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012 - Kill it with fire

Tohsaka Rin

Two hours of intense work later, I'm sitting on a stone bench near the Matou mansion. There's nobody in the house, Matou Zouken in particular can't be located by any means at my disposal, magical or mundane. The wards of the mansion are malicious and actively hostile, so I haven't been able to investigate inside. The presence of Crest Worms within its walls cannot be confirmed.

I don't dare pit Archer's relatively low [Magic Resistance] against what could easily be Greater Rituals, so I can't just send her inside for me either.

Instead, I deploy a Bounded Field all around the property. It's something all Second Owners should know how to do. It won't… contain a tide of starving magical maggots if it comes to that, but it will prevent anyone outside the area from noticing weird events taking place inside. It wasn't exactly easy to do this on short notice, but that's what I get for failing to summon Saber.

That bullshit [Altreactor] would've let her dance in and out the place while ignoring any and all traps and defences. I take a glance at the cute little girl sitting beside me, humming some random tune and kicking her legs distractedly, and I'm forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, I don't mind it so much after all.

"Right… that's that, I think." I finally speak out once I finally get my breath back under control. "Archer, if Emiya-kun's intel is correct, Crest Worms will start pouring from the mansion in… ten minutes or so."

Archer's stance goes from idly distracted to laser focus in the blink of an eye, nodding seriously at Rin's words.

"If and when that happens, we are going to need that mansion gone to the foundations, overpowering the wards and any structural barrier while making sure nothing inside survives." I continue, before hesitating a bit. I don't want to doubt my Servant, but… "Think you can handle that?"

She should, Archer's Noble Phantasm is supposed to be capable of destroying 'anything and everything'. And if she can't… let's say I'll just have to go Fahrenheit 451 on any straggler. But that's not something I'm in any hurry to go through. If only I've had time to set a proper kill field, at least I wouldn't have to get up close and personal with the smell of burnt maggot, but such is life.

"Of course, Master." Archer nods seriously, moonlight reflecting on her red eyes as she stares straight into the mansion. "There's nothing I cannot destroy."

There should be something unnerving, I reflect, in such a cute and small girl saying things like that and absolutely meaning them. Instead I have to hold back the urge to pat her head and praise her as a good girl.

Is this gap moe? It's totally unfair!

I'm still reflecting on this when the sun goes down and the feeling of the place… changes. It's nothing immediately obvious. No rumbling of thunder, no ominous music or drums echoing from the depths, but there's something that makes my finely tuned supernatural senses go haywire with the feeling of danger.

To my right, I notice Archer tense up in my peripheral vision and have to raise a hand to signal her to wait. There's something wrong alright, but it's still too soon to jump the gun, we don't know yet whether—

That's when I hear the noises, the screeching and skittering of countless small creatures in the dark, slamming into my hindbrain with the force of a sledgehammer and urging me to run, to flee. To get away from the tide of rot and maladies rushing at me from the depths below, carrying the sickness of long-dead carrion.

But I'm a proud magus, and instincts are things to crush under heel for me. So I stand my ground, holding back the urge to step back and doing my level best to keep the blood from draining from my face. And then, I can finally see them.

They spill from everywhere at once. Doors, windows, drain pipes, sewer manholes, ventilation shafts, chimneys… everywhere. The mansion gets swallowed whole by the wave of vaguely-phallic worms full of teeth and barbs that swiftly proceeds to flow outwards.

Well... shit!. When I said 'Tide of carnivorous magical maggots' wasn't wasn't expecting the 'Tide' part to be literal.

"Crapcrapcrapcrap!" I curse urgently, poise and dignity swiftly forgotten before the unnatural manifestation of fears best left buried deep within the human psyche. "Kill it Archer! Kill it all dead!"

"I am Destruction." Archer's voice is still cool and collected, raising her shortbow to the skies with a calm that feels unbearably slow to my adrenaline-flooded mind. "I bring forth nothing. I bless nothing. I save nothing. I only erase... completely. [Star of Tears, Photon Ray]"

Archer's small bow shoots a single, laser-like red arrow towards the sky, and a column of raw destruction comes down in answer, bathing the mansion and the grounds around in pure, undiluted power. I can feel the wards breaking down under that intense pressure all the way from here, whatever contingencies and countermeasures overwhelmed by the straightforward destructive power unleashed on them.

More surprising, maybe, is the relatively minor drainage from my prana reserves. Somehow, Altera's Noble Phantasm is absurdly economical on top of it's utterly ridiculous destructive power. Now, if only I could find a way to talk the enemy Servants into sitting down and waiting a minute or two for the big-ass pillar of light to rain on them from the sky, this War would be a cinch.

The urge to smile like a loon overpowers me, satisfaction and relief mixing with adrenaline in an explosive cocktail of pure glee. Monsters, magic, the very land… Nothing can stand in the way of Archer, my Archer. With something like this as a trump card, I don't need to worry about strategy and tactics. Only need to locate the enemy base and…

And…

Cooler tempers reign as I imagine what, exactly, would happen if I get trigger-happy with Archer's Noble Phantasm. There is a reason why it's very description includes a warning, after all. I'll need to make sure there's no collateral damage. Not all of my rivals are going to be nice enough to live in isolated mansions with wide clear areas around, after all.

Plus, any Master who has seen the fireworks here and knows me in the slightest will kidnap a handful of innocents to keep inside their workshop. And with that my advantage will be gone. Because I might be a first rate magus, but I have standards. And those will unfortunately play against me in this War.

"Enemy destroyed." Archer's cool voice pulls me from my thoughts and back into the present. "Next target?"

I turn to face my Servant. My small and adorable Servant who, in spite of her calm voice, is looking at me with barely contained relish, practically vibrating in place.

"Nothing more for now. Good job, Archer." I smile, patting her head softly and delighting in the way her eyes close in pure bliss at the simple gesture. "Let's go back home and get something to eat, shall we?"

That's one crisis dealt with. Of course, Shinji's miraculous reveal as a Master means my theories about Emiya-kun's 'faction' need to be rethought. Unless both Sakura and Shinji are Masters? Strictly speaking, and considering Shinji is likely to be cheating somehow, that's certainly a possibility.

But that's something I'll deal with tomorrow, and will hopefully involve sniffing down and eliminating the mysterious Master attacking Homurahara. Speaking of which… Emiya-kun, his sister, maybe Sakura, Shinji, herself and maybe the mysterious Master too, assuming he's not one of the above.

That's between four and six Masters involved with the school. Is there something in the water or what?