Rider watched as her target struggled.
She didn't lie one bit about respecting his bravery. Though the brat could've opted to submit in the face of what was obviously a stronger opponent, the redheaded young man's determination was something to admire.
A shame that he chose to spit in the face of her mercy.
Knife after the blade, curved slender swords nary a meter long and more pelted her. But being a Servant, such mortal weapons could do no harm. The boy may have employed a creative use of his craft, but it lacked the power, the bite to wound a Servant. It was certainly an annoyance though.
"Trace… ON!"
One of the newly spawned blades caught Rider's special eye. Catching it between her fingers, she kicked the ground hard, sending the boy sprawling back as a crater formed between them. Upon stopping his endless wave of projected steel, she studied the dagger that had her magic eye instinctively alerting her. But upon looking down, she noticed the redness of her hand, a wet and slimy feeling in her fingers.
She was bleeding.
'What the…?' She took notice of the blade, black and wickedly sharp. Far better than those he threw at her earlier. But there was an eerie feeling to it. It was almost—nay. It was definite as soon as her eyes caught the wisps of darkness. Wisps of hate that craved to hurt her skin by contact alone. 'How did a child come to learn to project cursed magic?'
"T-Trace—!"
Rider wasted no time snapping the dagger in half. The projection vanished like the rest, but its source and make had her more alert than before. More cursed daggers appeared. Some of them carry more of the cursed dark energy than before. But all that stopped when, with one foot, she kicked a nearby cabinet at the corner where the boy had been hiding from.
"GAH!" CRASH.
She heard a yelp of a brat getting clobbered by a half-broken dresser, preventing him from firing more blades at her.
'Quite the anomaly. Perhaps there are those who possess magic capable of hurting Servants in the modern age after all.' She commented to herself. Once again, silence befell the ruined shed as the brat's attacks ceased entirely. Then, suddenly, she felt it. A pulse of mana emanated from the dark corner of the ruined shed.
It was a familiar hum of power. After all, she too answered its call once before. Light began to shine from the dark corner of the broken shed.
'A Servant Summoning?' Manifesting her own blade, she rushed in to end the problem before it could manifest. The swiftness of a crimson bolt of lightning trailed after her. What it clashed against was a darkness that didn't budge one bit against the force of a thunderbolt. "Kuh…."
A blackened sword held her back. It wasn't the boy's. No. Though it had a darkness about it, there was a clear difference between this blade and the daggers he'd thrown from its regal aura alone.
Where the cursed daggers were imbued with hate akin to gnashing teeth, the black sword adorned with regal purple filigree was a just and indifferent darkness.
"Begone."
The one who wielded the weapon muttered quietly, almost annoyed. Rider's instincts compelled her to retreat and she did. It was just in time as the air about the newcomer suddenly became heavy and imposing. Through her eye, she watched the mana permeating in the air become a solid wave that pushed outward, cracking the already broken rooftop but repelling the debris outward leaving the newcomer to bask under the moon's spotlight.
A young woman, blonde and pale, stared at her with golden orbs. Clad in dark armour that shone with purple lustre under the moon's hallowed blue, a black knight stood guard. While her features were one reserved for regal beauty, her expression was of cold apathy. One that had Rider instinctively thinking of her king.
Not in that they shared a likeness but for the fact that her new opponent seemed to be his complete opposite. Cold, distant, ruthless.
"And who might you be, stranger?" Rider readied her sword, contemplating whether she should call her chariot. "You don't happen to be the brat's Servant, are you?"
"Servant… me?" The black knight's expression softened a bit. As though snapping out of a trance, she spared a glance to the boy behind her who, Rider finally noticed, was staring at the knight with a dumbstruck expression until the knight finally spoke. "You… Are you… my Master…?"
The boy's expression stiffened upon being addressed before glancing back to his Command Seals and the etchings on the floor that soon faded of all the Grail magic's light. Assessing the situation swiftly, Rider came to the conclusion that the brat might not have intentionally summoned for one but accidentally triggered an already-prepared glyph.
Of all the machinations of Fate, she just had to have stumbled on the most ridiculous one. A shame. She was so close to resolving this without a fight too.
Well, she was getting bored sniffing out mice anyway.
"While I'd prefer to not cut in and ruin the moment, I'm of the mind to nip problems in the bud." Levelling her sword in a ready stance, Rider summoned a crackle of lightning to travel down her steel. "Please, step aside. I'm under orders to confiscate the brat's Command Seals. I won't kill him, but I can't let him go with them still attached to a potential nuisance."
The blonde knight's gaze returned to meet Rider's own. And though she appeared to be lost earlier, there was a steeliness to her gaze now, as well as a firm warning as she kept her black sword up. The regal sheen of the dark blade suddenly instilled Rider with a clue as to her identity, causing the heterochromatic woman to grit her teeth at her worsening luck.
"Leave. Else I cut you down where you stand." The knight stated flatly with a scowl.
"Afraid I can't do that, King of Knights," Rider muttered back equally unamused. "I may have planned to spare the boy, but allowing a Servant as powerful as you to join in on the fun is detrimental for me in many ways. For that, your Master will have to die. Nothing personal, kid." She threw the offhand comment to the boy and threw a smirk at her opponent. "You'd do the same if you knew you couldn't win by fighting directly, no, Saber?"
The answer was not in words. Instead, it was an almost instantaneous slash to her head. In the process of attempting to block it, and subsequently being pushed back by the force of the swing, one thought ran through Rider's mind.
'Ah… shit… Did I piss her off?'
CRASH
With a thunderous sound that almost couldn't be muffled by the residence's Boundary Field, Rider crashed into the earth to form a crater several meters deep almost pushing past the firewall and spilling into the street. A relief, considering having to avoid causing a commotion for the normal folk was a task that her Master insisted upon.
Be that as it may, it seems her foe did not get that memo as she flew out of the shed in one leap and brought down her sword on Rider's head.
'Ah, I hate hotheads…' Calling upon her chariot, the wyverns swiftly manifested mere meters from her left already moving at speed. Reaching out to grab the reins, she was immediately dragged to the side, evading Saber's head-splitting slash as it deepened the crater. So much so that something underground must've exploded for a spout of water suddenly gushed out to rain over the property.
So much for keeping the war a secret.
"S-Saber!" The boy Master stumbled out of the shed, seemingly perplexed at the violence taking place. "S-Saber! Stop this! Stop already!"
"Stay back, Master! You will just get in the way." The blonde knight spared him one look before turning her attention towards Rider in the air as she circled above them. "This one knows too much. She cannot be allowed to leave!"
Rider smirked, spotting a chance to taunt a chase. "What's wrong, King of Knights? Is your fame too much to handle? Worry not, I won't dare ask for an autograph. But do be pleased, I will share our wonderful encounter with everyone else I meet. It's not every day I get to cross swords with the famed King Arthur and live to tell the tale!"
"That is if you live…" Rider could've missed it had Saber not hissed it with such disdain. Dark energies started to form around her sword, whipping up a maelstrom of mana that had Rider beading with sweat. "Let's make it interesting, Rider. Come and claim the honour of being my first kill!"
She'd rather not. With her class's base stats, getting out of the way of whatever that was would be child's play. After all, only the biggest of idiotic fools with kingly levels of stupidity would dare try ramming against that head-on. She scoffed at the notion of being the one to claim that title.
"Hmph, as entertaining as your proposition sounds, my overly pessimistic Master has ordered me to cut meetings with problematic opponents short. Worry not, we'll see each other again, I'm sure." Cracking the reins of her skeletal wyverns, she spared the dark knight and her equally curious Master one more glance. Specifically with her glinting magic eye. "Until next time, girlie! You as well, boy!"
Upon reaching a fair distance in the skies, Rider dematerialized her chariot and body to rush back to base.
'Master… We have a problem.' The immediate response on the other end of the telepathic bond was a sigh. That and probably a deep inhalation of a cigarette but Faker had already given up stopping the man's bad habits. 'Also, I'm curious. Do you magi often utilize cursed magecraft?'