durandal. Hrunting. Each one is singled out, and each one is blown out of the air by a well-placed bolt of flame.
Lancer's scythe can be safely ignored. It doesn't have any annoying explosive or target-seeking properties, so I can just dodge it.
A spear of light that gives off the same feeling as my Gae Bolg - that can't be the real Gungnir, right? I throw my spear, which smashes through it with ease. Definitely a fake, then.
Gae Bolg smashes a Holy Sword, and a near identical looking Demonic Sword, out of the air on its way back to my hand.
A sound of crashing metal as something carves through the storm of swords, knocking all in its way aside - a mountain-sized sword, hewn of rock, fit only to be wielded by a giant or a god.
"[Wicker Man]!" - My Noble Phantasm snatches the colossal sword out of the air, crudely grasping it and swinging to bat hundreds, thousands of weapons out of the sky.
A similarly massive sword-like weapon - multiple blades of flame mounted along the spine of some ancient creature - arcs through the air, flooding Archer's world with light as a wall of fire erupts from its jagged blades. The fire cleaves through Archer's weapons, through my Wicker Man, through the ground and the sky themselves.
It leaves a gorge of glass in the sands of the Reality Marble, and a cleft in the black sky through which a waterfall of molten gold pours.
Of course, my Wicker Man rapidly reconstructs itself. It was a being of fire to begin with - something like this won't slow it down for long. But more and more Noble Phantasms crash into the giant, and eventually, the Wicker Man is driven to its knees.
But that's fine. Any Noble Phantasms targeted at it are weapons I don't have to deal with. Empowering my agility with runes, I rocket forwards to Archer's location.
He starts running at some point - giving up on standing at the top of his hill like a tool, he flees across the graveyard of swords, taking potshots at me with that bow of his all the while. I'll catch him eventually, of course - the runes enhancing my speed make me about a rank higher than him in agility.
Of course, I'd have no difficulty catching him if I had been summoned as a Lancer, but by this point I've complained enough about my class for one war.
Still, this chase is starting to get annoying.
"Bastard! Get back here and fight me!" I yell, deflecting yet another copy of Hrunting. I think there are six or seven orbiting around me at various distances right now, which is beginning to get a bit dangerous.
"Get rid of that spear, and I'll think about it!" He yells back, hurling a pair of his shortswords at me.
"Not a chance in hell! Do you know how long I've been hoping you'd be stupid enough to pull out my own spear against me!?" I shout back as I bat the swords out of my way with my staff.
He sighs. "Since the night I first used Caladbolg?"
"Since the night you first used Caladbolg!"
"I figured…" he mutters, launching another Hrunting. The other seven copies are coming back around, too, so now seems like a decent time to reset the count. Adding a rune to my cloak, I bid a fond farewell and toss the garment into the air, where it's pincushioned by copies of Beowulf's blade.
His eyes widen as he notices my right arm - no sense in hiding the ball anymore, then. I was trying to hang onto them in case I needed to bail out the guys fighting Saber, but-!
"Command spells!?" Archer yells in shock.
That's right. Command Spells, which I looted from the corpse of my former master. The right arm of Kotomine Kirei, former overseer of the Holy Grail War, has been grafted onto my body in place of my own arm. And, since that cheating hack of a Master had ten Command Spells inherited from prior wars…
"Here goes nothing!" I yell as four of them flare to life, boosting my Agility to a truly absurd degree.
The efficiency is, of course, horrendous. Command Spells have an intended use case, and a Servant replacing their own arm with their master's using a combination of runecraft and crude spiritual surgery was not what the Founding Familes intended.
That being said, four Command Spells are still four Command Spells, and it's enough that I'm able to close the gap between myself and Archer almost instantly. Of course, the sheer pressure of moving at such speed obliterates every bone in Kotomine's arm, forcing me to astralize my staff - but I won't need it anymore.
"Your heart is mine! [Gae…!" I growl, spear surging with crimson light.
A familiar shield shoots to Archer's hands. "[Lord…!"
"...Bolg]!"
"Camelo-ghk!"
There's no clash of Noble Phantasms. No unstoppable force versus immovable object. No final flashy explosion where sword beams intertwine and tear the world around us apart.
Archer's heart was pierced before my spear was even thrust.
Such is the nature of Gae Bolg's thrust, which rewrites causality itself to ensure the death of its target. Furthermore, even setting aside his obliterated heart, the curse upon the spear will prevent healing and inflict massive damage to the rest of his body.
Archer coughs up a mixture of blood and molten metal as he collapses to his knees. "Gah… dammit. I got careless, huh? Or rather… honestly, what the hell were you doing, hanging on to a trump card like that for this long?"
I shrug. "To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure that I wasn't just gonna blow my own arm off trying that. I only actually went through with attaching this thing last night, after all. All that aside, you look like hell. Hurry up and disappear already, it hurts to look at you."
I'm not joking. At some point in our fight, his skin started splitting open, and his eyes turned yellow. By this point, he's bleeding metal everywhere. "The hell's with you bleeding gold, anyway?"
"There's- ghk- an old Japanese art form. Kintsugi. Where broken pottery is repaired using gold." He mutters through coughs. "Well… this metal… is pyrite, though."
"Fool's gold, huh?" I mutter, as the sky fills with even more cracks and cascading metal.
There's a sudden spike of bloodlust as I exit Archer's [Unlimited Blade Works]. I immediately whirl around towards the spot he should be standing - but that's not right! The attack is actually coming from-!
Clang!
Assassin, appearing seemingly from nowhere, barely deflects the scythe thrust at my exposed back. Lancer jumps back, getting some distance between us and herself.
I let out a low whistle. "Nice timing, Assassin. This mean you guys cleaned up Saber already?"
"No. Mordred was completely defeated, so Lord Magus sent me to help you finish off Archer so you could come help." He says. "Considering how desperate the situation there was... I will suffice hold off Lancer."
"...Well, I can't say I'm a fan of having my fights interrupted, but that wasn't what wound up happening, so I can't complain too much." I say with a sigh. "I'll leave it to you, then. Your magic resistance runes still working?"
"Yes. It should be a fairly even fight."
"Then I'll leave it to you. Try not to die, Assassin." I conclude. "I'll come back and bail you out when Saber's dead."
"Understood." He says, and he darts into action.
And so, I head to the cave of the Greater Grail.
A/N:
The reason Cu didn't turn up in last loop was cuz he got ganked by Medusa. Subaru accidentally saved him this time LOL.
It's not specified what the yellow stuff in Emiya Alter's skin is, but it's almost definitely a Kintsugi reference, and I feel like having the metal be Iron Pyrite, AKA Fool's Gold , seems like the most obvious thematic choice.
"Gungnir" was an image a la Excalibur Image (only weaker), so it lost to the more real, rune-empowered Gae Bolg.
Rho Aias can't block anti-unit Gae Bolg (probably), so Emiya decided to try his new toy. But that didn't work either.
Next chapter Friday or earlier.
Review responses:
orion399 said:
Clarent will be back after re-summoning Mordred right? Or is it possible to summon Mordred anymore? Now that Arturia is gone, using Avalon as catalyst would summon her instead of Mordred. Maybe summon Arturia, then, Mordred using the same catalyst?
Avalon went poof last chapter with Excalibur (They fucked off to the reverse side of the world). However, it going poof there is something that will be edited out when I do a final edit of the chapters to this point after the Fuyuki arc is over. Regardless, Avalon will probably not end up in Chaldea, so resummoning Mordred is unlikely to work.
Also, I'm a bit curious about a couple of things.
1. Gil, Merlin and "Solomon" all have Clairvoyance EX. Do you think they would be able to realize that Subaru is save scumming?
RbD trumps clairvoyance type skills for purposes of this fic (considering that it trumps all the future-predicting stuff in re:zero, I feel this is fine to do).
2. Would King Hassan be able to realize Subaru's ability? Gramps is said to be at the boundary of life and death, meaning he is one with Death, and is familiar with its ways.
We could argue that Subaru already "knows" death and is familiar with its ways after getting violently murdered so many times. What would Gramps think of him?
Death-related servants are definitely gonna pick up on some weirdness with subaru. How so is undecided right now.
Crown of Reaper said:
"You and I are way too similar, in all the wrong ways" Did you just hint that Saber Alter will be summoned? I always liked her and after Shinjuku... you get the idea.
Unlikely. He was saved from going down her path thanks to best boy Otto. (Greed!Subaru has much higher affinity for her, but he ain't here).
IhevMelons9 said:
Take your time just please don't burn out. If you feel tired and want a rest do so.
I'll slow down for a few weeks post Fuyuki, probably. But for now, I'm two or three chapters out from the last chapter of the arc, so I'm gonna try to finish it ASAP.
That being said, I am really looking forward to the first dream sequences of this fic. I feel like Mashu might start feeling insecure when she finds out about both Emilia and Rem. Big shoes to fill as main heroine and all. That or she might find some kinship with Rem on unrequited feelings for the MC.
She doesn't have any romantic feelings for Subaru (yet). That being said, I'm not sure how I want to treat the dream sequences yet. I feel like it kinda drains some tension if everyone knows about RbD.