V.
By all appearances Lancer's observation was indisputable. None of the others seemingly had any way to help Louise. Lancer made no attempt to catch Louise off-guard. Her attack did not come swiftly or suddenly, instead she calmly raised the spear in her hand and held it aloft as though primed to send it sailing through the air.
"You have fought well, Master of the Rider. But now, your battle ends." Lancer gave the most subtle of bows, practically imperceptible to Louise before throwing her deadly weapon towards her target.
Louise immediately deployed her mana barrier as she saw the enemy Servant prepare the attack. The weapon collided with the magical protection and almost instantly shattered the flimsy obstruction. Though the barrier had managed to arrest the boar spear's forward momentum, there came the low rumble and snap of Lancer teleporting to the weapon placing her before Louise.
As the Servant brought the weapon down on Louise, the three points menacing with all the lethality Louise had before witnessed, the young mage found herself with nothing between her and the weapon other than her own bare hands, her right naked as it was without glove, jewelry, or ornament of any kind, and her left with no marks but the burn scars she had received from Rosa, her command seals no longer visible.
The now all too familiar report of Rider's pistols rang out in the night air, the loud thuds momentarily drowning out the sounds of chaos that were floating up from below. The shots both connected with the boar spear and halted the otherwise deadly attack as Lancer's hold on the weapon was completely unbalanced and she only barely kept her grip on it as it lurched away from Louise.
Rider was already charging Lancer, his sword drawn, as she tried to make sense of what had happened. He struck out with several rapid strikes, hoping the surprise would be enough for him to finish her off immediately, but Lancer managed to dodge several of the blows, only receiving shallow cuts from one or two.
She was on her guard again and swung the spear in great sweeping arcs that forced Rider back. He tried to parry one of the attacks, but Lancer's dainty and regal frame was misleading, and the swing nearly sent Rider's sword sailing from his hand. Lancer had created some distance between herself and her opponent and thrust the spear towards him, this last attack pushing him even further away.
"Now," Lancer, despite the presence of her usual authoritative composure, sounded ever-so-slightly piqued. "Kneel!" She shouted the command this time as she brandished the spear towards Rider.
The cavalier's only response to the usually imperious command was a sideways smile and a shrug of the shoulders.
"I said KNEEL!" Lancer redoubled the command, the sound of magic rumbling through the air around her target and yet, despite a slight bend in his posture from the sheer amount of power being exerted, he did not move.
"Sorry, Madame." Rider straightened back up as he offered a tip of his hat, a ring with a green stone dangling on a chain around his neck. "But I had promised my king that, were I free, I would serve no other Master. And at the moment..."
Lancer turned just in time for Louise's mana gauntlet to strike her square in the face. The blow was not enough to do much damage, but the magically enhanced nature of it did stagger the Servant, giving Rider time to once again charge forward.
"I am free!" Rider finished his sentence as he drove his sword through Lancer's shoulder, the blade biting deep before penetrating out the other side.
Louise had immediately retreated out of Lancer's range after delivering the one attack, knowing full well that attempting to interfere anymore would be suicide. Louise had to trust in Rider to handle Lancer on his own, which was not a hard proposition considering the sheer amount of trust she was already placing in him.
She had been relieved to see that the mana-transfer ring was working for him like she had hoped, the conduit chain she had added still allowing him to pull energy from Rosa just as Louise herself had when she wore the ring directly. She had worried at first if he would be able to last with their contract severed and his direct supply of mana from a Master cut off, a concern that had been exacerbated by her inability to regularly check in with him, the mental contact being a sorely missed ability.
Rider had continued to prove himself the loyal comrade he was, having never strayed from the agreed upon plan, except to find and help Louise despite no longer being her Servant. Now, more than ever, he wanted to continue to show his loyalty to, and faith in, Louise. He was close to Lancer now, her long and awkward weapon not suited to strikes at such short range giving him a marked advantage.
The young queen was only parrying Rider's strikes, knowing any attempt to bring the weapon down on him would be too slow and only accomplish leaving her wide open to another, more devastating attack. She played on the defensive for some time before Rider, attempting to put more power into a thrust, spent a fraction of a second longer preparing to attack than he had before, and Lancer capitalized on the opening. The regal Servant let the haft of her spear slide down through her hand until she was gripping it close to the top, her hand just below the three points.
Rider struck forward with all his skill and strength, but the lack of speed on this strike had doomed him. The blade was deftly caught between the points of the spear, and as Lancer felt it slide across the polished metal of her favored weapon, she spun the shaft, crushing and twisting the sword, and used the force to wrench it from Rider's grip. Though the maneuver had allowed the tip of the blade to pass through and touch her throat, the wound was superficial, and the ribbon of blood that ran down was indicative of nothing more than how much the attack had failed.
As the sword clattered across the roof Rider immediately retreated from the reach of his opponent's attacks, drawing both pistols as he did so. The shots he fired did nothing in terms of inflicting damage, but they kept Lancer on the defensive that much longer and prevented her from pursuing him immediately.
Lancer had just finished deflecting the shots and was about to charge her opponent when some movement at the edge of her vision caught her attention and she turned to face it, her weapon coming up defensively just in time to parry the elegant blade that had come so close to ending her.
Saber wasted no time following up on the initial strike. Every attack he made was done so with the strict intention of being the fatal blow and rained these lethal strikes down on his opponent. Lancer had become so distracted by, and engrossed in her fight with Rider that her concentration had wavered, and that moment of weakness had allowed the previously paralyzed Servant to break from her Authority.
Lancer's usually serene features showed just the slightest modicum of anger as she continually parried Saber's attacks. "Away with you!" She shouted as she swiped her spear towards him, the motion giving action to her words. The aggressive swordsman tumbled through the air away from her. She turned back to Rider to face her previous foe, only to find he had capitalized on the time Saber had bought him to scurry across the battlefield and reclaim his lost sword.
Rider resumed his attack, his strikes coming light and swift. He knew now that any opening allowed to the queen would be too much to be worth the extra strength of the attack. He needed to focus on speed and hopefully wear her down. Saber recovered from the magical repulsion and charged back towards Lancer, joining the swirling melee already formed by her and Rider.
"Away! Kneel! Back!" Lancer, as she parried attacks from both her opponents and harried them with blows of her own, was continuously shouting commands at Saber, forcing her authority upon him, pushing the Servant away and forcing him into a constant cycle of having to rejoin the battle.
The entire time the Servants were battling, Madame Fenix had not once turned to watch the spectacle, or even observe her fellow Masters. Ali was clearly winning the battle between his barrier and her crushing spell, but it would still take some time for him to fully dispel the malicious magic. Whether it was knowledge of this that allowed the older mage to retain so much calm, or that she considered all others that much below her notice was unclear.
What was clear to Louise was she would be of no use in the battle between the Heroic Spirits, that Ali was still incapacitated, and that if she suddenly felt so inclined, Madame Fenix could interfere to aid her already incredibly powerful Servant. The young Saint-Hermine crossed the roof to where the older woman was standing watching the flames below and was surprised to find just how close she was able to get before Madame Fenix was inclined to take any notice.
"Your audacity is great, for you to approach me so." Madame Fenix said to Louise, though she still did not turn her gaze towards the young mage. "Though I suppose it is not as great as that of your patriarch."
Louise only stared at the back of Madame Fenix's head, her gaze burning with more intensity than even the raging flames below.
"Look at it. All of it. Loathe as I am to indulge an enemy, no one here but you could possibly understand what I have so meticulously crafted." Madame Fenix made a wide sweeping gesture with her hand toward the chaos below. "I only recently came to understand why your father did it. The beauty he must have seen as his commands, as his magic, as his will destroyed so much. Were it only half as glorious as this, I may be able to almost understand why he destroyed everything that I had held so dear."
"Is that why you did all this?" Louise asked, her words full of enraged confusion more than anything else.
"Don't be absurd." Madame Fenix turned her head ever so slightly, the edge of her eye finally turning to look at Louise. "While I learned the beauty of flame that night, the night your father destroyed my life, I also learned something valuable. The amount of magic, the amount of energy present in suffering is incredible. You must know, must have at some point seen, that as much as some mages try to deny it, magic is empowered by strong emotions. They increase mana-flow exponentially, when managed correctly."
Louise couldn't deny Madame Fenix's words. Just considering everything she had seen with Rosa was enough to prove the older woman's words held some truth. There was also the example of how Leo, powered by nothing more than spite and pride, had managed to break, though only slightly, from Lancer's authority, even when it had so completely held beings as strong as Servants in check.
"And you see the ultimate form of Lancer's Noble Phantasm now, its flames of despair and terror fanned more and more as it spreads. The fear and suffering needed to start it was great, but now..." Madame Fenix fully turned to face Louise, though the younger mage felt hesitant to meet her gaze. "The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre can easily generate all that it needs for itself. It will rage and burn until there is nothing left, no more suffering for it to feed on. A Noble Phantasm this powerful, and it is capable of self-perpetuation. It's marvelous!"
"Why?!" Louise screamed, her disgust rising to match her anger. "All those people, those innocent people!"
"Do not, Saint-Hermine, speak to me of pity for the innocent!" Madame Fenix's voice rose for the first time as she interrupted Louise. "You would speak of compassion for them? They who are below us? Those who cannot even dream of standing as we do? And even if they could, even were they worthy beings just as we are, I will not hear pleas for compassion from one who carries that man's name. Were not my family, my clan, innocents? What did they do to deserve what he did to them?"
"I don't know! But I am not my father!" Louise yelled back. "And those people down there, those humans who you look so completely down on, are not the Saint-Hermine family. They are not deserving of your scorn and ire! You have no right to do this to them!"
"I have every right to do anything I please, Madame." Madame Fenix narrowed her eyes at Louise. "I have every right. You say you are not your father? You carry his name, even if not his blood, you carry his will. Is that not true?"
"It..." Louise paused for a moment, unsure of how to respond.
"You must. Why else would you be here?" Madame Fenix gestured menacingly at Louise. "Or do you dare assert that both daughters of Saint-Hermine chose, of their own will, to come here and shed one another's blood, as well as the blood of all the others who would stand in that man's way?"
"Enough!" Louise screamed as she lunged at the elder mage, her mana blade unfurling along her arm as she did. The blade crashed into Madame Fenix's barrier which, up until that moment, had been invisibly rotating around her. Small bolts of lightning arced around Louise as she pushed with all her strength, trying to will the blade through the magical obstruction. "I fight in this Grail War on my own terms! I fight for my own cause!"
Madame Fenix flicked her wrist, the motion sending a rhythmic clinking noise trilling through the chains that encircled her wrist. As she did so the barrier swelled where Louise was trying to force through, and several tongues of lightning swiped Louise away, sending her stumbling back.
"Ridiculous. A mere child like you, even if you are a mage, has no will of her own. Especially one who serves under a man like him." Madame Fenix directed several more bolts of lightning to strike at Louise as she spoke. The energy swirled and slithered along the floor before rising into the air like angry serpents that came crashing down on Louise.
The young mage only barely managed to roll between the several bolts that had all fallen at once upon her, the energy from their impact propelling her even further away, and closer to Madame Fenix.
"You came here at his command. Whether you know it, or are willing to admit it, your actions here are not your own. You are nothing more than another nameless arm of his will. That is all a Saint-Hermine is, and ever will be, and nothing more." Madame Fenix rolled her fingers backwards in a beckoning motion, the accompanying metallic ringing acting as the signal to bring the lightning arcing once again after Louise.
Louise shifted her blade into the shield form, and focused on forming the reciprocal version of it she had once used against l'Archer Noire. The lightning stabbed down on her and was absorbed into the shield as it buckled beneath the force of the absorbed strike. Louise had just enough time to turn the bloated buckler on Madame Fenix before the golden bolts exploded out of their temporary containment. "If that's the case," Louise's words were strained with the effort of redirecting the lethal energy. "Then I'm not a Saint-Hermine!" She shouted as the host of light instantaneously encircled Madame Fenix's barrier and erupted into a magnificent storm of unconstrained energy, the magic that made up her barrier shattering into a thousand pieces. "I am Louise, and nothing more."