At the top of Ryuudou Temple, Artoria stood with the tip of Invisible Air pressed into a tile, fingers wrapped around its hilt. Her shoulders were rigid and spine straight, armor already dissolved away.
Ahead of her was the same seam she had fallen through to reach the Grail, and her eyes remained locked on it as she waited.
A wayward wind drew her gaze upward. Medea floated a few feet above, perched upon a horizontal staff with her legs hanging idly in the air, facing Artoria.
"You seem worried, knight," she commented while crossing one leg over the other on her staff, inspecting her nails casually, free hand resting in her lap.
"Are you not?" Artoria raised an eyebrow, tilting her head back to meet Medea's gaze.
"Why should I be worried? Master can take care of himself better than most of the idiots out there." Shifting her focus from the nails, she cast a glance downward. "Worrying would mean I don't actually believe in him."
"Worrying and trust are not mutually exclusive," Artoria retorted, shaking her head. "Whether you are trying to fool me or yourself, your coiled shoulders tell as much."
"Tch." Medea dropped her hand, chin tilting down, gaze landing squarely on Artoria. "You've been observing me? Since when... let me guess. Since that bucket incident, or maybe even further back."
"A knight is trained to be observant, to avoid being duped by those bearing malice."
Medea snorted. "Why are you looking at me while saying that? Are you trying to insinuate something?"
"I insinuated nothing. Your taking it personally simply reveals that I struck a nerve." With that, Artoria turned her attention to stairs leading down, the sound of footsteps echoing from that direction.
"Hmph. Your tongue has grown sharper. Trying to copy me, are you?" Medea's staff turned on its axis, her body twisting toward the stairs. "...How cute."
Purple hair was the first to rise into their view, followed by glasses framing her face, hands gripping a single stake-chain, and her boot struck tiles as she finally reached the top.
Medusa.
Resting her chin on her knuckles, Medea swept her gaze around and asked, "Done with that dog-thingy?"
Nodding as she walked over, Medusa twirled the stake-chain in her grip one last time before it dissolved into particles of mana.
Artoria's palms pressed deeper into Invisible Air's hilt. "Medusa... I've noticed that Master acts slightly different around you after coming back from your trip. Is there something you're hiding from us?"
Medea's ears pricked up like a startled cat, face snapping between Medusa and Artoria, chin nearly slipping off her knuckles. "Don't tell me..."
Tilting her head toward them, Medusa shrugged imperceptibly. "Master is... Master."
Narrowing her eyes at that, Artoria was about to push for more when the seam near them widened with a crack.
All three shifted their focus, eyes dropping to land on four fingers that now gripped the seam's edge.
"Master!" Medea's exclamation echoed out just as Artoria released Invisible Air and crouched down, palms descending to pull the hand up. Silver hair framing Illyasviel's face rose up first beneath her hands, and a voice resounded from below. "Pull her up."
She shifted her grip and grabbed both of Illyasviel's thin shoulders, dragging her up to her waist. Links rattled on links as a chain wrapped around the Einzbern's waist, heaving her whole body up, settling it in Artoria's arms.
Fissures spread across the ground as his hand wrenched at the seam, arm hauling him upward through its widening gap. Tiles shattered in spiralling fractures around him, and his body emerged horizontal, rising side-first from the earth.
His boot landed on a broken tile.
Then he pushed against the earth, a single motion of spine snapping from curve to line, legs driving down, heels grinding against fractured stone. His body pivoted from horizontal to vertical in one unbroken arc, momentum carrying through his back and knees until he stood.
Looking up from Illyasviel, Artoria felt her breath hitch, voice trailing off. "Master...?"
Medea had frozen on her staff, palm resting on a magic circle mid-formation, its rotation stuttering like a stuck gear. "No way."
Pushing her glasses up, Medusa adjusted her hold on the newly materialized stake-chain, eyebrows pinching together in focus before jumping up at once.
...
I cleaned some dust off my coat with a few pats, each one controlled, flattening only the creases visible near my shoulders.
At the sounds of Artoria and Medea, I turned toward them. Both had their eyes locked on my face, darting between it and my hair. "What?"
"Did your soul finally heal, Master?" Artoria asked, and in her pupils, my reflection stared back. Usually that reflection contrasted sharply with my own because her eyes were green, while mine were crimson.
But this time, our pupils were nearly indistinguishable from one another, because my eyes had turned green like hers, or like the old shade of Hajime.
Shaking my head at her question, I replied, "Close. It should be fully healed soon."
"And what's up with your hair, Master? How did it get a makeover?" Pointing a finger at my hair, Medea leaned closer from her staff.
I clutched a handful of strands in my grip and brought them up. They remained black as they always were, but their undersides had taken on a shining silver hue that reflected moonlight from the sky.
"This might be a side effect of merging with the Grail."
"You did what—" Medea's voice was still cracking upward when I cut her off and turned toward the stairs leading down from Ryuudou Temple.
"Not now. Later." I said, striding over while rubbing my hands clean, halting at the top, a step away from where the stairs ended.
Artoria hefted Illyasviel onto her shoulder, arm looping around her waist, and grabbed Invisible Air with her free hand, sliding it free from the ground to follow behind me.
Straightening her staff, Medea floated over to hover above my shoulder, her staff pointed straight ahead, body perched sideways on it.
Another stake-chain materialized in Medusa's empty hand, and she marched to my side.
I looked down those stairs, sweeping a glance around the forest that stretched on either side of those steps for hundreds of meters before arcing inward toward us, edges vanishing in curving foliage.
Our surroundings were not still.
Pressure bloomed across my skin in points, here, there, dozens of them, one a vibration from a shallow inhale, one a spiked pulse from someone holding their breath, another a circuit spinning life force into mana.
They dotted the treeline on both sides, vibrations ringing across trees, and along the mountain's curve. I could feel exactly where each one stood without turning my head.
My hand came up, palm facing downward, fingers spread wide.
"All of you seem to be here for me." I slipped my other hand into my coat pocket, unhurried. "How utterly mundane. To stand here, expecting anything but your own annihilation... as if you ever had a chance."
Ink-black tattoos surfaced across my skin from beneath my collar and spread across my face. Silver traced their edges as they crawled, down my arms, across my knuckles, coiling over every inch of visible skin before vanishing beneath the coat.
"Come."
Silver threads rose from my feet, thin and perfectly vertical. Each one like a single strand of silk defying gravity.
The first thread reached shoulder height and spiralled into a ring of silver light, a circle barely wider than a fist.
Then a second. Third. Tenth.
They kept climbing and spiralling, one after another in rapid succession, each pulling the next into existence, until their rhythm blurred and everything behind me was screaming with light.
Magic circles punched open in cascading rows, each one tearing a hole overhead wider than the last, spreading past the treeline, the temple, and the mountain's curve. On and on until silver ate the forest on both sides and kept going, horizon to horizon, a river of glowing eyes blinking open across the night sky.
Behind me, the horizon had ceased to exist.
There was only silver.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Sorry for the wait. I was really busy with the Danmachi one. Honestly, Its a very ambitious project even by my standards. Storylines running underneath storylines, breadcrumbs that chain into a coherent whole if someone follows them. I think those who write these type of stories probably take six months to only set a deep storyline.
Have a wonderful day, everyone!