It begins with ambition.
There is a lord, whose name and titles are irrelevant to this tale. He rules over his domain with an iron fist, but that is not enough. His heart burns with the flame of ambition, and he looks upon the lands of his neighbours with covetous eyes. But his land is small, his wealth not enough to buy the loyalty of the armies he would need to force all others to bow before him.
And so he turns to other methods.
Children are taken from the masses of serfs in the lord's domain, torn from the arms of their wailing parents and brought to the lord's castle. There they are broken, as only humans can break one another, and remade into instruments of murder, efficient and disposable. The lord's neighbours had slain in their homes, killed by assassins who take their own lives before they can be captured and interrogated. Their domains are thrown into chaos, and the lord takes advantage of that, conquering them at his leisure, sending another of his broken men when someone manages to replace the fallen rivals.
The lord's territory grows and grows, but he is is never satisfied, because men such as he never can be. Eventually, he dies, as all men do. But the killers he has made out of stolen children remain, a sinister order grown into a terrible, self-sustaining engine of death. With the lord gone, his domain falls apart, and the broken men are left without support. But as the engine grew, the lord started to allow others to make use of their services, purchasing two deaths (that of a target, and that of the killer) in return for prodigious sums of money, or for promises of alliances.
That practice continues, and contracts are taken for no purpose other than to maintain the engine. New children are taken, now from places no one will notice rather than stolen in plain sight, and broken as their predecessors were broken.
On and on the vicious cycle goes with terrible inertia, devouring children and spitting out killing machines. The awful engine moves across the world over the years, always one step ahead of all those who would see it destroyed. Years turn into decades turn into centuries, generation after generation swallowed up.
Then, one of the broken men is sent to kill someone. He does not ask why, he does not hesitate. He does the job quickly, efficiently, as he was trained all of his life to do. But as he stands over the corpse he has made, knowing the next step is to kill himself in a way that will also dispose of his own body, he pauses. For the first time since the human being he once was was broken down and rebuilt into a twisted parody of a living thing, he asks himself : why ?
He can find no satisfying answer, and so he disobeys and does not end his own life. Ten killers are sent together against the rebellious tool : they fall, and the rebel endures. But the engine cares not. The rebel is not the first to break free. When that happens, the engine merely follow the old rules laid back by the lord that created it, like a curse cast upon the world that endures long past the evil wizard's death : ten are sent after the one. That has always been enough, and there is nothing in the rules about what to do if the rebel survives, so the engine does nothing.
The rebel lives on. He finds a place, and a kind of peace. He knows, without the shadow of a doubt, that he has been broken, that he is not and will never be like the others around him. He wonders if he is a monster, but the thought does not trouble him as he knows it should, for even rebellion is not enough to undo what has been done to him. Even so, the thought that somewhere the engine that broke him still churns on; that troubles him.
Then fire comes to the place he has come to call his home, and true monsters come with it. The rebel tool fights, and in that fight he realizes at last that he is not hollow anymore, that he is not a monster. And if he is still too changed to feel joy at the realization, he still feels satisfaction, however balanced by dull horror at the sights around him.
Then the rebel tool is dragged into darkness once more, and bound with new chains, different from the ones he escaped but no less terrible. For the first time in decades, he screams in agony as his flesh and soul are violated by the dark arts of his captor, until he falls silent.
But this tale is not over yet. For just as the engine of woe still rumbles, so too does the rebel who refused to be a tool endure.
November 27th, 2004 AD – Greater Grail Cavern
The battle started with Belial spewing a torrent of black hellfire from its ventral mouth. Shirou moved immediately to put himself in front of Saber, his wings deployed to cover the two of them. When the attack ceased, Saber saw the Demon Pillar land on all four nearly a hundred meters away – it must have used the recoil from the blast to put some distance between it and its opponents.
Strange. The thorns on its carapace didn't look like it was weak in melee combat, and from what she had seen of the Demon Pillars so far she doubted it couldn't have ignored the recoil completely if it wanted (Magecraft in general and Servants in particular generally regarded the laws of physics as more of a suggestion, and the Kor Phaeron's summoned monsters even more so).
Then she recalled the fight against Amon and its horde, and realized what was going on.
It's trying to buy time for Pretender, she sent to Shirou. It doesn't need to defeat us, just keep us busy long enough.
You are right, replied her Master. And we can't ignore it and press on, because fighting Kor Phaeron will be difficult enough without being attacked from behind.
Clever. Then again, if there was one thing Shirou's inherited memories and Saber's observations agreed on, it was that Kor Phaeron excelled when it came to using others to fight his battles for him. And while that was rather low on the list of reasons to despise the self-proclaimed Black Cardinal, it was still personally irritating for Saber.
Then let's make sure Pretender is disappointed.
As one, Master and Servant charged. Saber might not have the raw Agility of Berserker or Rider, but she was still a Servant, heavy armor or not, and the distance between them and Belial was not so vast she couldn't cross it in a handful of heartbeats. Shirou could have gone faster using his wings, which let him basically ignore distance and teleport right to his target, but it was likely Belial was trying to separate them, so he kept pace with her instead.
On the last five meters, they split up, moving to flank the Demon Pillar, and struck as one. By unspoken agreement, Saber went low, aiming to cripple Belial's legs, while Shirou went straight for the Demon Pillar's unholy mouth. His sword could banish Belial without causing undue damage to its host, and a pair of broken or even severed legs was an acceptable price to pay for being freed from possession in Saber's mind (besides, Shirou's other lovers could probably reattach the legs, especially with her Master's ability to create copies of Avalon).
Unfortunately, Belial was incredibly fast. Whether it was due to the Demon Pillar's power or the innate abilities of its host, Saber wasn't sure. Certainly the human teacher had been far more dangerous than the monks prior to his possession, but this was downright ridiculous. Belial leapt in the air, dodging both of their blows, before spitting another projectile at them – a fireball rather than a torrent this time, made of the same infernal fire as before. Her Master and her dodged sideways, and before they could regroup Belial rushed Saber, forcing her on the defensive.
Belial fought with some kind of unarmed martial art, the thorns on its carapace leaving scratches on Saber's armor wherever the Demon Pillar got close despite her Intuition Skill helping her predict its movements. Meanwhile, Belial's armored exoskeleton was strong enough to withstand glancing blows from her blade, and despite all her skills, the Demon Pillar was too fast to allow her anything more than that.
The engagement only lasted for a few seconds before Shirou was back at her side, forcing Belial to disengage once more and leaving Saber rather angry. They charged again, only for the process to repeat, Belial keeping its distance and trying to separate them before rushing in for a quick exchange and escaping before they could land a telling blow. Its mobility was absurd : not only could the Demon Pillar jump around in its heavy carapace, it was also capable of changing directions mid-air by spewing torrents of infernal fire to shift its momentum like some grotesque firework.
And through it all, Belial just. Wouldn't. Stop. Talking.
"Your defiance is futile," it taunted. "The two of you already belong to Chaos."
"Everything you do is merely a game by the Changer of Ways, Emiya-Who-Was-Corswain. Your hopes and dreams are only there so that the pain of their loss can be used to punish you for your past failures."
"Do you really think you escaped the Grail unchanged, Saber ? You are as transformed as your sword, only in subtler ways. Your arrogance and draconic greed mark you as one of the Lord of Drakes', but you will kneel to Ruin all the same in the end."
And on and on it went, a litany of threats and taunts that, given the fact the servants of Chaos had consistently lost every single battle in the Grail War so far except for the one they had fought against unarmed monks, somehow lost its impact. Still, eventually Saber had enough :
"You do realize Kor Phaeron sent you here to die, don't you ?" she spat back, unable to stay silent any longer. Belial laughed.
"I am beyond death," it sneered. "I am Neverborn !"
"Everything dies," said Shirou, punctuating every word with another blow for the Demon Pillar to parry or dodge. "Even ideas, even gods. And you, Belial, are no god."
Kuzuki's face was still completely blank, but Belial's wordless screech proved to Saber that Shirou's words had hit their mark.
The battle went on, with Belial continuing to retreat into the featureless darkness, while Shirou and Saber covered one another's blind spots while they gave chase. This couldn't go on : just like with Amon, time was on the side of their enemy. Every moment wasted here brought Kor Phaeron closer to completing his blasphemous work with the corrupted Grail. They had to end this, now, so that they could advance to the real battle.
Through their link, Shirou sensed her plan even as she came up with it. She didn't give him time to protest, and simply acted, forcing him to follow her lead, the two of them moving with a unity that, if not for the circumstances, would've pleased the King of Knights greatly. They charged again, Saber taking the lead, Shirou's wings stretching around them to provide cover from Belial's infernal bombardment.
This time, Saber aimed directly for Kuzuki's head. They didn't know what the death of the host would do to the Demon Pillar, but she suspected it wouldn't be pleasant. And while she loved her Master's determination to save all of Pretender's victims, one life was of little import compared to the ruin that awaited should Kor Phaeron succeed and the Conglomerate be forced to unleash their country-destroying contingency.
Her aim was true, her killing intent real. But Belial was too fast. It moved under her attack and rushed her, ready to strike, its mouth opening, doubtlessly to speak another taunt about her willingness to kill its host being a sign of her supposed corruption –
Exactly as Saber had planned.
Pivoting on her feet, she let go of her sword, its momentum sending it flying before stabbing into the ground. In the same motion, the Servant of the Sword clasped both her gauntleted hands around Belial's left wrist, even as its right fist smashed into her guts with supernatural might. She felt her blackened armor crack under the strength of the blow, and tasted her own blood in her mouth. It hurt, a lot, and she was fairly certain there was some. But, drawing upon all of her willpower, she held on, and bared her teeth at the Demon Pillar, holding it in place with all of her A-ranked Strength.
"Got you," she said, staring into Kuzuki's empty eyes.
"You -" its chest mouth began to say, but then Shirou was there, moving into position with a beat of his shadowy wings, his great sword held horizontally.
Belial tried to move, to break free of Saber's grasp, but she held firm. Shirou rammed his sword into Belial's mouth, and the blade severed its grotesque tongue on the way in before bursting out of the Demon Pillar's back. Black blood flowed from the wound, pooling at the feet of the three combatants.
"Souichirou Kuzuki," intoned her Master. "I see you."
There was no response, until, with a wet crunching noise, two more mouths split open on the shoulder paldrons of the exoskeleton, and Belial spoke through both of them at once.
"I told you he is no more," hissed Belial from its two new mouths. "Just one more mindless voice screaming in pain -"
The lips of the teacher's human face twitched, and the Demon Pillar went silent in shock.
"I deserve this, Emiya," whispered the possessed man, his face twisting into an anguished expression as somehow, he managed to break through Belial's usurpation of his body. "Do what you must. End it."
This close to her Master, in this place where reality was made fragile by the corrupted Grail's influence, Saber briefly saw what it was Shirou saw with his blazing eyes. She saw fragments of Kuzuki's past, which at least went some way toward explaining just how Belial had been that strong, despite its host body not possessing any magical ability. How exactly an assassin trained since childhood to be an emotionless tool of murder had managed to break his conditioning and live a normal life as a teacher was beyond her, but she did make a mental note to look into locating and dismantling the organisation responsible with extreme prejudice once the Grail War was over.
She knew she'd seen only part of what Shirou had seen, but what she had seen was enough for her to fully agree with her Master's words :
"I see you, Sensei. I see all that you have done," said Shirou. "And I tell you this : you are not the monster you think you are."
"Is that what you really believe ?!" laughed Belial. "Or is that what you need to believe, need to tell yourself, so that you can still think you can be anything more than Corswain's ghost struggling for redemption ? Souichirou's soul was lost long before you ever met him !"
"Liar," replied Shirou, and ignited his blade.
Man and Demon Pillar screamed in agony together as Shirou's power burned through them. Regardless of what Saber's Master had said, this was clearly different from what had happened with the monks – and, as she'd been told, with Sakura when Shirou'd freed his first lover from the grasp of her monstrous ancestor. The scream of Belial reached a feverous pitch, and then diminished along with its foul presence, until nothing remained but the memory of its existence.
With Belial gone, the Demon Pillar's carapace burned away, revealing a torn monk uniform underneath. Like the monks whose home he shared, Kuzuki bore the marks of his possession on his flesh. Painful-looking red scars in a lightning pattern spread across what she could see of his torso, and there was white in his hair that hadn't been there when she had seen him at school.
In the end, though, whatever it was Shirou drew upon or summoned from the depths of his Reality Marble judged Souichirou Kuzuki worthy of life. Because, impossibly, despite having been attacked by monsters, subjected to unspeakable rituals, then possessed by an infernal entity that had used his body to fight against a Servant and whatever Shirou counted as, and then liberated from said entity, the man not only survived, but stayed upright and awake instead of falling unconscious to the ground.
"Emiya," he coughed out, his voice raspy and dry. "That was … foolish. Still, I'm grateful."
"Kuzuki-sensei," Shirou replied softly. "Are you alright ?"
"Yes." He grimaced, holding his chest with a pained expression. "Or I will be. This was a rather unpleasant experience."
Shirou's mana briefly flared, and a golden sheath appeared in his hand. He gently pressed it against Kuzuki's chest, and the teacher's breathing eased as Avalon started working its magic.
"What is that, Emiya ?" asked Kuzuki, eyes slightly wide. From anyone else, Saber would have considered such a lacklustre reaction an insult to the wonder of Avalon, but from this man, she supposed it was acceptable.
"That's a long story, and we don't have much time," replied Shirou. "Keep it close until it disappears, it will help you recover. Can you get out on your own ? We need to stop the man responsible for all this, and we are running out of time."
Saber was pleased that her Master hadn't suggested she escort the man to safety. He was making progress, however slowly.
With Belial's destruction, the infinite blackness around them appeared to contract, brutally returning to something that made sense. They were in a rough stone corridor, with the archway through which they had passed only twenty or so meters behind them, and an opening pulsating with a baleful radiance up ahead.
"If there is no enemy left, I should be able to make it outside. But when this is over, you will explain what happened," Kuzuki told them. "Or I will have you in detention until you graduate, and I'll leave it to you to explain why to Fujimura-san."
"That would be very bad," said Shirou with a wry smile. "I will tell you what I can, Sensei, but some of these secrets aren't mine to share."
Kuzuki stared at Saber's Master for a moment, then nodded. "Then that will have to suffice. Do you have any suggestions as to what I should do once I'm out ?"
"Find shelter and hide," Shirou replied immediately. "Unless I miss my guess, things are only marginally safer outside than in here."
"May Chaos … take the world …"
The twisted thing that, based on the scraps of clothing that still clung to its form had been a human being at some point, croaked out the words before finally succumbing to the massive wound Kairi's shotgun had torn in its torso. It wasn't the first time Kairi had heard those particular words tonight, and he was getting really tired of them. Then again, he was getting tired of a lot of things at the moment.
Moments ago, a violent storm had erupted in the skies above Fuyuki. Howling winds that sounded entirely too much like screams raged across the city with enough strength to bend trees, and lightning of no natural color crackled in the black clouds. A vortex was forming directly above the Greater Grail's location, in blatant violation of all meteorological principles. Even all the way out here on the city's outskirts, Kairi could feel the terrible energy accumulating there. Before, it had been like an unpleasant itch at the back of his mind, but since the storm had begun it had escalated into a constant pressure on the Necromancer's very soul.
The silver lining, if one could call it that, was that if any civilian decided to break confinement and get out in the middle of that, then Kairi wouldn't have to bear their deaths on his conscience, as they were clearly terminally stupid or suicidal. Also, any damage to the city would be easy to blame on the storm.
And there was going to be a lot of damage to explain, of that he was certain. Just as they had feared, as whatever was happening at the Greater Grail progressed, the streets of Fuyuki had become a battlefield, where agents of the Clocktower and the Mihashira Conglomerate battled monsters with Magecraft and mundane weapons.
Since the attack had started, Kairi had fought Dead Apostles, onis, demented men and women he was almost certain had all been serial killers before the Grail had reached out to them, and some kind of monstrous spider-thing that one of the Department of Folklore's people had identified as a Tsuchigumo. At any other time, he would have expected these predators to turn on one another, but here and now they moved with a complete and honestly terrifying unity, compelled by the Grail's siren call. That alone was terrifying, but that wasn't all.
The humans who were attacking alongside the born monsters were all horribly mutated, with entire limbs replaced by tentacles, open maws and eyes opening at random spots on their bodies, patches of fur and scales, and all other manners of mutations. No two of them were the same, their bodies transformed into grotesque tapestries of flesh-warping.
In his time as a freelancer, Kairi had faced the creations of several insane Magi who had thought that, if humans were unable to reach the Root, then obviously the answer was to alter the human body into something that could. At first glance, it made sense (well, as long as you were an amoral sociopath willing to experiment on other people in order to perfect the process, but those weren't exactly rare among Magi, unfortunately), but human biology was complicated. Such attempts to play God rarely succeeded in creating a stable result, capable of surviving outside of whatever laboratory the poor bastards had been changed in.
Which meant that, no matter how random the changes visited upon these mutants appeared, there had to be a guiding intelligence behind them, one capable of calculating the cascading effects and either ensure they didn't kill the recipients outright or ignore biology completely through the use of Magecraft. Given the corpses weren't falling apart or dissolving into goo, Kairi thought the former option was likely.
So the Grail's corruption wasn't just powerful enough to call monsters from all across Japan and beyond, it was also capable of warping human bodies and intelligent enough to do so without killing them. Great.
He was about to call the other teams to ask if someone needed support (somehow their Conglomerate-provided phones still worked in the middle of the storm, which really shouldn't surprise him) when a bolt of something that definitely wasn't lightning struck the pavement in front of him, briefly blinding him despite the sunglasses he wore at all times. Moving on reflex, he jumped backward and brought his shotgun up. When his vision cleared, he saw that the impact had left a crater in the pavement, and a humanoid figure stood in the middle of it.
It was tall and beautiful, elegant and monstrous. Its eyes were two perfect opals of blackness set in an exquisitely repugnant face. Its skin was purple, and it had one breast bared while the other half of its chest was covered in black and pink armor that could only have been designed in a smith's drug-fuelled hallucinations. One of its arms ended in a crab-like pincer with an impossibly sharp edge, which clicked in a nauseating rhythm as it looked at the Necromancer.
"Kairi," it moaned his name, opening its arms with grotesque sensuality. To Kairi's muted horror, its voice was identical to that of his daughter, though he had never heard her speak in such a tone and prayed that he never would. "Come to me, beloved."
He wanted to approach it. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, Kairi wanted to hold it, to feel its presence close, without anything like clothes or skin to get in the way –
The Necromancer tore himself away from the androgynous horror with a supreme effort of will, his heat pummelling in his chest. That had been far, far too close. How the hell had that thing's charm spell gone through his defenses without him noticing ?! He wasn't a bloody amateur : his clothes had several protection spells embedded within them, including one that should have at least warned him of such an attack on his mind. Yet when he ran his od through his vest to check, the spell hadn't even been triggered.
He didn't have any more time to consider the implications of that, as the purple monster reacted to his defiance with a wide smile that revealed hundreds of long, needle-thin teeth and an enormous black tongue.
"Kairi, Kairi, Kairi," it purred, its voice thankfully no longer resembling his daughter's at all. "Disobedient children need to be punished."
Kairi didn't answer with words : instead, he opened fire with his shotgun. The shells slammed into the creature's torso, but it didn't flinch, its flesh rippling at the impact but appearing no worse for wear. Its face contorted into a mix of anger and delight, and it advanced toward him, raising its pincer. With a muttered curse, he started throwing necromantic spells at it, but they failed to take hold : whatever it was, it was deathless, beyond the structure of life and death his Magecraft depended upon.
Kairi briefly considered running, but his instincts, sharpened over decades of bloody work, told him that the creature would catch up to him immediately if he tried that. Right now, it was taking its time approaching him, probably just so it could enjoy its fear (he wasn't arrogant enough to pretend he wasn't feeling any at the moment).
As he kept shooting, he thought furiously, trying to find a way out of this situation. The monster had to be vulnerable to other branches of Magecraft, if only because the alternative meant they already lost. It had been a long time since he had relied on anything else than Necromancy in battle, the discipline was just that useful in all – well, almost all – combat situations, but he still had a handful of generic spells he could cast reliably.
He was about to throw caution to the wind and try to cast a fireball at the monster when his ears (Reinforced to remain at maximum sensitivity despite the repeated blasts of his weapon) picked up the unusual sound of a horse neighing from somewhere behind him. Before he could fully process the incongruous noise, his other senses warned him of a powerful presence rapidly approaching him.
Before he could even start to move, the presence passed him by, the rush of displaced air almost powerful enough to make him lose his footing.
In a scene straight out of legend, a black-clad knight sat atop a red-eyed steed speared the abomination, her weapon piercing its chest and impaling it to the ground with enough strength to shatter the pavement across the entire width of the street. The runes on the weapon's haft blazed with crimson light, and the creature screeched as the spear's enchantments took hold of it.
Kairi would remember the scream of the monster as its body faded away until his dying day, he was certain of it. The sound was full of hatred, pain and, unless he was badly mistaken, fear. It was also far too loud to come from a creature that size, and went on for far, far too long, causing the glass panels of a nearby bus stop to shatter into a thousand pieces.
The Necromancer emerged from his shock when the knight pulled her weapon free and turned her mount to face him. Her helmet dissipated into golden motes of energy, revealing a face he recognized from his visit at the house of the Magus Killer's heir.
"Mister Sisigou," she called out to him with a curt nod. "I'm glad to see you still alive."
"Thank for the assist," he replied. "You are Rider, right ?" Given the horse she was on, it was a stupid question, but Kairi still wanted to check, just in case he was actually talking to a Berserker.
"Indeed," she nodded, her face set in a serious expression. "What's the situation across town ?"
"We're still fighting," he answered. "Every group is locked in battle at the moment. We faced plenty of monsters and mutants, but whatever that … that thing was, is new. Any idea what the hell it was ?"
"I fear Hell is the appropriate term," she said, with a sudden bloodthirsty smile that somewhat contradicted her words. "According to my Master, this creature was a Neverborn : something akin to daemons, though not spawned from the desires of any denizen of the World." She gestured to the raging storm above them with her spear : "This tempest is the result of Pretender's work straining against Gaia's scriptures, and we can expect more of these fiends to manifest because of it."
"Oh, brilliant," Kairi sighed. Daemons were always a mess to deal with, and it certainly didn't seem this new kind was any weaker. He was getting too old for this; if he survived this mess, he was going to give some serious thought to retiring from field work and taking a job at the Conglomerate as an instructor or something. "I don't want to sound ungrateful, but weren't your lot supposed to deal with that ?"
For a moment, he thought that Rider looked embarrassed at his question, but whatever he thought he'd seen on her face vanished too quickly for him to be sure.
"We defeated the Greater Grail's first line of defense," she said, "but only Shirou and Saber were able to go through the second. The rest of us came back to evacuate the captives we'd rescued, and my Master sent me to assist in the city's defense."
"Two people against the source of all of this ?" Sure, one of them was a Servant and the other was Kiritsugu Emiya's son, but still … "You think they can do it ?"
Rider laughed. "Oh yes, Necromancer. I would pity Pretender for facing the two of them, were he not such a despicable being. I have faith in their victory."
Omake : To Sum Up The Author's Feelings After Playing LB6
During King Arthur's Reign – Somewhere in Britain
In the long and bloody history of the British Isles, never before had such total destruction been unleashed. The ground shook and the heavens cracked with thunder, while the air was full of inhuman screams of terror and knightly battle cries.
Above the dim of battle, one voice rose, loud and clear and filled with righteous fury :
"FUCK YOU FAIRIES ! BY GOD, FUCK YOUUUUUUUU !"
Some distance from the carnage, Bedivere glanced toward the white-haired wizard at his side. The two of them were the only ones not lost to the madness of battle, their horses placidly watching it all unfold with the cold, dead eyes of war-trained beasts (who might or might not have a small spell cast on them to keep them from freaking out). Behind them, the dozens of captives who had been rescued huddled together, watching the brutal demise of their former tormentors with a mix of terrified shock and vengeful joy.
The Knight of the Round Table asked nervously :
"… Merlin ? Should we … do something ?"
"No," immediately replied the half-incubus, with a surprising absence of whimsy in his expression as he stared at the slaughter, unblinking. "No, I don't think we should."
"But … they are killing them all."
"Yes. Yes, they are."
"At this rate, there won't be any survivors," tried Bedivere.
"That indeed seems likely. Your point being ?"
At this point, the knight gave up his (admittedly half-hearted) efforts, and sighed, before turning his gaze back to the battlefield where his comrades, led by their beloved King, were finishing the extermination of another of the Fae Clans, having cornered them in their last lair in Britain.
"You know," said Merlin after a moment, "I can't help but think there is something missing from this. Like we should be eating some sort of snack while watching this."
Used to the random tangents of the Magus of Flowers, Bedivere didn't dignify that with a response.
AN : IT LIVES !
Good gods, the writer's block for this chapter was absolutely brutal despite its short length. It went through a lot of rewrites : for instance, in the first draft, Saber carried an unconscious Kuzuki outside, leaving Shirou to face the trials ahead alone. But then I remembered the instances of Saber telling Shirou to stop being a self-sacrificing idiot taking everything on his own shoulders, and I realized that had to change. And that battle against Belial was a nightmare to write for some reason.
I am still not entirely satisfied with how it all ended up, especially since I was coming back to this story after a six-month period, but at this point I am just glad this chapter is done and I can move on to the next one. And this time, it won't take half a year : due to another bargain I made with the Gacha Gods upon the release of Lostbelt 6 on FGO, I am now compelled to finish the Grail War arc before returning to my other stories or face their terrible wrath (for those who want the details, I got Morgan and the two Faerie Knights with only a fraction of the Saint Quartz I had saved up for that precise purpose). Currently, my notes put that at two or three chapters, but if there is one thing I learned while writing A Young Girl's Weaponization of the Mythos it's that plans change.
(AYGWM was supposed to be SIX CHAPTERS long. Now there are twenty-two published chapters, and while I at least know the road map toward the ending and am aiming to finish it before the end of the year, there is still a lot of ground to cover before going there.)
Regarding this chapter, one thing to note is that Kairi has the worst possible match-up against the Neverborn : his Necromancy is completely ineffective, and a shotgun doesn't have the ritual element that makes, say, swords work well against 40K!daemons. Or, if you want to put it in tabletop terms, the Daemonette succeeded on its invulnerability save against the shotgun, and has immunity to necrotic damage. Yes, I am aware I am mixing games.
And if you are curious about the Omake ... well. Let's just say that FGO's approach to fairies is closer to the Lords and Ladies of the Discworld or the Fae from the Dresden Files than Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.
Also :
FGO Yang Guifei Interlude : *implies that all Foreigner-Class Servants have in common the fact that there is a mystery surrounding their deaths (whether how they died or where they were buried)*
This story : *Corswain's fate is, in the Roboutian Heresy, a complete mystery*
FGO TV Tropes Page : *Pretenders have an adversarial relation with the Caster Class*
This story : *Kor Phaeron disguises itself as Solomon of the Caster Class*
Coincidences ? Yes, 100%. But amusing ones, nonetheless.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts on this chapter and ideas for what will happen next. And just so we are clear, this story will not end with the Grail War arc : there will be two more arcs afterwards, as has been the case since I first wrote the outline of this story over three years ago after being infected with the notion of a Roboutian Heresy / Fate Stay Night crossover. No, Malcador Lite, I still haven't forgotten.
Zahariel out.