A tsunami.
On our tail, eating any distance between us in absolute silence, advancing at a rate that Mustang couldn't logically outpace.
Irisviel remained frozen on the main screen, an arm outstretched toward us, mouth wide open.
A grab handle above broke and slammed into Artoria's crown, shattering into pieces. She didn't react, her eyes locked on the sidemirror, on a wave that ascended across its glass, covering sky like a dark veil.
Medea glanced up at the sudden silence, then turned her head to look back through the rear windshield. Her pupils constricted, and magic circles across her arms stuttered, a few crumbling in particles.
An eerie quiet fell through the cabin, with the only sound being that of Medusa's hands fumbling around, searching for her glasses.
I snapped my gaze ahead. At the edge of horizon, another mountain loomed into being. But this was different, at its peak, jutting out of snow, was a structure framed by antenna arrays and reinforced paneling buried under decades of ice.
A research station.
My hand crushed into the steering wheel.
"Eyes forward, all of you." I said while flooring the pedal. "Hold tight."
350 mph.
Mustang's engine wailed. A high, continuous shriek that cut through the stampede's collective panic. Pistons hammered, exhaust punching a vapour trail two meters back, ripping penguins skyward, steam freezing into ice crystals around them mid-air.
Screams tore around us. Mustang shredded through bodies, beaks and blood slamming the hood in bursts. One hit our windshield dead-on, rolled up glass, belly smearing blood across it, then slid over the roof.
Gone.
Pressure hit the stampede's rear first.
A monolith of compressed air detonated through the penguins like a blast through sand. Birds at the back flung up and forward, bodies cresting and curling over each other like an erupting tide, wings still beating.
400 mph.
All of the penguins ahead us flickered. Then their bodies streaked backward along Mustang's flanks, pure drag of black feathers.
Next, ice beneath us turned transparent.
One meter it was white, the next it was glass, and through it, a world below opened up.
Rivers of ice ran in channels carved across floating islands in water, their flow locked mid-current, boulders broken off those islands suspended underwater. Air bubbles hung in clusters further down, thousands of them, scattering our headlights.
Then bodies.
Dozens of them, surfacing from dark depths where light did not reach. Massive ribcages that curved upward like giant arches, connected to spines trailing into darkness, skulls the size of our car, eye sockets empty, tusks spiraling out from jaws frozen mid-roar.
"Mammoths..." Irisviel muttered under her breath.
We passed over them, their silhouettes shrinking behind us, sealed white as ice turned opaque again.
That tide of penguins crashed where we'd been moments prior, ice sheet crumbling as they plunged inside, struggling for a breath before going limp.
The second wave came harder.
This one was black water. A surge of it, vanguard of that larger tsunami, lapping at the leftover stampede's edges, sliding around animals at the fringes and dragging them backward.
Artoria's hands shot toward the side window. Gold bled from her gauntlets and blazed along Mustang's frame.
Ahead, three seals slid into our path, shoulder to shoulder, a physical wall of flesh.
"Izuru, we're about to crash!" Irisviel's composure cracked.
"Estimated time for contact: three seconds, two—"
Medusa's eyes snapped open.
One second.
Click.
Mustang's nose swung left. Its rear drifting right, and the whole car went horizontal, tires screeching across ice, snow spraying around in a full circle that flung every nearby penguin away.
Medusa's body flipped with the car, torso twisting until she faced the side window on the far side. Cybele peered through it, locking on those seals ahead.
Their flesh turned grey, white skin writhing as it hardened, then fractured into flaking stone, their slide slowing to a crawl.
Mustang's flank hit the middle seal.
Stone detonated.
A grinding roar rattled through our cabin, dust and fragments raking across Artoria's edge in a cascade that blurred everything outside. Her door panel buckled inward two inches, and her shoulder took that impact, knee bracing against the door's interior.
Our car's nose clipped the left seal, bumper hissing past the right one, and Mustang slotted between them sideways, punching that middle seal forward.
Medusa clamped on her eyes, fingers curling around the window frame, bending metal with a groan.
I looked back through my own side window.
That wave had no edges anymore. Just water, side to side, foam bubbling along its edges as it sucked the stampede up, thousands of penguins vanishing in a single gulp.
"Irisviel, take the wheel."
I unlocked the door and shoved it wide.
"What are you—Master!?" Medea snapped her head toward me, eyes wide, arm lashing out for my sleeve.
Ignoring her, my fingers dug into the doorframe's top.
Air howled through the cabin. Medea's hair whipped back, her palm missing me as I pulled myself out, wind tearing at my coat, the world outside a cluster of dissolving shades.
My foot found the doorframe's bottom. One hand still at its top.
I pulled.
Atmosphere slammed into me. Four hundred mph of it trying to rip me off. My fingers locked around the edge, knuckles white, and I swung upward, body rolling over the doorframe, world flipping as I landed on Mustang's roof.
Silver threads crept out of my heels and slid inside the roof, melding with ones already running through its frame, and I stood.
Artoria's voice punched through, muffled by glass and speed. "MASTER!"
Black marks with silver outlines climbed across my whole body, every circuit crackling to life with abandon, lines of heat blooming ancient patterns over me.
I spread my arms.
Left toward the surge. Right toward the mountain.
My coat stopped flapping, hair dropping back on my shoulders, engine's wails dying to nothing.
I swiped my left arm downward.
Wind split with a shrr, tracing an invisible line that crossed the distance in a single frame, opening that tide. Two colossal walls of black water peeled away from a center that no longer held, each side falling outward, a thousand tons of seawater separating along a single seam.
The wave's left half collapsed sideways. Its right half followed. What had been a hill became two black slopes falling away from each other, vapour rushing into the space where a sea had been a second ago.
Behind us, penguins poured through that gap in hundreds, their bodies landing, feet slapping onto the ice floor, alive, confused, still running.
My right arm swept horizontal.
The seal split first.
Its top half divided from bottom, both pieces tumbling across our car, one rolling off the bumper, one sliding along the hood, blood splaying our headlights in a red smear that dried to black instantly.
Mustang punched through that gap between halves, and I felt the chassis rock once beneath my boots, left, right, settling.
My cut kept going.
Past the seal, beyond that stampede, further than kilometers of cracked and melting ice.
For two seconds, nothing happened.
Then ice answered.
A line opened from left to right, and the sheet ahead of us buckled along its full length. A crack across it deepened in an instant, widening from hairline to a chasm, and the ice on farther side of it lifted, water gushing out from that gap.
One slab the size of a city block tilted upward, its leading edge climbing skyward in a quake that shook the surface beneath us, nearly a dozen meters of deep water between the closer and farther side.
Below, Mustang straightened from its skid, a side door tearing free, someone hurling out and tumbling into a cluster of penguins trying to keep pace behind.
I looked back.
My hair lifted, every strand streaming toward that cluster and past my shoulders.
That cluster of penguins where one of my Servants had fallen was a mass of black bodies, pressed together, rolling over each other.
White light bled from its center.
Penguins at the edges ignited first, their feathers scattering along white fractures that traced across their bodies from nowhere. One after another, they combusted in a blaze, each one unmaking in glowing cinders that curved around a silhouette.
A hoof stepped through.
Pure white and planted on air where a penguin had been a fraction ago, glowing motes flickering around it. Then a second hoof. A leg. One wing folded against a body that was still forming, still solidifying, mane trailing vapor that froze and fell as snow.
Pegasus.
Medusa was on its back.
Her hair thrashed like Pegasus' mane, both streaming behind. Her lashes trembled, Cybele's purple gleam seeping out from between shut eyes.
Pegasus banked left, sprinting alongside Mustang's flank.
A few inches of water had risen through cracks racing on the sheet of ice beneath us.
Water peeled off Mustang's rear tires, tapering close before unfurling, spreading wide and lifting skyward. Wings of violet.
Spray peeled off Pegasus's hooves, tapering close before unfurling, lifting high and curling overhead. Wings of white.
Two pairs of wings.
Behind. Tsunami.
Ahead. Mountain.
Below. Ice.
Above. Apocalypse.
I faced ahead, hands pocketed, one foot forward.
"Finally."
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Alright. It's happening. Sword & Wheel is officially live tomorrow, Patreon exclusive for now, because apparently the world isn't ready to handle this responsibly on the open web yet, and frankly, neither am I.
Some context for the uninitiated: this is not a spinoff, nor a side project, and certainly not "The Wheel but with a haircut." This is a full ground-up rebuild. An AU DLC pack of Danmachi if you will.
And before anyone asks, no, I didn't ask permission. I did, however, fill out an homemade form, stamped it with a rubber stamp I don't own, and mailed it to an address I made up. As far as the multiverse's paperwork is concerned, we're golden.