Gudako was tired, annoyed and absolutely terrified.
Tired from 8 minutes of straigth running and dodging flying debris.
Annoyed at caster for once again forgetting to mention that there was another servant.
And absoluttely terrified from the above mentioned servant chasing them, did she mention that the servant in question was heracles? BECAUSE IT FUCKING WAS, AND APPARENTLY HE HAS MULTIPLE LIVES BECAUSE WHY NOT AND ON TOP OF THAT HE BECAME INMUNE TO WHATEVER KILLED IT, AND THAT'S JUST GREAT.
======Third person pov======
Gudako was getting really tired, and from the panting and sweating ritsuka and olga were showing they were probably not much better than her in that aspect, meanwhile mashu at the front didn't look very tired and neither did caster who was running beside her and who occasionally shot a spell over his shoulder with an increasingly panicked look on his face, his expression together with the sound of stomps and fighting getting closer didn't help calm her fear.
She didn't dare turn around or stop even when Jack went flying over their heads and crashed trough multiple buildings to her right.
She still didn't when caster stopped and started chanting and she didn't dare look back when the stomping suddenly stopped only to be replaced by the sound of angry roars and wood cracking.
They where a block away from a T junction when she heard caster cursing followed by a crash and the stomping returned.
They where half a block to the T junction when mashu stopped and signaled for them to keep running, she didn't look back when she heard the heavy clanging of stone on metal.
When they reached the junction and where turning right she heard a heavy CLANG followed by a hole suddenly appearing in the building in front of them, none of them stopped or looked back they just used as much reinforcement as they could and kept running. Gudako truly feared they were going to die.
When they turned around the corner she saw Jack pulling himself out of a bus about ten meters in front of them with an angry expression on his face and blood dripping from a gash on his forehead.
She would have breathed a sigh of relief if she didn't want to waste air on anything besides running, when she heard a crash above them the three of them instinctively looked up only to freeze when they saw their pursuer perched on the roof's edge on the building beside them.
Her hearth stopped when it let itself drop with a roar.
It was halfway towards them when it was answered by a battlecry followed by a bus crashing into it, sending them both trough a wall.
Gudako let out a garbled sound of relief then the three of them broke out of their stupor when Jack screamed "KEEP RUNNING".
When they ran past him she saw him sheating his cleavers and heard him singing something.
They were almost a block away and turning once again when she turned and the last thing she saw was Jack leap with a hand pulled back towards a charging heracles.
=====================
They kept running for another solid 10 minutes then they went into a somewhat stable looking house and they simultaneously dropped from exhaustion.
*pant*"y-you guys think they will be okay?" said Gudako while greedily taking gulps of air.
Ritsuka took a breath then answered "Well heracles was very powerful so i don't know, but for now i hope they can get away and find us."
Olga also finished catching her breath then spoke "we should worry about ourselves right now, we are in the middle of a burning city with god knows how many skeletons and a prowling archer servant who would be happy to kill us while we are defenceless against him."
"Whe should probably put some bounded fields around here, to get the skeletons off our backs at lea-" Gudako was interrupted by a voice resounding inside her head.
'master, master can you hear me'
"¡¿Jack?!"
'Master take cover underground right now' yelled Jack.
"what do you mean take cover" asked a startled Gudako.
"what are you talking about mashu"
Judging from ritsuka's face and words he was probably getting a similar message from mashu, meanwhile olga just looked confusedly between them.
They were interrupted by a flash of light, they had a moment to look out the window at the growing wave of fire in the distance before a shockwave that broke the windows and blew them off their feet reached them.
The next moments passed in a blur in Gudako's mind, just a panicked scramble to their feet and towards the basement, the last thing her mind registered was her tripping down the stairs before blacking out.
============
The first thing Gudakos mind registered was pain, then the feeling of someones hand tapping her cheek while talking.
"hey girly wake up already" said a familiar voice, Gudako was only able to make a miserable groan.
"well it seems she got hit on the head quite hard, i will have to resort to other methods" said who she finally recognized as caster's.
"what are you doing you brute" screeched olga.
Gudako barely recognized the sound
crackling electricity before she snapped her eyes open with a scream.
======5 minutes later======
After Gudako finaly got the stiffness out of her limbs and patted her hair down she finally asked the important question.
"What the fuck happened"
"Weeell" mashu started akwardly.
Caster cut her off "your servant was getting angry heracles wouldn't die when he killed him so he decided he would blow up half the bloody city to see if it kept him down"
Gudako took a deep breath then exhaled.
"let's..let's just get out of here okay"
That's when Gudako noticed just how hot the air felt and the fact that there were multiple holes in the ceiling. She decided to ignore the fact that a chunk of ceiling was lying on the floor just a breath from were she had fallen unconcious.
"ok give me a moment to get us a ride you guys aren't gonna be able to walk out of here" said caster, then he walked to a large chunk of ceiling and wrote some glowing runes on it wich dissaperead after a moment, then the chunk of stone started floating and gained what seemed to be a traslucent bubble around it.
"well all aboard now" said caster before climbing on top of it.
"¿why couldn't you just carry us out?, and where's Jack." asked ritsuka. "you'll see" stated caster.
When their vehicle floated trough a hole in the ceiling they realized why they wouldn't be able to walk out of there.
All around them the only thing they could see was rubble and dark orange flames. When they looked more closely at the air outside the bubble they realized it was shimmering like they were in the middle of a desert.
" you guys noticed then" said caster " you were fine down there but the air around here is so hot you probably wouldn't have been able to be more than a second outside without getting a serious case of sunburn, give it a few minutes and you'd be getting some third degree burns at least."
Gudako still was curious about what happened "¿Jack did this?".
"Yes, thankfully he was considerate enough to tell us what he was about to do, so i took cover behind shield girl here" caster then gave a chuckle " poor archer didn't see what was going to happen till the last moment"
"archer was there" asked a surprised olga.
" yeah he was probably trying to get a free kill but he got too close so when Jack used his noble phantasm, by lugh that thing was fast, the last thing i saw before everything turned into fire was him starting to astralize, not that i would have helped him."
"What do you mean" asked ritsuka.
"Look at the fire" caster stooped their vehicle for a moment.
They did as he said and looked intently at the fires around them.
Gudako was focused on a flame when she noticed that the longer she looked at it the darker it became, and slowly she started hearing fearful whispers in the back of her mind wich turned into voices asking for help that soon after became screams for help and mercy asking to be freed from the suffer-.
*SNAP*
Gudako snapped out of her daze at the sound of snapping fingers and she noticed not only a hand on her arm but also the fact that she was leaning half way out of the piece of rubble they were on and the arm that wasn't being held was reaching out towards the flame and was almost out of the bubble.
She instantly backed away and started breathing heavily, she distantly noticed that the hand on her arm was mashu's and that ritsuka and olga were in similar states of panic. Caster had his eyes closed with a hand pointing up and a concentrated look in his face.
"pewf that was a close one" he said after opening his eyes "luckyly i was able to reinforce the sield in time".
"what was that" said olga while hugging herself.
Caster sighed and gave them a solemn look.
"that, is very nasty stuff, even with the shield in place they were still able to affect you that much, it was stronger than i realized but now i've strengthened the shield so it shouldn't be an issue but still, don't stare intently at it just in case."
"its some kind of cursed fire, but not the kind of fire you make with a spell or get from some other source like a god or spirit, no, this fire was cursed by the death of thousands in it, what makes me wonder is it's source like i said it made wasn't by a spell it was his noble phantasm wich makes me wonder just what did he do to get something as twisted as this as one."
"the burning of london" said olga with wide eyes.
"¿hmm?" caster turned to olga.
"it's the biggest act of mass murder ever commited by one person, it's why Jack the ripper is known as the worst mass murderer in history. Jack the ripper somehow planted thousands of tones of incendiary explosives all over london and london bridge, it was speculated he planted them mainly in abandoned buildings and all over the sewers, an there is a theory that the only reason he didn't destroy more was because he ran out and wasn't able to get more." olga took a deep breath and continued.
"Then one noon of summer people saw Jack on the middle of london bridge singing something, people were terrified, the army and whoever remained from the police converged on the bridge and were deciding wether to storm the bridge or simply bomb it to kingdom come, at this point witnesses from the survivors from boats in the river later said they saw Jack pick up a single stick of dynamite light it and then simply hold it close while continuing to sing *sigh* people were confused at what he was doing, when the dynamite detonated everything went to hell, people had two seconds to start cheering or wonder why a single stick of dynamite did such a big explosion before a chain reaction started, in less than ten seconds the bridge was destroyed and in less than two minutes half of london was a burning ruin."
" The death toll from the explosion alone was confirmed to be at least half a million civilians soldiers and policemen, thats not taking the thousands of people who died from the waves of smoke that hit other places of the city, the clocktower itself was almost caught in it as well."
Caster closed his eyes and exhaled trough his nose "yup" he said "that will do it, a blaze that consumed half a million people made into a noble phantasm, i'm pretty sure the only reason we weren't hit by any after effects was because we weren't considered enemies".
"ok you wanna hear the good and bad news" asked caster.
*sigh* "i feel i'm not gonna like this but go on ahead" said Gudako.
Caster just chuckled dryly "well the good news is archer is dead and we found a way to get past heracles's invincibility"
"REALLY, what is it" asked an exited ritsuka.
"His invincibility only affect his skin, we found out when Jack attacked him while he was regenerating, that's the bad news by the
way, heracles survived and it certainly didn't help the little psycho's mood, last i saw him heracles was weakened from the fire and Jack was trying to find a way to get past the skin and was seriously starting to consider stabbing heracles where the sun doesn't shine" the group shuddered at that.
" Yeah i know it certainly wasn't something i was going to stick around to see if he actually decided to do it so the missy and i decided to go look for you and here we are now" finished caster.
Gudako then noticed that the closer they got to the epicenter the less rubble there was until there was only fire covering everything.
That's when they heard screams.
"DIE ALREADY YOU STUPID BASTARD DIE DIE DIE AAAAGHHHH" It was Jack and he wasn't happy from what they could hear.
When they finally reached the center of the explosion they saw was Jack sitting on top of a black lump with extremities comming out of it.
It took Gudako a second to realize the lump was heracles and he seemed to have his lower half missing but there was something odd about the way he was bisected.
'that's weird, it seems like he was cut in half below the waist but, how did Jack do it he would have needed to do it from the insid- wait.... oh....OHHH...huh...UGH OH MY GOD' Gudako was suddenly thankfull the fire covered what she really didn't want to see.
"AHHHHHGHHHH DIE ALREADY YA BOGGIN BOWFIN MIDDEN BAMPOT"
Jack's cursing broke Gudako out of her trougths of her servant giving heracles a prostate exam with two very sharp objects.
When she looked at Jack struggling to shove a knife inside heracles mouth who was holding Jack's forearms with his hands and the knife between his teeth, then Jack gave another scream of rage and suddenly pulled back dropped the knife -wich fell to the side- and since heracles was holding onto his forearms he pulled them to the sides leaving heracles open to a vicous headbutt from Jack.
"AAAAGHHH *BAM*"
Heracles was stunned enough that he let go of Jack long enough for him to reach back and pull one of his cleavers out and proceeded to try and shove it down heracles throath but failed since he once again caught it betwen his and held Jack's forearms back.
"FINE THEN LET'S SEE HOW YAH LIKE THIS"
Gudako noticed that the cleaver was starting to spark and shoot small wisps of flame and she got a sinking feeling in her stomach.
It seems caster noticed to because they immediatly started backing away a high speed.
"LONDON BRIDGE IS"
Gudako heard his voice less and less as they backed away.
"BURNING DOwn my fair lady"
Thankfully it wasn't an explosion this time but a pillar of fire that stretched all the way to the sky.
*Sigh*
Gudako looked at the sky
"I want my daddy"