...
Shenghuo regarded the new figure.
He was, in a word, unimpressed. Though a Servant he certainly was, his boyish figure and severe injuries left much to be desired. This was a Servant so weak that he found himself confident that he, with all his current equipment and magecraft, could defeat the assumed-to-be Saber with ease, disregarding his Noble Phantasm, which was always a Servant's hidden ace.
This apathy drew his attention to his sister, rattling in her upside-down cage like a hysteric parrot. She was drawing attention to herself, playing a pitiful part to earn the favor of her rescuer.
Bile rose in his throat, but he forced it down. In his distraction, the injured boy-Servant was already halfway off the floor; regarding him with rose-colored eyes.
"Should I be congratulating you, Saber? You made it all this way, after all."
The intruder's legs shook like thin reeds as he assumed some sad approximation of a fighting stance, "Master of Archer, I presume?"
He cracked a smile. Something in that note of fear caressed his ego pleasantly.
"And you presume correctly. But, before we begin, tell me: did my golems put up a fight at least? I'd like to know how they performed against someone like yourself- for future reference."
The boy's body seemed to stabilize, and the mage's trained eyes couldn't help but notice the thin veil of gold that clung to his body, and that the multitude of burns were slowly fading, revealing youthful, pale skin underneath. As if to add a point to his rising health, light formed and solidified in his hands: creating two sickles of gold, black, and electric magenta from handle to blade.
"...Golems? Is that what you call them?"
"For now, though I can understand the confusion. The Hebrews made theirs from clay. Through the Silk Road, my people learned to make them from iron and steel. As far as I know, I'm the first to make golems from non-solid matter- plasma no less. That in mind, I would like to know how they did. What improvements must be made?"
His eyes darted around the room as they spoke. Shenghuo himself was torn: he'd like to buy time for Archer, but, if this boy was healing like he appeared to be, then he needed to pluck the fruit before it ripened.
"That so? I have to say, they don't seem very practical- unless you're trying to burn your house down."
"Perhaps. Although, once flame golems are mastered, air, lightning, and even pure-ether golems are sure to follow: each with their own purpose in mind. Still, I'd ask you to not get too snarky with me: this is beyond our little conflict; this is for science.
"No... I think that's enough games. We're on a schedule."
He wondered briefly whether Saber was, in fact, working against Lancer, but that seemed too far-fetched a theory and was dismissed immediately.
"Very well. It hardly matters, anyway: the results of a trial are only valuable if you can repeat them."
From his boot he sent a current of mana into the paths marking the floors and walls of his workshop. The orange-red circuitry webbed across the room before collapsing in above the doorway- the exit. Steam fissed from the ceiling as two more orbs dropped down.
-
The problem with repetition is that it must always be repeated with a new group of subjects, lest the results of the former study interfere with the latter, as it did with Saber and the flame golems. He knew exactly how much time he had, and, the moment the ball dropped, leaped into the air, dealt a decisive kick to the wooden beam above him, and flipped in front of Heping as her and her chains fell limp onto the floor.
By the time the flame golems formed in the air, Heping was already rising on her unsteady feet; pulling the gag and blindfold out of her face.
Shenghuo snarled at the plan unfolding before him, "Damn it all."
...
Heping stumbled to her feet to the best she was able, ripping at the cloth around her eyes and mouth. Her legs shook as her head became weightless from the blood rushing to where it ought to be, and her will was the only thing keeping vertigo at bay.
She had listened intently to the events as they unfolded, and could piece together a few things: Lancer was here, and so was Saber, and her brother wasn't about to let them leave.
With this, she wasn't surprised when her blurred vision revealed the shape of a crimson demon with wings of fire, and a fit figure, blonde from head to toe, guarding her from his malice. Instead, the surprise came as her senses returned: clarifying the demon as her brother, equipped in a set of slate, traditional style armor with terracotta orange pauldrons and hems, and the blonde athlete, not blonde at all in fact, as a boy with magenta, black-speckled hair, rose eyes, and a bulky black jacket.
What her mind had translated as "wings" were her brother's flame golems, though these seemed far more complete than any version she had ever seen, and though they lacked eyes, it still felt as if they were looking at her.
The boy kept his eyes ahead; she noticed the sickles in his hands,
"Are you alright? Can you run?"
She barely heard him past the complaints of her own body. In her state, all she could truly make out was that the two bright lights at the edge of the room were getting brighter.
She laid a hand on his shoulder, "Get behind me."
"What? No-"
"He will not kill me."
He didn't move, but neither did he stop her as she pushed past, taking only a step forward and placing herself between the two men.
"So, what will it be, then, sister? Are you going to end this farce?"
"Yes."
A shadow of a smile rose across his stony cheeks. A smile of victory, of arrogance; of hubris. A rare victory where your prey, so drowned in hopelessness, willingly submits itself to slaughter. Yes, this would all end if she surrendered. If she told her Servant to stand down, and her rescuer to leave her be, the night would end, and everyone would leave with their life.
But she was raised as a soldier, and had a far simpler method of bringing peace.
As she had countless times before, she shot her mind, her judgements, her second-guessing to the far reaches of her mind, and let instinct take her. Her muscles ran taught, forced to be content with whatever blood they had with them, and moved her as a shadow against the two suns she faced. In the millisecond it took to clear the distance, blue; indigo; black lines moved like circuits across her forearm: aimed between the eyes of her target- her brother.
Had she wanted to disorient him, she could've. She knew how to punch in such a way that guaranteed a concussion without a kill, but that wasn't the goal. This punch was packed with all the mana she could muster. A veritable cannon that would tear through flesh and bone as easily as the air itself.
A kill shot.
But this armor was designed for threats like herself. As her hostility approached, a chamber in the right breast of the armor opened, revealing the smallest light. In the moment before the strike landed, with her fist so close he felt the air tickling his lips, something in that armor burst with the resonant boom of a thousand gunshots at once, unseen force rippling across the room, tearing at the foundation, and sending Heping flying back with all the speed of a bullet herself. Saber caught her in his arms, but this only left both of them to slam against the far wall, his back taking the brunt of the blow with a dangerous crack of skull and spine.
Even in the eclipse of the flames behind him, you could watch the color drain from Shenghuo's face. From hubris to horror, from mountain to valley in a moment.
"You- you really tried to kill me."
The shock lasted only a second. He grabbed the helmet from the table beside him and clasped it over his head: liquid-like metal emerged from within to connect with the rest of the armor. Steel and iron whirred and clicked, red light moved between plates, and a hiss of smoke and steam whistled from where a plume would normally fly.
He raised his right hand with dignity, "You've forced my hand, sister! Archer, to me!"
Red light burst from his armored hand, and a golden mist manifested beside him before its shape solidified as a black ink blotch, his thin, glowing bow drawn taught against a string of fire that blended in with the light behind him. Another avian shadow stretched between the string and bow.
"I was in the middle of something."
"Shut up!"
Thunder boomed outside.
"Your abilities are of no use in such tight quarters. Go and deal with the pig."
"Capture or kill?"
"Kill."
The string and arrow disappeared, leaving the bow floating in midair. As Archer turned to rush up the stairs, it was as if the bow latched to some invisible hook, floating behind the shadow as he slipped between the golems and away.
Shenghuo watched his sister closely for a reaction, but she hardly seemed to notice as she peeled herself out of Saber's arms. She would not bargain for her Servant's life, even knowing he was outmatched. That was the fight she wanted.
He lowered his eyes, "So it shall be."
The spaulders of the armor opened like hatches, flames pouring out like a cascade, and the same from his palms. The fire shot red, orange, blue, white, and, like the golems before them, solidified into recognizable shapes: two armored arms, each of his four hands holding a blade of shining white plasma.
"Golems!" He pointed one blade towards his targets, "Entrap the girl! Don't kill her; don't let her interfere!"
The two flaming wings rushed forward, spinning and twirling through the space between. Saber, the hero that he was, side-stepped around the girl still coming to her senses and ran with equal fervor, twin blades poised to strike in a hellish joust.
-A game only he intended to play.
The sea of red fire parted before him, swirling around to the still-bodied Heping and entrapping her in an artificial dome of flame like a hollow star.
"Dammit! Are you okay?!"
Inside, she covered her eyes, the intense light hurting her far more than the intense heat, though that too was starting to eat away at her stamina even now,
"Yes! Just defeat the Master so we can help Pigsy!"
The Master? Not her brother, not 'Shenghuo', hardly even 'The Master of Archer'. Only: 'The Master': the enemy, and nothing more of significance.
The apathy gave him pause, but he checked to be sure, "Permission to kill?"
"Granted. Do not hesitate."
He nodded, not that she could see, and, with the zig-zagging gait of a serpent, charged 'The Enemy' with the hope his own two blades could match his opponent's four.
...
Beyond the roar and crackle of the flames, she could hear grunts, whooshes, and taunts too quiet to make out. She was well and truly isolated: freed only to become a prisoner again.
'Nothing happens unless you make it happen. If you had any sense, you'd know that already, instead of always playing the frickin' damsel.'
She cracked a smile and pretended as if her captor stood in front of her, "You will need thicker walls than these to keep me still, brother."
With her physical nature, she did what came to her mind first: she charged the wall. Sending black circuits along her arms, she threw her whole body weight against the barrier. The flames that spun around her shifted in front, forming a solid white wall that she bounced off with the sound of searing flesh. Stumbling back, the wall of flames returned to their position, closing the small gap that had emerged immediately behind her.
She examined her arms: they were red, but couldn't have beyond first-degree burns. In one breath she thanked her instructors for teaching her this magecraft and cursed her brother for forcing her to use it.
She had felt the gap open behind her, but understood enough that she wasn't fast enough to take advantage of it. The other issue was that the blinding, ever-present light cloaked the cores in such a way that she had no way to locate them amongst the flames, this made worse by the obvious fact that they were maintaining a rapid orbit to further disguise themselves.
Her second experiment saw her stick her arm out towards the edge. How would the walls respond to a non-violent approach? Rather than form a wall, the cores which spun around her at extreme speeds altered their trajectory into an oblong shape, forming an egg of relative safety rather than burn her.
The golems had interpreted their orders as meaning that they should avoid hurting her so long as doing so didn't obviously interfere with their other priorities.
Heping was not an intelligent girl, and it was very obvious to anyone that whatever IQ ran in her family had been entirely monopolized by her brother, with her not even getting a mouse's share of it. The one advantage she had over, not just her brother, but anyone else who claimed more intelligence than she, was her level-headedness: a sheer nonchalance that could only be possessed by someone lacking any sense of value for her own life.
So she tested another theory. She began to back up slowly and, sure enough, moving away from the battle, the cage of fire moved both with and around her: the edge of the flames never inching any closer to her back even as she approached.
But would they be so lenient? Would they be so stupid?
They would.
As she came closer to the wall she'd been slammed against not long ago, the heat cut into her back more than before, and then cut off entirely, allowing her back to press against the warm stone.
She watched the flames dance, the cores' AI doing their best to calculate the most efficient method to entrap her while giving themselves a defensive advantage, but they found none. In order to cover the semisphere without leaving gaps in their defense, they both had to remain more-or-less still.
But she was still blinded by the light. She couldn't maintain direct eye contact with her surroundings, and had spent much of her time there either looking at the floor or with closed eyes altogether.
So her insane nonchalance provided another, equally stupid idea.
She sent the Mana Hardening across her eyes.
-
The eyes, being an extremely sensitive organ, are not fit for Hardening. It had been attempted and succeeded before, with many results often leading to the creation of Mystic Eyes: magical artifacts which stood the test of time.
When it failed, as it most often did, the user could easily blind themselves, or just as easily damage their sight permanently by locking their corneas into certain formations. This isn't to mention the possibility of the eyes bursting like bubbles from the increased physical pressure, which is far more common than anyone would care to suppose.
-
It hurt. The weight racked the inside of her skull, and it really did feel like her eyes would pop out of her skull. But she only needed a moment: a second to spot the cores among the flame, a second to see where the flames emerged.
She leaped out and grabbed one with a black fist, using all her strength to push past the white-hot barrier as it tried in vain to stop her, and shattered it with a flick of her wrist.
The other retreated a step, recalculating its options after losing its ally, wreathing itself in flames to buy time, and underestimating her inclination to self-destruction. Shifting hands, she did the same, and let both metal cores drift to the floor as dust and scrap, ignoring the severe burns on her palms and the bits of metal that had made their way into the crevices of her seared flesh.
Her eyes were still recovering from the shock, and as she blinked, and blinked, and blinked again, trying to force her sight to return, she made out something.
Saber charged Shenghuo with his arms wide, his two blades coming in like the maw of a giant viper, trailed by violet lightning. He was going for the neck. But Heping could not see the burns and slashes across the Servant's front. Neither could she see any marks or scrapes on Shenghuo, but, unlike with Saber, there was actually nothing to see there: he was untouched.
The two white arms came down like lightning from above, catching the blades by the hook, and Shenghuo, in perfect sync, lunged forward like a boar, piercing Saber on both sides of his chest all the way through to the other side.
Heping watching in horror as the two white lights emerged from out of his shoulder blades.
"No!"
"No!"
She felt her voice echo.
No...
That wasn't her voice.
She looked up and there, peeking down from the room above, was a girl with blonde hair, turned blue near the ends
....