For a moment, I didn’t exist. I stretched between nothingness and infinity like a speck of stardust swirling around the Milky Way, a thing without thought or form pulled along by gravity and the weft and weave of the fabric of space and time. I was union and harmony, the song of stars and the chorus of answering planets, all spinning around an unstoppable force called inevitability.
And then I came back to reality with a jarring thud, landing on my feet with the entire weight of my body, and my stomach lurched in my gut from the shock of suddenly having a body again. The breath wheezed out of my lungs, and as a galaxy of lights bloomed behind my eyes anew, my ears rang and popped.
Wait. No, that wasn’t right. My ears weren’t ringing, not from the shock of landing the way we had or suddenly having ears again to hear with. That crack and pop, that wasn’t my ears adjusting to the change in air pressure, that was —
“Master!” Mash said urgently, and Ritsuka’s head spun about to look at her, still disoriented and getting his metaphorical feet under him. “Nearby, there’s…!”
— gunfire.
“H-hold on!” Rika sputtered. “I know America’s got more guns than people in it, b-but I didn’t expect us to land in the middle of a shootout!”
I stretched out with my swarm, feeling around the area for any sign of what might have been happening. The clearing we were in was relatively calm, and we’d landed in the middle of what looked like some kind of nature trail, a rudimentary dirt road cleared for foot traffic or maybe the occasional bike, but not anything larger or more ambitious. We were surrounded on nearly all sides by trees, bushes, and a shrub here and there, dense enough to be called a forest but not so dense as to be impossible to navigate.
It reminded me of that nature camp I’d gone to what felt now like a lifetime ago, back after Mom died and I was trying to get my head back on straight. That ill-fated nature camp that marked the last time Emma and I had ever spoken as friends.
My search wound up fruitless. Nothing. Whatever and wherever that fight was happening, it wasn’t close enough for me to get eyes on it, which absolutely didn’t mean that we couldn’t get hit by a stray shot if whoever was fighting happened to aim wide and miss. I wasn’t sure how bulletproof our mystic codes were, and I also absolutely didn’t want to test them if we didn’t have to.
The first and most important upgrade I was going to have to do when we got back and I could get more weaving done was making us undersuits the way I had the Undersiders and the Chicago Wards once upon a time, and then turning them into suits of armor using runes. That was far more important than making myself another handful of flashbangs.
“Those don’t sound like any modern firearm I’ve ever heard of,” Emiya commented with narrowed eyes. “Single-action rifles of some kind, maybe…? The only people I know who use that sort of thing in this day and age are hunters and snipers.”
“Eep!” Rika squeaked, and she tried to cover her face with her arms.
“We’re not in the middle of it,” I told her, although I wasn’t sure how much of a comfort it really was, “but if we can hear them, they’re not that far away either. Far enough, at least, that I can’t see them with my bugs. Arash.”
I slung my bag around and found the zipper, sliding it open with a single, long motion. Huginn and Muninn were strong enough and sturdy enough that I wasn’t worried about anything short of an anti-tank rifle doing serious damage to them, and this was the first time in a long time that we were in a position I could safely use them to actually scout the situation.
“I’ll go on ahead,” Arash agreed immediately, as though he’d read my mind.
“Mash, take point,” Ritsuka said, picking up where I was going with that. He was still a little pale, but he didn’t seem ready to let that stop him.
“Right!” Mash said with a confident nod.
Arash leapt towards the direction of the fighting, vanishing mid-jump so that his toes barely had the chance to ruffle the leaves of a nearby shrub before he was gone. Mash hefted her enormous shield and turned to face that direction, too, placing herself at the front of the group.
“Wait,” said Rika, incredulous and looking around the group like we were all crazy, “we’re going towards the fighting?”
“Should we not?” Aífe asked, lips curling into a bloodthirsty smile.
“Not just because they’re fighting!” Rika insisted. “I’m allergic to bullets, Super Action Mom!”
A perfectly good point, and not a wrong one under normal circumstances. However…
“Rika,” I said calmly, “who’s fighting, and what are they fighting about?”
For a second, she just stared at me dumbly, not entirely sure what I was getting at, and then her eyes slowly went wide. I could almost see the cogs turning in her head, the moment the lightbulb turned on and she realized exactly what I was implying.
“The Grail,” she said, almost a whisper.
“It’s not a guarantee,” I allowed, “but we weren’t supposed to land anywhere near the site of a major battle or anything like that.”
“Not that that means much,” Ritsuka murmured. Even if I did kind of agree with him, I let it slide without comment.
“We’re near the coast, at least,” said Emiya. He tilted his head back, looking in the direction Arash had gone. “If you enhance your nose a little with some reinforcement magic, Master, you should be able to smell it. That briney scent — we’re only a few miles out from the ocean.”
Ritsuka seemed to do exactly that, lifting his own nose into the air and taking a few sniffs. His nostrils flared and his nose wrinkled. “He’s right. It’s not quite the same, but it smells like that time Mom and Dad took us to the beach.”
“Well then, what are we waiting for?” said Rika. She whirled about, pointing off after Arash and towards the source of the gunfire. “Let’s go! We’ll make this the shortest Singularity yet!”
“Fou, fou!” the little gremlin said, popping up from out of nowhere. I suppressed the shiver of revulsion that tried to shudder down my spine like a reflex.
Rika rolled with it without missing a beat. “See? Even Fou agrees! Onward!”
Emiya gave me a look. I extracted my ravens from the bag and didn’t even look back at him as I said, “You heard her. Let’s go.”
Huginn and Muninn unfolded from their storage forms and took off, flapping their wings and going almost straight up as they sought the height to give me a better look at the distance. Emiya, watching them go, huffed with a half-smirk.
“Who’s taking orders from you? I just wanted to make sure my Master didn’t get whiplash if you tried to rein her in.”
With my ravens free and everyone up to speed, there was nothing else keeping us in that spot, so we all took off towards the sounds of battle. Mash, of course, led the way, with her shield out in front, and she bulldozed through the foliage, making a path for us to follow in her wake.
It wasn’t quick or easy, although it was probably quicker than taking the path around and hoping it got us to the right place. It was awkward and clumsy and even painful at times, rushing through the bushes and trees and trying not to twist an ankle on the roots or the uneven ground. Mash wasn’t taking the time to absolutely snap and break whatever got in her way, leaving some of them to whip back around at the people behind her.
Emiya, fortunately, had put himself there, and he carved those branches away with his pair of twin swords, sparing the rest of us the pain of having to deal with them ourselves. It did not, unfortunately, prevent anyone from getting a face full of leaves from the branches he cut down, but it was better than getting bowled over by a huge branch swinging back around and taking you in the chest like a sledgehammer.
Midway through our romp in the forest, a presence brushed up against my mind. Master, said Arash, you’re going to want to see this.
What is it? I asked him.
I think I’m looking at the consequences of that fluctuation Da Vinci was talking about, he answered. Those are gunshots you’re hearing, all right, fired from muskets, of all things.
My brow furrowed, but I didn’t dare take a second to look through his eyes. The moment of disorientation — however short — would be dangerous just then.
But… Muskets? Really? Were we wrong? Was this not Earth Bet at all, and Solomon really had just been screwing with us? Had we prepared so much and spilled so much of my history to everyone for nothing more than the worst practical joke in history?
The idea rankled, settling in my gut, sour and heavy, but as much as that was definitely a possibility, it didn’t feel right. There was no way. The only reason Solomon would have had to mislead us about what we would face here in this Singularity was because there was something worse than what we were expecting. I couldn’t let my guard down that quickly or that easily.
Something else, Arash continued. There’s at least two Servants here, on opposite sides, from the looks of things. I’m not sure which side is the side we should be coming down on and which side is the enemy, if either one fits that neatly.
A Servant battle? Then who was firing the muskets?
I took a large step over a particularly large, gnarled root, slapping my hand against the trunk of the tree to which it belonged to push my balance back into equilibrium, and kept running. The musketeers?
The instant I thought of it, a possibility occurred to me, and a funny jolt shot through my belly. God, were we about to come face to face with D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis? I thought we’d finished with that bullshit after London. Hadn’t we encountered enough “fictional” Servants already?
They’re one side, Arash told me. Look like settlers from the eighteenth century. They’re fighting — get this — a bunch of Celtic warriors in chainmail with spears.
What? What the hell?
What? I repeated, projecting it for him this time.
That’s why I said you’re going to want to see this, he answered. I’m not sure what to make of what I’m seeing right now.
I wasn’t either, and I couldn’t even see it yet. I’d had a front seat to plenty of strange and bizarre things, and they had only gotten worse in Chaldea correcting these Singularities, but a bunch of Celts in chainmail wielding melee weapons battling colonial era Americans with muskets was farther out there than I’d been expecting to find in this Singularity.
Hold position, was the order I gave. There’s no point taking sides when we don’t know which one is which.
Roger that, Arash replied, and then his presence retreated from my mind and left me alone to my thoughts as I ran and panted.
My instinct was to side with the Colonials. If this was somehow the result of the fluctuation between 2011 and 1783, then the English settlers from the eighteenth century should have been the side that belonged to proper history. But the celtic warriors from medieval Britain could only have been the doing of some Servant or another, because they had no place in America in any era, and that meant that there was no way of telling who was who and what they were fighting about.
Mordred had been one of the ones helping us in London, after all, and the final battle had been against a version of King Arthur. Once Servants got involved, the normal lines got thrown out the window.
It felt like we ran for ten or twenty minutes, dodging around the trees, bushes, and shrubs with clumsy grace as Mash bashed her way through whatever stood in her way. Finally, however, light shone through up ahead, and Mash burst out of the tree line and into the open air, and around the edges of her shield, I could see tufts of grass and an expanse of pure, white sand. And beyond that, in the distance, the dark, steely blue of the open ocean.
But when I came out of the forest myself, stumbling to a stop, I could at least see what lay beyond it and past Mash’s form, and the cacophony of gunfire and shouting was all the louder and clearer. In the stretch of land, some three hundred feet between the edge of the woods and the beach, there was a pitched battle. The crack of guns being fired, the roar of men charging at one another, the desperate shouting of orders and cries of pain.
“What the hell?” Rika whispered as though she had read my mind.
For an instant, I thought I was looking at something out of a weird fantasy movie, because that was the only place they all belonged together. On the one side, men in a motley collection of colors, all of them darker and muted, dressed in coats and breeches with tricorn hats and clean-shaven faces. They grouped together in haphazard, disorganized lines, firing, and then crouching down to reload as the next group stood to shoot. The crack of gunfire came from them, and their muskets spat smoke that drifted lazily into the air like a fog.
I wasn’t the biggest history nerd out there, but… Local militia, maybe? They certainly didn’t have the look of an actual army, although with the supplies the Colonials had during the Revolution, that wasn’t saying much.
Across from them stood a group that didn’t belong in 1783, and belonged even less in 2011: burly celtic warriors with bare, thickly muscled arms. They wore shirts of chainmail that covered only their torsos and upper thighs over fur tunics and coarse, woolen pants. Cloaks were draped over their shoulders, and iron helms protected their heads, leaving free only their thickly bearded faces and untamed red hair. At the front of the group stood these men, carrying spears and swords with rounded, wooden shields, and these they apparently used in an attempt to block the musket balls being shot their way, to at least some success, judging by the pits and holes that dotted the reinforced wood.
At the back of their group, however, there were thinner men with broader shoulders and leaner physiques, blond hair wild and faces clean, and they wielded bows and a full quiver each of arrows.
Between the two groups, more than two dozen bodies already laid on the ground, blood staining the grass and the sand, but even a quick glance showed that the militiamen were losing. As I watched, they retreated another dozen feet, trying their best to keep enough space between them to stay out of range of the reach of those spears. It did nothing to protect them from a volley of deadly arrows that hit their targets with lethal accuracy, killing almost half a dozen more men.
It was in the space between these two groups where the Servants fought, and it was obvious because it was the hardest action to follow. I caught glimpses of a pair of spearmen — Lancers, they had to be — exchanging blows with lightning speed. The clang and crack of their weapons meeting was almost enough to drown out the rest of the fighting, and they stayed still only long enough to appear as twin blurs, opposing streaks of black and red.
But they never stopped moving. They were constantly in motion, exchanging so many blows so rapidly that the chorus of their strikes seemed more like one, continuous sound than the staccato of the Colonials firing their muskets. Half the way I was distinguishing one from the other was the sharp bursts of magical energy that accompanied each stab and swing, intense and powerful.
“Master,” said Mash uncertainly, “who are we supposed to help?”
Ritsuka, equally as unsure, turned to me for answers. “Senpai?”
I didn’t have any. My instinct was still to assume the musketeers were the ones we were supposed to be siding with, but we just didn’t know enough about the situation. My bugs landed easily on each group, which said at least that neither side was so rich in magical energy that it overwhelmed my swarm’s more fragile bodies, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything either.
Arash appeared next to me, startling the twins and Mash a little. “Neither of the Servants is American or English, for what that’s worth,” he announced. “One is definitely Celtic from before the era of firearms, and the other would look Indian, if it wasn’t for the hair and skin tone.”
“Indian?” Rika asked, voicing the question I was about to. She held a hand up behind her head, fingers splayed. “Like…?”
She flapped her hand in front of her open mouth, and my brow twitched. Where the hell had she learned that stereotype? Forgetting about that, why would a member of one of the native tribes be helping the English settlers from 1783?
“Like from India,” said Arash, addressing the stereotype not at all. “With a presence like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the demigods from the old myths.”
It was hard to tell when I was surrounded by the presence of several other Servants myself, but it was there, that presence he was talking about. A subtle heaviness in the air, a gentle weight that pressed on my shoulders, as though the Earth’s gravity had become just the slightest bit stronger. I might not have even noticed it if Arash hadn’t said anything.
A demigod from Indian myth? Damn it, I didn’t have as firm a grasp on that one as I would have liked. Indian mythology was so extensive that I hadn’t ever quite gotten a handle on all of the heroes involved.
“The question is,” said Emiya, “what the hell are the two of them doing here?”
“Aside from fighting?” Rika asked sarcastically.
“Yes,” was Emiya’s dry response, “aside from fighting.”
“I don’t think they’d answer if we asked, Senpai,” Mash said.
“Fou-fou kyu,” the little gremlin agreed. It even nodded sagely.
“Do we interfere?” Aífe asked. There was a note of eagerness in her voice, poorly hidden, and she eyed the battle with hungry eyes.
“I don’t know if we should,” said Ritsuka. “If we stick our noses in, they might just all gang up on us so that they can go back to fighting each other.”
And while Mash could certainly defend all of us from whatever the Celtic soldiers and militiamen could throw our way, it didn’t mean we would get any closer to finding out what the hell was going on here. If the Servants turned around and ganged up on us, we still had the numbers advantage, but Altera, Herakles, Caenis, and King Arthur had all proven that there were Heroic Spirits who were strong enough, skilled enough, or just plain powerful enough to hold their own against multiple Servants at once.
But I also didn’t see how we had much choice otherwise. Without knowing which side was on the side of proper history and solving this Singularity, either side losing could be bad for us, especially in terms of establishing contact with the people who were supposed to be our allies here.
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“Aífe,” I began, “Arash, I want you to split up those two Servants and force them to stop fighting.”
Rika made a noise in her throat. “Looks like you’re on defense today, Emiya.”
Emiya huffed a chuckle as Aífe and Arash both readied to jump in. “Of course —”
Before they could do anything at all, however, the water near the shore surged, and a man appeared from beneath the surf, clutching something to his chest. He ignored the fighting and turned towards the militiamen, racing up the beach and across the sand and sprinting over to their lines. The instant they caught sight of him, the archers in the back of the group of Celtic warriors immediately began to target him, firing volley after volley of arrows at his retreating back and ignoring the musketeers entirely.
Mash startled and gasped, pointing after the mysterious diver. “Master! That’s…!”
Beep-beep!
My communicator turned on of its own accord before I could even think of answering it. Marie’s voice, tinny and broken, shouted, “The Gr…l! He -as…ail!”
My heart skipped a beat. What?
“He’s got it!” one of the militiamen hollered, loud enough to pierce the cacophony of noise. “He found the Grail!”
As though some spell had been broken, the fighting Servants came to a halt, resolving into two distinct figures. One wore golden armor on his arms and legs and carried a shining golden spear, but most of his body remained protected only by what appeared to be a thin black bodysuit. Pale, white skin stretched up from its haggard collar and across taut pectorals, and an admittedly handsome face was topped with an untidy mop of hair just as white. Two enormous wheel-like things floated behind his shoulders — what they were for, I had no idea — connected by a sort of ragged, shawl-like thing that hung between them like a cape or mantle.
The other was very obviously the Celtic warrior, because he wore a form-fitting bodysuit similar to what we had seen on Scáthach and under Connla’s baggy clothes. Black with swooping red lines, it covered his entire body but for his head and hands. Silvery metal armor protected his shoulders and shins, and hair the color of ash hung in tangles and tufts about his head. He was also very tall, although nowhere near as tall as Herakles, and built like a brick wall, carrying a wicked, jagged spear that was as tall as he was.
And if he was the Celt, then the other man had to be the Indian. He turned eyes like moonlight our way, and then looked behind him, to the man dressed like all the other militiamen who cradled something gold and gleaming in his arms.
Could that really be the Grail? Here, that easily, that quickly? After how much we had prepared for this Singularity and how much I’d fortified myself for what I would have to face here, the idea that it could all be over that quickly felt fucking cheap.
A quick glance with my Master’s Clairvoyance showed three Servants: the two Lancers, both of them about even in terms of ability, and the man with the supposed Grail, a Rider whose best stat was his constitution.
“It seems that my comrade has found the treasure we were searching for,” said the Indian. His voice was calm and clear and even. “In that case, there is no more need for the two of us to play around anymore.”
“He saved us the trouble, you mean,” said the other Lancer, voice rougher and almost gravelly. “I have no intention of allowing him to leave with that Grail.”
“No way,” whispered Rika. “That really is the Grail? So fast! We just got here!”
“Don’t forget that we might just have solved the Orléans Singularity that quickly, too, if we had known Jeanne Alter had the Grail when she attacked us in La Charité,” Ritsuka murmured.
“I would expect nothing less of a hero such as yourself,” said the Indian. He looked back at the militiamen again, and in a tone that brooked no argument, told them all, “Retreat. Take the Grail back to headquarters. I will cover you.”
“You will try!” said the other Lancer, and he leapt towards the Indian, spear first. The Indian blocked him easily, deflecting his spear away, and the dance began again as they clashed back and forth.
Behind them, the group of militiamen broke ranks and began a fighting retreat, firing shots to dissuade the celts from pursuing as they turned and ran. The one with the Grail, Rider, took off at a run, and then he whistled, sharp and high and loud. Ahead of him formed a horse, a stallion in full tack, ready to go. He was going to escape.
Make him drop the Grail, I ordered Arash.
Got it, he replied.
In one, smooth motion, he formed his bow, drew back on the string, and nocked an arrow. Next to me, the twins startled.
“Senpai?” Ritsuka asked.
“All we care about is the Grail,” I answered.
Ritsuka’s brow drew down and his face pulled into a grimace.
There was no time for an argument. Right as the Rider leapt up and onto his horse, Arash let loose his arrow, and Rider had barely landed in the saddle before that arrow bloomed from his shoulder. He let out a cry, and for a second, it looked like he really was going to drop the Grail from that single shot alone.
But he firmed up his grip, gathered magical energy, and before I could give the order for another shot, shouted, “Midnight Ride!”
Instantly, the horse took off like a rocket, going from nearly stationary to breaking the sound barrier in the blink of an eye. Like a comet, like a meteor, horse and rider streaked away, leaving behind a trail of magical energy so dense it was visible to the naked eye. Arash fired after him, loosing arrow after arrow, but miraculously, they all fell short or missed. All I could do was watch from a dozen different angles as he fled, disappearing towards the horizon, heading northwest as little more than a smear of vague color. Every bug I tried to attach to him slipped off, and every shot I fired from my ravens curved around him to hit the ground instead.
In a few seconds, he vanished even from Huginn and Muninn’s field of view.
“Arash?” I asked.
Arash shook his head. “He’s gone. Whatever that Noble Phantasm is, it made it impossible to hit him once he activated it.”
Damn it. There went our chance to end this thing so quickly.
Once more, the fighting broke off, and the Celtic Lancer landed back in front of his group with a scowl and a click of his tongue. He eyed the spot where Rider had disappeared with a narrow glare. “Bastard. Should’ve known that he was hiding a Noble Phantasm like that. No other reason they’d send a Servant that weak out to get something that important.”
“Heroic Spirits are those who have ingrained their deeds into the consciousness of mankind,” said the Indian Lancer, still cool as a cucumber. He didn’t even sound smug, more like he was admonishing the other’s disrespect. “Even those who appear worthless still accomplished something worthy of praise and adulation. Rider may be no great warrior, but that does not mean he is not a true Heroic Spirit.” He titled his head. “Do you still intend to pursue my allies, Lancer? On my honor as a hero, I cannot allow you to slaughter them needlessly.”
The Celtic Lancer grunted and let out a sigh. “Nah. No fucking point in that. It’d just be me being petty.” He cracked a bloodthirsty grin. “But I’ll still take your head anyway!”
He cocked his arm back, and magical energy surged as his spear erupted into poisonous red flames. They licked the air, tongues of almost liquid fire leaping from the blade and the shaft both, so sweltering that I could feel them even from where we were standing.
“I see,” said the Indian Lancer. “Very well. Don’t take this as an insult, Lancer, but I won’t need my spear to stop your Noble Phantasm. After all…”
“Lúin —”
Magical energy surged in the Indian Lancer now, and ridiculously, it gathered into a point, a ball of flame in front of his face. “A true hero kills using only his eyes!”
“— Celtchair!”
“Brahmastra!”
The flaming spear flew, the ball of fire erupted into a beam. They both streaked across the distance, bright and eye-searing and loaded with power. Somewhere in the middle, they met and clashed, and dripping flame splattered like acid across the ground as the spear collided head on with the beam of fire and stopped. For an instant, for a heartbeat, they hung in the air, each one pushing back against the other and bleeding power and energy dense enough to ignite the grass around them, and then, against all sense and reason, the spear was deflected, spinning up and up end over end, to land point-first in the sand.
The beam continued on, and it struck not the Celtic Lancer, but had been thrown far enough off course to hit the squad of Celtic warriors behind him. It carved through nearly half a dozen like a hot knife through butter, passing more easily through their flesh than any bullet and killing them instantly, and exploded against the ground behind the last, throwing up clods of dirt, grass, and sand.
A tremor of unease squirmed in my gut, because where the fuck had that come from? These two were supposed to be fairly evenly matched, weren’t they? And yet this guy had easily overpowered a Noble Phantasm without breaking a sweat?
The Celtic Lancer stood frozen, mouth pulled into a tight grimace but eyes wide and wild, like he would die if he dared to blink. I saw his hand twitch as though to reach for a spear that was beyond his grasp, but he made no move to retrieve it.
A Noble Phantasm that made him stronger than he should have been, it had to be. Something like Lancelot’s Arondight or Babbage’s armor, something that pushed him beyond the limits of what he could do normally. Maybe something like King Arthur’s Mana Burst, something that could only be used in short spurts. That would explain the discrepancy.
“Fortune smiles upon you, Lancer,” said the Indian Lancer. He dipped his head into a short, respectful nod. “Until we meet again. I look forward to our next match.”
And just like that, he vanished, disappearing into spirit form. The militiamen he’d been protecting were long gone, having taken the chance to flee while they could, although they weren’t so far away that a Servant couldn’t have run them down if he wanted.
“Tch.” The Celtic Lancer scoffed. He didn’t seem inclined to go chasing after anyone. “You were just playing with me the entire time, weren’t you? Bet you were the main hero in your country’s big legend.”
He walked over to retrieve his spear, and it was only as he reached out to yank it from the sand that I saw the red, blistering burns that decorated his knuckles and arm nearly up to the elbow. Wounds from his battle with the other Lancer, or was I right to think that his own Noble Phantasm could inflict damage to him?
Something to file away for later.
“Did…” Rika began. “Did…that other guy stop tall, dark, and handsome’s spear by firing a laser beam from his eyes?”
“You weren’t seeing things, Master,” Emiya told her. “That’s exactly what happened.”
“Oi!” Lancer called, and it was obvious he was talking to us, because he turned our way. “Not that I’m not grateful for that shot you took at the pissant who stole the Grail, but you certainly don’t look like anyone I know is on my side.” He brandished his spear at us. “So what is it you lot wanted with that Grail, eh? Come to steal it out from under my queen’s nose, is that it?”
All of us tensed and prepared for a fight, and my mind ran through half a dozen different scenarios. We still didn’t know whose side was which, but a hot-blooded guy like this might not listen to us until we knocked him around a bit. The trouble was, he wasn’t alone, and while the militiamen had been able to kill a few of the warriors grouped up behind him, that didn’t necessarily mean they were weak enough that us Masters could deal with them safely.
Aífe was the only one who remained relaxed.
“Put that spear away before you stab yourself with it,” she drawled as she stepped to the front of the group. “Unless you want to test your luck against me again. I’ll be glad to show you just how much I’ve improved since the last time I beat you into the ground.”
Lancer’s eyes landed on her and immediately went wide. The tip of his spear drooped in shock as his grip slackened.
“Lugh’s balls,” he said, disbelieving, and then a broad grin broke out across his face. “I don’t believe my eyes! Aífe, you ferocious bitch, you’re actually here, too?”
“You know him?” I asked her.
She glanced at me with her trademark grin, and instead of giving me a direct answer, asked me back, “Do you think there’s a warrior in all of éire who hasn’t been on the other end of my sword, either in training or in combat?”
“She put me on my ass more than once back when she was just a wee thing with a chip on her shoulder,” Lancer revealed. “Heard she eventually went back and started teaching upstarts how to hold the right end of a sword. I certainly felt a whole lot better about myself once people started whispering her name like the devil. You and that crazy sister of yours, that is.”
Almost as an afterthought, he turned back to his group long enough to tell them, “Ah, stand down, you poor bastards, this one’s way outta your league. No reason to give her cause to dirty her gloves on your faces.”
The whole group took this order as gospel and relaxed, releasing tension from their bows and their sword arms, although they didn’t, I noticed, sheath their weapons yet. There was something almost…mechanical about their actions, something vacant about their eyes and their gazes, as though they weren’t all entirely there.
I wasn’t sure what that meant yet. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Until we knew how and why a bunch of warriors from what looked to be the Dark Ages had wound up in America — either 1783 or 2011 — I didn’t think I’d get an answer.
Lancer approached casually, slinging his spear up and over his shoulder. “Have to say, I wasn’t expecting you, of all Heroic Spirits, to show up, Aífe, although maybe I should have. A smarter man might’ve known you would’ve come eventually, seeing as Scáthach and two of her brats are here, too.”
Aífe stilled, and immediately, the air around her shifted to something sharp and dangerous. “Scáthach is here?”
“Fucked if I know why,” said Lancer. “Don’t rightly know where she went off to, either. Especially since her two brats are both up with the cheese queen.”
“Cheese queen?” the twins both said at once.
Given the context… “You mean Medb?”
Lancer glanced at me only long enough to rake a look up and down my body, as though sizing me up for how much of a threat I was. “That’d be the one. The other other crazy bitch from our little family of fucked up stories.”
“Wait,” said Rika, still confused, “why are you calling her the cheese queen?”
“Because of how it’s said she died, Senpai,” said Mash. “Furbaide wanted revenge for his mother’s death, so he killed Queen Medb while she was bathing by, um, by hurling a wedge of cheese at her from his sling.”
It did sound ridiculous, but a lot of the old mythologies were filled with nonsense like that, so at this point, I didn’t even bat an eye.
Rika, on the other hand, turned to Mash, disbelief written all over her face. “You can’t actually be serious, Cinnabon.”
“She is,” said Aífe, and instead of explaining any further, immediately asked Lancer, “Her two brats? There are only a handful I can think of that she would dare to leave unattended in Medb’s clutches.”
“The Hound and his bosom pal,” said Lancer with a nod. Bosom pal? I could only think of one hero who met that description for Cúchulainn.
Rika’s head whirled around towards him, and the demand she looked like she’d been about to make for more detail died a swift death in the face of an old friend’s presence. “Cú’s here?”
Lancer’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve met him before, then?”
“As a Caster,” I answered, “several months back.”
Lancer’s brow furrowed. “A Caster, eh? Can’t say I’d expect that outta him, of all people.” He shook his head. “Well, if that’s how you knew him, sorry to say you’ll be disappointed when you see him again. He ain’t much for conversation, these days.”
Aífe picked up on it the same time I did. “He’s a Berserker?”
The disappointment in her voice was palpable.
“Got it in one,” he confirmed. “Ya might get a word or two outta him, but mostly all he does is grunt and groan.”
Oh. That was… I was honestly a bit surprised to find that I was disappointed, too. I guess…some part of me had been looking forward to seeing him again, despite how much of a horndog he was.
“Which means if I socked him one good, he wouldn’t even understand why,” Rika lamented. She hadn’t forgotten her promise from Septem, it seemed.
Lancer gave her a queer look, eyes roving up and down her body, and in a skeptical voice, he asked, “He make a pass at you, girl? Have to say, you don’t look like his usual type.”
Female and breathing? I didn’t say.
“Nope!” Rika said brightly. “I just owe him one!”
“Guess you’ll just have to keep owing him one, then,” said Lancer.
“It explains why he would side with Medb, at least,” said Aífe. “That boy in his right mind doesn’t want anything to do with her.”
“It explains Ferdiad, too,” Emiya added. “As I remember it, he was already on Medb’s side, so having his best friend there would just be more reason to stay, wouldn’t it?”
Lancer sized him up. “Spoken almost like you were there, friend.”
“Not at all.” Emiya shrugged. “I just know a little bit about Irish mythology. Once you’ve been on the other end of that spear enough times, it seems more prudent to know what you’re dealing with.”
“Ha!” Lancer shook his head. “True, that. So you must’ve fought him in some scuffle or another. What, one of them Grail Wars or something?”
Emiya’s mouth curled up into a half-smirk. “Something like that.”
Lancer saw the evasion for what it was and huffed a short chuckle.
“Speaking of the Grail,” I began. Lancer’s smile died.
“Aye, I suppose we ought to get back to that one, eh?” he said grimly. “Not to ruin our happy little reunion here, Aífe, but how did you and this group here get caught up in all of this nonsense?”
“We’re here to fix it,” I said, watching his face. His brow furrowed, confused.
“Fix it?”
“We’re part of the Chaldea Security Organization,” Mash told him dutifully. “Our job is to Rayshift into aberrant spacetimes called Singularities to retrieve the Grail causing the distortion and restore proper history to its correct course.”
“We put right what’s gone wrong!” Rika chimed in like she was reciting a slogan. Ritsuka’s expression was aggrieved and resigned.
Lancer’s reaction, however, was…not what I’d hoped or what I’d feared. It didn’t match any of my expectations, actually. He didn’t close off and become more guarded, as I would have expected if he was on the side of whatever or whoever had caused the Singularity to form, but neither did he immediately open up like he’d just met comrades in his solemn duty either. Instead, he seemed only more confused.
He breathed out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “That’s all beyond my ken, I’ve to say. What’s what with all of this nonsense is just me trying to swim with the sharks. You want to talk about what’s all to do about this crazy shit, you’ll need to go and see Medb and the Boss — and as an Ulsterman, let me say, I never thought those words would ever have left my mouth.”
“Your boss?” Ritsuka asked.
“The guy running our little army,” said Lancer. “He’s holding our sad, little family of misfits together, telling us where to go and what we need to do while we’re there. When we heard those shits from out west were looking into what might’ve been a Grail out here, he sent me to see if they really found something or if they were just sniffing for scraps. He’s the one who knows what we’re doing and why we’re here, so if there’s anyone who can tell you lot about what’s going on in this little corner of hell, it’ll be him.”
“Sounds like a pretty important guy,” said Arash.
I could already think of a few people it might be, in fact. Legend or Chevalier, maybe, if it was a cape. Maybe Armstrong if it was a PRT director. As an American, I should probably have been embarrassed that I dismissed the idea of the President out of hand, but I didn’t even remember who that was supposed to be right now, so unless this was one of the ways where the fluctuations influenced things and it was Washington himself, I was discounting him.
“Only reason why things haven’t gone any more to pot than they already are,” Lancer confirmed.
“So how do we go about meeting him?” asked Emiya.
Lancer jerked his head to his right, our left. “You’ll be wanting to head north. Probably a good idea to make a stop off in, what’s it, Boston? Yeah. Little place called the Black Rose, in the heart of the city. Talk to the bartender, he’ll get ya in contact with the guy in charge up there, an uptight twat by the name of —”
“Accord,” I concluded, already dreading it. The instant he mentioned Boston, I had almost expected it, because this couldn’t be Earth Bet without him running things up there.
Lancer gave me a considering look. “That’d be him. You’ve heard of him, then.”
“He’s got a reputation,” was the only thing I said. It seemed to be enough.
“Well,” said Lancer, “he might be a right bastard, but he knows what’s what. Half the reason the Boss can keep things going is because he’s got that little shit on a leash. You want to talk to the Boss and Medb? He can get you a meeting.”
“Miss Taylor,” Mash murmured.
I wanted to sigh. Yeah. Any hope I might have had about avoiding the trappings of my past was now well and truly dead.
“We’ll do that, then,” I said. “Who should we say sent us?”
Lancer blinked, and then shook his head. “Wife’d have my head for that one,” he muttered to himself. Then, louder, “Name’s Celtchar. Might not be as big a name as the Hound or his ilk, but I was — am — a warrior of Ulster. Well met, the lot of ya.” He jerked his head at the group still waiting silently behind him. “Now, if none of ya have any more questions for me, I’ve got to get this sorry lot back home and let the Boss know that the Westies made off with the Grail and sent their bigshot to come get it.”
“Thanks for your help,” Ritsuka said honestly.
Lancer — Celtchar — shook his head. “Weren’t no trouble.” He waved a hand goodbye and turned away, and to the group of Celtic warriors, he shouted, “Oi, you sorry sacks of shit! Pick your asses up off the ground and let’s get moving! Boss needs to hear what happened here, and right quick!”
We watched him go, staying silent the entire time as he led his troupe of Celtic warriors away. Only once he was out of earshot — and out of range of my bugs — did we huddle together and discuss our options.
“So?” said Emiya. “Where does this put us?”
“We have a lead,” Ritsuka opined.
“For what that’s worth,” Aífe warned, crossing her arms over her chest. “The young man I knew wasn’t the type to lie or mislead, but Medb wasn’t the sort to take orders or follow someone else. Whoever this boss of theirs is, she might have subverted him for her own purposes by now.”
“This is the lady who was super upset that Cú didn’t ravish her, right?” said Rika.
Aífe nodded. “The same.”
“She sounds kinda screwy to me,” was Rika’s opinion.
“Different times, different standards,” Emiya reminded her.
Rika didn’t budge. “Still.”
“If we knew where Rider went with the Grail,” Mash said, trailing off.
“Fou, fou…”
“Sorry,” said Arash, shaking his head. “I know he went west, but with the Grail in hand, he could cross the entire continent before needing to rest.”
“He could be halfway to Hollywood right now,” Rika added. She grimaced. “Ugh. He might get to meet Arnold before me, and that’s so not fair.”
“If we don’t know where he’s going, then we can’t really follow him, can we?” said Ritsuka. “So we really only have the one lead for now.”
As much as I might not have been incredibly happy about it… “Hold on a second.”
Muninn swooped low, and the twins startled as she opened her mouth and snapped out a sizzling shot towards a nearby tree. The crow roosting there squawked and cawed indignantly, taking flight to avoid the shot and then, flustered, flying away.
That didn’t work the first time, it’s not working a second or third, I thought at whoever was controlling it.
“We’ll go north,” I said. I ignored the raised eyebrows. “If Accord is the only way we’re getting a meeting with Medb and Celtchar’s boss, then Accord is who we need to talk to.”
I just had to hope he was in a more reasonable mood than usual.
It is time.
This one is another kinda long one, because there was too much I wanted to fit into it. I dropped a lot of hints, and there's still going to be some familiar elements, because the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Make no mistake, though. This isn't the American Myth War from canon. Don't let the familiar faces fool you, because they're not going to appear the way you think they will.
"Wait, what? Gunpowder as a lube?"