Rin Tohsaka truly did not know how she was supposed to feel.
Even for her, the suddenness of it all was too much.
She was still reeling from having the truth of Sakura's life as a Matou being abruptly shoved down her gullet when Lancer attacked them. She only stood and watched in silence as he, instead of adhering to the rules of the war, turned his blade on a fellow Master with no remorse. A fellow master that had helped Rin, even if slightly, deal with her own emotions at his own expense now.
If he hadn't come there for her sake, to be there to give her the news and his words of comfort, Lancer would have fought against her instead. He wouldn't be lying in a puddle-
Her body refused to move. She had to something, anything at all. Rin Tohsaka was a magus. And yet... it seemed the world itself was holding her in place.
"Master, move."
Archer put a hand on her shoulder. His easy disregard was gone with the chill wind rustling through her hair, replaced with a tentative urgency as his gaze flickered between Lancer and Henry's... Right, she was there.
That unsettling girl with the hateful eyes who had burnt down a part of the city against Berserker.
She... was calm. Eerily calm.
When Rin had seen them, the master-and-servant pair looked not like a magus and a familiar in a hesitant partnership, but a pair of old friends who often made jokes at each other's expense. She didn't treat him with the hate she had for the other servants. He didn't treat her like a servant, but an equal.
He'd never even called her his servant.
"What? Not too worried about your little master?" Lancer snorted, struggling against her strength. His spear groaned and trembled in his grasp, stuck under the weight of a cut meant to tear him from shoulder to gut.
She gave him no answer.
But, his words brought Rin to her senses.
Her eyes widened, and before she knew it, she was running to her fellow master's side. When she looked at him, her heart sank. He was too injured. The wound in his chest was mortal. He wasn't going to survive that.
No, he shouldn't even have been breathing.
He was.
The blow had clearly torn his heart to shreds.
That was instant death for any magus, no matter how accomplished.
But, he was still breathing, slowly, haggardly.
His eyes were still open. They were shimmering brightly, as though they were jewels in the sunlight.
If there was still a mere inkling of a chance at him surviving, she had to try to help him. She couldn't live with herself if she didn't do her damndest.
With pursed lips, Rin knelt by his side. She rummaged through all the precious stones she had on her person. When she found one infused with enough magical energy to actually do something, her gaze fell on his blood.
Her eyes widened.
The blood was jerking, trying to reach out with tiny tendrils to fill out the gap in his chest. The blood dirtying his clothes slowly left them, moving back towards the cavity, hair by hair. Once again, Rin couldn't understand what was before her eyes.
That tended to happen a lot with him.
In the first place, she couldn't even begin to understand this person lying before her in any capacity. He was a Sealing Designation yet acted nothing like one. No, he just behaved like a frustrating child that seemed to draw joy from getting on her nerves, behaving like he was better than her even though he was a new magus with no noble blood.
"Dog." Her eyes shot to the unknown servant Henry had summoned. "Your blow faltered, didn't it?"
She'd never learnt her name, had she?
"To begin with, one I acknowledge as mine master-" The grin that stretched her lips beyond humanity then was unmistakably one filled with cruelty and madness, "-would not be so weak as to fall to a God's disgusting offspring."
"What the hell are you on about? Have you lost your marbles now that you're fading?"
She raised her blade high, and then brought it down again. Sparks flew into the night.
"Yet, to injure one I call such is a grievous affront to myself and a ridiculous thought. You overstep, dog."
Again, she raised her blade and brought it down.
The earth shook and cracked.
Lancer pulled his spear back and thrust forth but by then a rifle had formed in the black-haired girl's hands. By then, she was already holding it against his face. Flames blew out from the muzzle, forcing Lancer to jump away lest they blow off his head.
Somehow, Rin felt the cold night grow hotter and hotter.
"You, girl. And your servant. If you cherish your flimsy lives, move as far as possible."
Archer appeared beside her.
"For this affront, I shall make this place into a hell on Earth."
"I should've expected this." Archer murmured calmly, a hand on Rin's shoulder as flames swirled around them. "She's about to-"
"As before, the heavens shall perish. All who name themselves as Divine will become soot and ash."
"Oi, didn't you just say you weren't bothered by what I did?!"
"This I declare-" She drove her blade into the earth, and placed her hands atop the golden hilt of her katana.
Wait, a katana-?
"-as the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven."
Archer groaned, Rin's eyes widened, Cu gripped his lance, and then the world was gone.
She opened her eyes to death and ruin.
Before her, a great temple rose to the sky. Flames sputtered and licked at the wood from fallen walls and tumbled pillars. Black smoke darkened the skies above. Around them, lay broken buddhas and shattered bells amidst the ruins of a grand place of worship. All else had broken down. All else burnt.
Flames spread as far as the eye could see.
No light came from the heavens above.
Yet, the flames were not so hot at all. Despite their brilliance, she felt as if suddenly she was standing outside on a warm summer day. That shouldn't have been the case. Those red-hot flames and the smoke should've made it difficult to breathe.
Henry was lying beside her too, unstrained by flames that gently licked and mischievously poked at his side.
Just... what was this place?
"A Reality Marble for a Noble Phantasm." Archer noted. "I see."
For a servant to use one wasn't as surprising, even if a Reality Marble was the crux of mystery. To deploy one, was to paint the very texture of the world with one's inner reality, an unreachable height for even the greatest of magi.
Yet, this so-called Demon King was a servant.
Her very existence defied what was possible and what was not.
That was just how heroic spirits fundamentally were.
Rin couldn't help herself, "She doesn't want to hurt us...?"
Her servant gave an idle shrug. "Beats me. That servant is particularly bipolar though, isn't she?"
He was right. She'd easily declared that she was not the least bit disturbed by her master's injury. Then, decided to unleash her Noble Phantasm for revenge.
Shaking her head, she returned her attention to Henry.
There had to be something she could do.
Beyond her, flames raged and explosions threatened deafen her. She didn't look, but she knew they came from within the temple. They were fighting in there.
Rin tried healing him again. His body rejected her efforts. So, she tried. Again. Then again, and again, wasting much of the mana she had saved up over the years, until a sudden crack broke her fervour and pillars of spiralling red flames erupted from within the temple and rose towards the blackened skies. Then, The burning temple spit out a charred mass.
A body burnt beyond all recognition.
Archer pursed his lips. Rin tore away her gaze.
Then, that world crumbled away. The cold air suddenly punched her lungs. They were out in the night once more, beside the Mion River with the Fuyuki Bridge solemnly watching over them. The body was still there though, yet the mysterious servant who declared herself something as boisterous as a Demon King remained unharmed.
She stood where she had been before as though she had not budged at all.
With that same manic grin, she dragged her blade to the burnt corpse and as she had intended before, spliced it from neck to gut in an agonizingly slow motion.
"For all your ferocity, Hound of Ulster, you were a mere footnote, as all the gods shall be. I would have liked to make you suffer more for your insolence, but my master would disagree."
When the corpse began to fade, Henry started coughing.
When it disappeared entirely, he suddenly sat up, as if he'd never been hurt.
"Goddammit, I gotta do something about curses."
"Henry-"
Rin turned, but a cloak fell over her.
When she finally removed it from her face, that black-haired demon king was holding out a clenched fist to Henry, a small smile on her face. He snorted, and bumped it with his own.
"Thanks for having my back. I got caught lacking."
"Always. For as long as I draw breath. That is our promise."
He was fine.
Rin let herself breathe.
God... things really were happening all too fast today.
-
Hope you enjoyed.
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