Those bunches of bone-masked men were all over the surrounding trees. In the branches, by the trunks, vigilant in their stance, ready to sprang up any moment like wolves on hares. One of them was a giant, as tall as Iskander is a giant, might be even taller, another was lean and muscled, agile in form. None of them were the same as the other; all were different in some ways. One Assassin, split into these many... what say of his magical energy? Would it be dwindled as it is shared along the lines?

"Traitorous Servant Assassin," Siegfried acted as my mouthpiece. "My master made a deal with yours' benefactor, what's the meaning of this?"

The masked men laughed, voices high and low joined together like some demonic cadence that came from one throat. Well, they were one Servant. The numbing pain in my hand was growing to be unbearable, I brought it up to my mouth and clamped my jaws down on the handle of the throwing knife and pulled it out. The Hi-power dropped to the dirt. The wound on my hand closed, and slowly, it was once more filled with life blood. I switched to Alilat as my primary Persona.

Once they'd had enough of a laugh at our expense, one of them spoke:

"We have no interest in your life. You just stay here and we'll watch you as you do, so don't think of anything smart. Tohsaka, that louse, decided that it'd be safer if you're here than to have you over there. So half of our forces came here to make sure you are well behave and in good company. So you just sit, Master of Familiars" - the emphasis was with contempt - "and nothing will happen to that head on your shoulders."

"I don't do well with people who threw knives at me," I said. "I might just do some disagreeable things."

"Don't try it," though he said so, he sounded eager for me to make the first move. I subtly pressed the magazine release on the Mauser and looked around the forest and focused on one of the Assassin that was by the trunk of a tree and as my eyes adjusted to the low light, I shouldered the Mauser and cupped my offhand beneath the magazine so that it wouldn't fall to the ground. I covered that Assassin's torso with the front sight and didn't bother lining up the rear sights, squeezed the trigger and streaked a fire across the night. The bullet splintered against the tree trunk, above the Assassin's shoulder, at his right and I slammed the magazine back in. I didn't care whether it'd hit anything, I just wanted to empty the chamber.

The pistol shot acted like a signal to these wolves. Before it even sounded the end of its blast, they were rushing for our blood, quick and eager. Siegfried stood his ground, just as eager for them to enter his sword range. The moment I was in pain, he felt it as well, and the anger in me was but embers compared to his wrathful fire. The first seven to surround us got a taste of that fire, for like a whirlwind with the sword Siegfried had cleaved the three rushing at him and then pivoted and continued the strike to the four that was blitzing toward Waver and I in one stroke of the sword. I had ducked down to Waver's level for Siegfried to pull off such a swing lest he caught me in the strike, not that it'd do any damage, it'd just stop in its track immediately.

The seven Assassins were without their legs and arms, separated from their stumps from the chests down. One of the lots, with his right arm still intact, was stabbing the grass and dragging himself forward, leaking blood and organs. I pitied him. As a gesture of mercy, I planted one of my swords into his nape like a flag.

The giant Assassin finally decided to come forth. His hands didn't give off a single glint of a blade; instead, there were ten, one for each finger. Siegfried took initiative and had struck a sidewise cut for the Assassin's temple. In response, the giant had aptly come upward with his claws to set aside Siegfried's cut. With his blade pushed upward, Siegfried was inadvertently in the Unicorn guard, so he struck a downward cut and the Assassin leaned and stepped away, so Siegfried stopped mid-strike with his sword at point and stepped forward and poked the Assassin in the middle of the face and pulled the sword out.

The giant's white bone mask was split with a red vertical slot in-between. He barfed out blood from the gape in his face as he was collapsing, and in that process, another Assassin had leapt off of his back toward Siegfried and blinded him bloody in the eye with a dagger. A sharp pain flared up in my eye. That Assassin pulled the blade out of Siegfried's eye socket, and leapt off his torso but Siegfried had caught his head. The Assassin struggled, stabbing Siegfried's arm and vambrace wildly. Siegfried squeezed, the Assassin's struggle ceased. Blood ran off his ears and down Siegfried's arm. He let the Assassin go and the Servant plopped on the ground with his head lolling to the side and he never got up.

I restored his eye and - although I already knew - thought, How's your eye?

Many thanks.

Siegfried wiped the blood away from his eye and resumed focus on the rest of the Servants. Their eagerness abated. They watched us with anger and caution. The moon glinted silver in their weapons. Once more, they came upon us like locusts and through instinct alone did we clash with each other. Ear splitting metallic clangs, flashes of silver blades and orange sparks cut through the night. Their tactic was hit and run, never to commit fully lest risk the cold steel tongue of Balmung wielded by dragon slayer Siegfried. Some of them were caught by the blade, some had escaped, some parried and leapt out, and some got hits in.

For my part, I'd made a show of my struggle to hit them, I let them have a hit at my arms and legs and neck and chests and then dished out counters as they wonder just how were they wounded or lose their limbs when they attacked me and I let not their wanderings go any further by shattering their skulls with my blade. Such are the powers of Alilat, a strike unto me would become a strike unto them.

Though the battle was progressing in our favor, the Assassins weren't dying quick enough. And my body was meat and bones, and they were burning with a thousand promises of pain with each strike I dealt out that was connected or parried. Siegfried has no such problem, but it was something else: whatever strength he channeled was ultimately mine as well, and although it was vast, I'd rather not be complacent and let the situation goes on any longer for the Assassins would surely adapt and overcome this repetitive bout of leap in, cut and leap out.

As it went on a little longer, the locusts were gaining speed as they leapt in and out with each cut. Throwing knives from the dark of the forest were whistling as arrow heads and were like silver threads of fate in their flight. Siegfried deflected the missiles in front of him with a swing of the flat of his sword while I grant those that were hunting for me the target they seek.

"Agh!" a strained cry of pain. Waver hid himself further into the big round buckler like turtle in a shell. A knife's handle protruding from his chest. I crouched at his level, covering where the shield couldn't and lay the sword down and grabbed his shoulder and said:

"Pull that knife out."

Waver didn't hesitate, and when I saw through the corner of my eye that I he had done so, I closed the wound with a simple Dia spell. If the situation went any longer, the next I find him, I might have to use Samarecarm.

I picked up my sword and stood up; an Assassin suddenly appeared in front of me. Another one, rushing in a low sprint, had sprung upon Waver. For my Assassin, I let him have his knife wherever he wanted and finished him with a sword strike to the skull and Siegfried had bisected Waver's would be killer. In that short moment of turning himself toward Waver, Siegfried had left his back open and an Assassin had leapt upon his shoulder and was rapidly stabbing his chest. Siegfried grabbed the Servant's head and squeezed it as easily as a man would squeeze a strawberry. Another Assassin leapt upon Siegfried's shoulder, another on his leg and another on his offhand and another on his sword hand. A full-body pain flared up in me as each Assassin raised their knives and stabbed down again and again.

Chaos had struck my senses like a hammer. The sharp whistles of the throwing knives as if they can cut through the air itself, the rustlings of leaves as the Assassins moved around like a winter storm, the sight of my red Siegfried - red as Caesar had been in the Theatre of Pompey, just as many wounds or perhaps more - as he cut and bashed and crushed the Assassins that were coming for him and the ones that were on him and the pain of muscle fatigue and the foreign psychological pain that came whenever Siegfried was struck, and the seemingly never ending amount of those locust Servants had enraged me so. It gave way for a primal thing in my psyche to caress my heart with its talons.

I pressed the Mauser's barrel between my cheek bone and jaw. Useless were the knives flying my way, and the Assassin that had rushed himself to be in front of me had jammed his knife into my Adam's apple and he gurgled and bubbled red at the throat and collapsed at my feet. Others too came to stop me, but it was inevitable. The Mauser's hammer struck the firing pin and the dimensional glass was broken open for the coming of the Serpent. It greeted the heavens and the Earth with a terrible sound like the wailing of the dead. It has six wings like the Seraphim, six arms with talons like the birds of prey, green scales adorned its back and down its one tail, the two other tails were the spines of snakes, it has six breasts, its head was a skull of which cold dead skin had stuck itself upon, its teeth were all fangs, it has three eyes of which the third one was in the middle of the skull and upon that skull was a mockery of some grand royal crown - Satan, humanity's great and eternal adversary.

"Wha-what is that?" Waver said. I got to him and wrapped my arm around his ears and across his eyes. "WH-what are you doing?"

"You shouldn't see or hear this," was all I said.

To our enemies, Satan grinned across its jaws, its dead skin stretching into a sadistic countenance. The fangs parted, it looked up upon the moon, and it wailed like a slaughtered sow. It was a grim sound from the world beyond spreading across the forest like a thousand dead. It raised and clap the first set of its arms above its head, shot the second set out horizontal and clap the last set beneath itself. A mock of the cross, the devil has no tact. All of a sudden then, scintillant particles appeared in the air by the multitudes and collected themselves into a ball of light and flashed like lightning and the Assassins at our left were no more and Satan's Ghastly Wail was like a herald of doom.

Fearful noises and wonderment were expressed at the dark being. It was good, fear was good. For only the fearful would be susceptible to the madness and death that Satan's wailing would bring about. The Assassins would then cry and scream and moan like victims of a plague. They writhed on the ground, bashed their heads on trees and rocks. Some of them resisted, but a gaze upon Satan's grin and its re-demonstration of power would once again set their heart on the right path.

"A-aagh!" Waver cried out. I immediately put my Mauser down and placed that hand atop the back of his head. A Patra spell spread in a steady stream from my psyche down to my heart then to the palm of my hand and put Waver's fear to rest.

"Calm your heart, clear your mind. Don't make me waste it all on you."

"WH-what is going on!?"

"The devil's business."

Satan laughed like the croaking of the near-decease. The Assassins were throwing themselves around like in some kind of depraved dances, writhing around as if some great high had taken them and that they were near revelation with their pagan god. Their cries, their moans, their screams joined together like some cannibalistic primitive orgy.

"Make him cease it!" Siegfried had enough of the entire affair and so was I. With a thought, I made Satan's wailing went up an octave and the Assassins followed along. They were bleeding then, out of their eyes and ears and noses and mouths. They collapsed in a twitching mass of death throes as their life gave out.

Soon, the chaos ceased. The Earth was quiet. The howling of the cold winter wind rustled the branches and the leaves. Slowly, the Servants disappeared, and traces of what we did here were only a few drops of mine and Waver's blood.

"Is... is it over?" Waver peaked out of my arm and I let him go and stood up.

"Yeah," I said. "Supposedly."

"I don't want to see such a thing ever again," Siegfried said.

"Me either."

Satan was floating around and was laughing like a dying old woman.

I shot a glare at it. "You, vanish."

It continued to float, coiling upward in a playful manner like a court jester. Then it vanished.

Waver stood up, holding onto his chest, the blood was a faint dark in his sweater. It could pass off as sweat. Not sure about his white shirt though.

"What was that thing that you summoned!?" Waver screamed and pointed at where Satan was earlier.

"A snake."

"A snake? What's the name of it?"

"You already know."

"I do?"

"You should."

He stopped and looked at me, puzzling. "Yeah, well..." he laughed weakly. "So you struck a deal with Tohsaka, huh?"

"I did."

"Since when?"

"Just last night."

"And he betrayed you the next, huh? I always knew that the magus world in and beyond the Clock Tower would be filled with a self-serving, egotistical bunches, but a betrayal right on the night after?"

"Even Judas wasn't that eager."

Waver snorted a laughter and Siegfried and I smiled. We three men were a battle worn bunch and goodnight's sleep sounded very tempting. But it wasn't yet my time to rest. The winter night's silence was like the hand of a spirit beyond the graves pulling us down to join it. The youthfulness in Waver's face had gone and in his eyes were something hollow and vacant. The emotions that was running high few seconds earlier was gone, and it had given me that look of him. I didn't want to see him that way.

"Well..." I said, "You ready to go?"

The corner of Waver's lips curled into a smile. His eyes were very tired and gloomy.

From Seth's neck I had dropped him off in the arms of Virtue and they landed in the streets. Then, in place of Virtue, Pixie was summoned and had taken charge to go and scan around the Mackenzie's resident which was three houses away. Seth and I were circling above the area, waiting for Pixie's confirmation on the safety of the house.

Pixie confirmed with "All clear!" and then flew back to Waver and told him the same. Waver nodded and looked to sky, he couldn't see us, but waved us farewell just the same. Then, with Pixie in her translucent form, he made his way to the Mackenzies.

Seth and I set course for mount Enzou.

Author's note: Les Rallizes Dénudés – Night of the Assassins.

I hope you enjoy reading this chapter. As for me, I think I need a beta reader. This chapter definitely shows that I need one. If anybody's interested then just contact me.