The village, which just minutes before had been a haven of fragile peace, had transformed into a hell of screams, dust and blinding light. For Leonel Herrera, time seemed to have fractured into a series of frozen images, each one a dagger of responsibility stabbing into his conscience. He saw a child stumble as his mother dragged him toward a crevice in the rocks. He saw an old man, the same one who always wove by the fire, rise with an improvised spear, with the useless and moving determination of one defending the only thing he has left. He saw Hassan of the Cursed Arm and Hundred Faces multiply in a frenzy of shadows, trying to create a safe corridor through the chaos. And at the center of it all, feeling the hammering of his own heart against his ribs, Leonel was paralyzed. Not by fear, though that was a cold knot in his stomach, but by the overwhelming pressure of calculating every variable on a board that changed at an infernal speed. Mordred, the enemy, was already a whirlwind of red steel and murderous fury. Now, with Tristan added to the mix, it had escalated from a desperate battle to a disaster of epic proportions. The toll of his bow-harp was not a musical sound but a death sentence materializing as arrows of light capable of piercing stone as if it were paper.
"I can't stop. If I stop, they die," Leonel told himself, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second. That paralysis was a luxury he could not afford. Tezcatlipoca's voice resonated in his mind, an anchor of calm in the storm.
"Fear is a tool, Master. It warns you of danger. But if you let it take control, it will turn you into a spectator of your own defeat. Analyze, decide, act. I help you."
Leonel exhaled. His hand rose, and his Magic Circuits ignited with an inner light that coursed through him like lightning. It wasn't the first time he faced the impossible. He had fallen in London. He had risen in America. He would not allow this desert to become his grave, nor that of those he had sworn to protect. Energy flowed from his core, and beside him, Tezcatlipoca's figure fully manifested. No longer an ethereal, diffuse presence, but an imposing warrior, his golden plates catching the glow of the flames and the reflections of magic. The glyphs of "smoking mirror" and "night wind" shone on his body like tattoos of ancestral power. His presence radiated a silent authority that seemed, for an instant, to contain the chaos around him.
Just then, a silver-haired figure placed himself at his side. Bedivere, with his arm hidden beneath his armor shining with a faint light of its own, stood firm. His eyes, usually full of existential doubt, were now tempered by an iron determination. The conversation the night before, the harsh reproaches of Artoria Lancer Alter, had wrought a profound change in him. He was no longer a knight lost in the past; he was a warrior who had found a new purpose.
"Master," Bedivere said, his voice steady despite the shock. "Grant me leave to take part in this battle. I have spent too long hesitating, looking to the past. It is time for my sword to act in the present. Allow me to face them."
Leonel looked at him. He saw in his eyes the shadow of pain, but also a spark of redemption. He didn't need to say anything. He nodded, a silent and absolute command. "Go ahead, Bedivere. Keep at bay whoever you can. You are not alone."
The battle could not be fought elsewhere. That was the cruelest truth. While Cursed Arm and Hundred Faces worked to evacuate the village as quickly as possible, guiding the families toward hidden paths in the mountains, the speed of the Knights of the Round Table was relentless. There was no time for a clean withdrawal. To get the civilians out without massive collateral damage was a chimera. The fight would inevitably be in that very place, an improvised battlefield among stone huts that until a few hours ago had been homes. A smell of freshly baked bread still mingled with the acrid stench of magic and the smoke of burning beams. Leonel felt a stab of guilt. Entire families huddled in improvised shelters, their terrified gazes fixed on him, placing in that young Master a hope that weighed on him like a slab. He felt terrible for them, deeply terrible. But there was no other choice. The only way to save the majority was to wage a pitched battle right there, using their bodies and their powers as a dam against the tide of destruction.
That was when he decided to divide his forces, tracing a mental map of the battlefield with Tezcatlipoca's help. The most direct front was Mordred. The Knight of Treachery, with her crimson armor and her thirst for vengeance, was charging directly at the heart of the village. Her objective was clear: capture Leonel and annihilate anyone who got in her way. The best way to stop a rampaging Mordred was with another just as stubborn. Leonel's Mordred, the allied Saber, roared with anticipation, Clarent already drawn and her eyes shining with fierce enthusiasm. "That impostor is mine, Master! Leave her to me!"
"Go," Leonel ordered mentally. "But don't go alone. Artoria, support her. Your priority is to prevent her from activating her Noble Phantasm."
Artoria Lancer Alter, already in her battle attire, nodded once. Her dark Rhongomyniad was an omen of storm at her side. The relationship between the two was complex, a mixture of rivalry, grudging respect and an almost familial, distorted dynamic, but in combat they worked like a perfect gear. Mordred's brute force and Artoria's lethal precision were a devastating combination.
"We cannot allow that Mordred to activate her Noble Phantasm under any circumstances," Leonel said, processing the information from his memories of the game. "The Lion King has granted them blessings. Mordred's allows her to activate Clarent Blood Arthur at any moment, without charge time or preparation. It's instantaneous."
Artoria's eyes narrowed. "That makes her a first-rate threat. What is the flaw in that blessing?"
"It's self-destructive," Leonel replied. "Every time she uses her Noble Phantasm that way, it consumes a portion of her Saint Graph. It's like burning her own existence to obtain power. But from the way she fights, I doubt she cares in the slightest. She won't ration it. She'll use it without thinking of the consequences."
"Crazy bitch," Mordred muttered. "That makes her even more dangerous."
"That's precisely why I need you to keep her on the defensive. Constant, combined attacks, without giving her a breath." Leonel then turned his head. "Serenity."
A shadow materialized at his side. The assassin with poisonous skin had not left. She had been there, crouched, waiting for the moment. Her large eyes looked at Leonel with unwavering devotion. She hadn't returned to her village, or perhaps she had come back the instant she sensed the danger. No matter. Her presence was an invaluable resource.
"Go with them," Leonel ordered. "Your poison and your smoke bombs won't kill Mordred, but they'll confuse her. I need you to blind her, to make her hesitate. Our Mordred and Artoria will keep her busy in direct combat. You attack from the shadow at the key moments. Make her stagger."
"As you wish, my Master," Serenity whispered. For a fraction of a second, her gaze met Leonel's; in it was a terrifying warmth, the promise of blind obedience and infinite gratitude. The next instant, she vanished in a cloud of dark dust. Leonel felt her advance like a cold caress in his consciousness. Three attack fronts on a single target. He prayed it would be enough.
Now, the real problem. Leonel raised his eyes toward the figure dominating the heights. Tristan. His silhouette cut against the smoke was ghostly. His fingers moved over the strings of the bow-harp Failnaught like a virtuoso playing a sonata, but the melody he produced was not art, but annihilation. Arrows that never missed, that sought the weakest points, that pierced barriers and left behind a trail of disintegrated bodies. He was, without a doubt, the more dangerous of the two.
Leonel called his remaining Servants. Mash, Tamamo, Jeanne d'Arc Alter and Xuanzang Sanzang materialized beside him and Bedivere, forming a wall between the retreating civilians and the unstoppable archer. The Hassans' priority was the evacuation. Theirs was to stop Tristan.
"If my memories of the game are correct," Leonel began, as Tezcatlipoca projected data into his mind, "Tristan is an Archer. His natural weakness would be Lancers. But this is the first time we face him in this singularity, and if the divine blessings are consistent... his 'gift' will be an adaptive defense."
Bedivere frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means he's probably resistant to Lancer-class attacks," Leonel explained. "The Lion King will have given him a blessing that nullifies his enemies' natural advantage. Lancers won't do special damage to him; they become as ineffective as any other class against him."
Tamamo no Mae, her tails bristling in a state of feline alertness, processed the information. "That's insane. Then how do we hurt him?"
"Here's the catch," Leonel continued. "According to the logic of these blessings, there's always a price or an inversion. If my theory is correct, Tristan's blessing not only neutralizes his weakness to Lancers, but inverts his affinity chart. Sabers, who would normally resist his Archer attacks, will now do double damage to him... But in return, he, as an Archer, will also inflict double damage to Sabers."
A tense silence settled over the group. Bedivere tightened his lips, understanding the gravity of the situation. It was a double-edged sword. Sabers could wound him mortally, but the slightest arrow from Tristan, already lethal in itself, would destroy them with double the ease. It was a strategic curse that turned the confrontation into a death dance where the smallest mistake would be the last.
"That makes him even more dangerous than I thought," Bedivere murmured, his silver arm shining with renewed intensity. "But I don't care. I'll be the one to face him. I must."
Leonel looked at him, assessing his determination. "Alright, Bedivere. You'll be our spearhead. But don't get overconfident. We'll all attack him together. Mash, your shield is the only thing that can stop his arrows. You are our main barrier. Tamamo, I need your support spells and slowing curses. Jeanne Alter, your black fire won't be as effective due to the resistance his natural Archer class gives him, but your offensive pressure can force him to move, to break his stance. Xuanzang, your martial arts and spiritual magic will be our ace up the sleeve. You have the Caster class, so you don't fall into his advantages or weaknesses. You are a wildcard."
The nun nodded, her usually cheerful face now taut and concentrated. "I will protect my disciple and these people. May the Buddha enlighten me in this trial."
In that instant, Tezcatlipoca intervened. His voice resonated not only in Leonel's mind but in the consciousness of all his Servants, a novelty that allowed them to synchronize even faster. «Mental link at maximum bandwidth. Transmitting enemy positioning data in real time. And Master, look at this.»
A fragment of obsidian seemed to detach from Tezcatlipoca's shoulder. It floated in the air, spinning on itself, and suddenly its surface became as smooth and reflective as a perfect mirror. In it, Leonel did not see his own face. He saw Artoria Lancer Alter dodging by centimeters a slash from the enemy Mordred, while the allied Mordred punished her with a thrust in the side. The sound came muffled, as if listening through a wall, but the image was crystalline. He saw Serenity throwing a poison bomb that burst in the face of the red knight. It was a window to another battle front.
«This is new,» thought Leonel, astonished.
«I have expanded my 'observation' capacity. Before, you had to ask for a status and I would inform you verbally. Now, through these mirrors that I can generate on the battlefield, I provide you with a real-time visual image of any point you desire. This ability can expand to more mirrors, which would allow you to simultaneously supervise all the battlefields where your allies participate. It is a logical evolution of my function as a tactical navigator.»
«That's... incredibly broken,» Leonel admitted to himself, unable to avoid a shiver of pure strategic admiration. The ability of a commander to be everywhere at once, to see all fronts without having to divide his attention, was an impossible dream for any general in human history. And he had it now, in the palm of his hand. He felt overwhelmed for a moment by the potential of it, but the urgency of battle brought him back to the present. A present where Tristan's arrows swept the plaza.
The battle began with a symphony of chaos.
On the secondary front, visible through the obsidian mirror that floated beside Leonel's head, the fight against the enemy Mordred was a whirlwind. The treacherous knight launched wild slashes at her allied counterpart, the clash of the two Clarents generating crimson shockwaves that cracked the earth. "You are a pathetic imitation!" roared the enemy Mordred, her eyes injected with a fury that seemed fed by her king's own blessing. "I am the one who earned her place at the Round Table! You are nothing but a weak copy of a memory!"
"Tell me something I don't know, idiot!" the allied Mordred retorted, using her strength to deflect a lethal blow and respond with a headbutt directly to her enemy's helmet. "But at least I'm not a pet enslaved by a false king! I choose who I follow, and it's not a walking corpse!"
Artoria Lancer Alter wasted no breath on provocations. Her role was that of a patient predator. As the two Mordreds clashed in a duel of power, she retreated a few meters, wielding her dark Rhongomyniad. From the tip of the lance, a spiral of black and golden energy began to emanate. The magical pressure in the atmosphere became oppressive. Artoria did not unleash her Noble Phantasm—she didn't need it yet—but released a concentrated version of it. A dark aura, like dragon claws made of pure cursed light, projected from her lance, impacting the flank of the enemy Mordred. The energy lance blow didn't pierce cleanly; her armor absorbed much of the strike, but the force was enough to throw her back several meters, crashing her into a stone wall that collapsed over her.
"Agh! Damn you, 'Father'!" the enemy Mordred spat, using that term with a venom more corrosive than Serenity's own.
That was when the Assassin went into action. At the exact moment Mordred was wrenching herself free of the rubble, four poisoned knives sliced through the air from two different directions. The knight managed to deflect two with her sword, but the other two embedded themselves in the gaps of her armor, at the joint of the elbow and the hollow of the knee. The poison wasn't lethal to a Servant, especially one with such high endurance, but its secondary effects were immediate: a muscle spasm that made her lose her balance for a second. A smoke bomb burst at her feet, enveloping her in a black, acrid cloud that blinded her senses. Serenity, invisible, danced around her like a ghost, applying surgical pressure at the precise moments.
Leonel's Mordred did not miss the opportunity. With a battle cry, she charged Clarent with crimson energy and delivered an ascending slash that caught the enemy in the torso, lifting her off the ground. Mordred's armor held, but the impact left her breathless. She was being overwhelmed, not by pure strength, but by an impeccable tactical combination. Three completely different combat styles, synchronized to perfection by Leonel's mental orders channeled through Tezcatlipoca. The enemy Mordred roared with frustration. She tried three times to activate her Noble Phantasm, her Clarent Blood Arthur, to sweep them all away in a single blow. But every time the sword began to emit the characteristic crimson glow of her ultimate attack, something interrupted her. A blast of energy from Artoria, a direct thrust from the other Mordred to her arm, or a rain of knives from Serenity. Keeping her on the defensive was exhausting, but it was working. The battle on that front was, for now, firmly controlled.
What was not controlled at all was the main front. The front where Tristan was.
Bedivere was the first to launch himself into the attack. His body, enhanced by Tamamo's magic and the determination to redeem himself, moved with a speed and grace not seen before. His silver arm became a shield and his sword a sting, charging against Tristan's elevated position. The Knight of Lamentation, however, remained unperturbed. With terrifying calm, his fingers plucked a single string. An arrow of light, fine as a hair, shot through the air toward Bedivere's heart. The knight managed to deflect it with his silver arm, but the force of the impact staggered him.
"You," Tristan said, his voice a sad, distant melody that rose above the din of combat. His fingers caressed Failnaught gently. His gaze, when it settled on Bedivere, showed no surprise, but a deep, infinite disappointment. A sadness so dense it seemed to cloud the air around him. "Bedivere. The knight of the silver arm. The one who did not return the sword."
Bedivere tensed. Those words were an echo of his own guilt. "Tristan... I..."
"There is nothing to say," Tristan interrupted, plucking three strings at once. The three arrows described impossible parabolas, evading Mash's barrier and seeking the civilians still running in the distance. "Your mistake doomed our king. Because of your weakness, the Arturia we knew clung to existence, and in her agony, took up the lance. You were her closest friend. You were the most loyal. And it was you who destroyed her. What you see now, this divine monster that judges without mercy... is your creation. You forged the Lion King with your disobedience."
Tristan's words were an attack more devastating than his arrows. Leonel, who watched the scene with his heart in his throat, knew it. He knew the story of the Camelot Singularity. Bedivere had not disobeyed out of malice. Artoria Pendragon, dying after the Battle of Camlann, had ordered him to return Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake so she could finally die and rest in peace. But Bedivere, seeing his king, his best friend, bleeding out, unable to accept her death, fled with the sword instead of delivering it. That decision, born of the purest and most selfish love, condemned her to an un-life, to a purgatory of centuries wandering as the King of Storms. In normal timelines, Artoria would become a Heroic Spirit, but in this one, in this distortion, that refusal to die led her to take up Rhongomyniad completely, losing her humanity in the process. Bedivere had been wandering for 1500 years, waiting to redeem his mistake. And now, his sin was being thrown in his face by his former comrade.
"What, you have nothing to say?" asked Mordred, the enemy, who from her battle front had also seen Bedivere and added her voice to the condemnation. Her tone, unlike Tristan's, was not sad but cruel. "You were always useless, Bedivere! Father's favorite! The perfect one! And look at you now! The one responsible for all this disaster! At least I was always honest with my hatred! You destroyed Arturia with your love!"
The psychological attack was perfect. Leonel, through the link, could feel how Bedivere's determination faltered. His movements became more erratic, his defenses less precise. An arrow from Tristan grazed his cheek, leaving a thin cut from which blood flowed. Another struck his shoulder, and though the armor stopped full penetration, the impact dislocated the joint with an audible crunch.
"Bedivere, keep your focus!" Leonel shouted, but his words were slow compared to the speed of combat. Tristan, seeing his opponent's hesitation, shifted his attention. His fingers flew over the strings, sending a volley of multiple arrows at the rest of the group.
Mash interposed herself, her Lord Camelot shining with a white radiance. "You shall not pass!" Tristan's arrows impacted against the barrier, and for the first time, Leonel saw Mash drop to one knee. Each arrow against her shield was like the hammering of a giant. They did not pierce, but the kinetic energy transferred to her body, making her tremble from head to toe. "They are... so heavy!" she groaned.
"His arrows are not just light," Tezcatlipoca analyzed in Leonel's mind. "He transfers his pain, his guilt, and his sadness into each projectile. It's a spiritual and physical attack simultaneously. That's why Mash's shield is suffering. It's not just blocking magic; it's blocking the curse of his legend."
Tamamo, seeing Mash in trouble, unfurled her tails in all their splendor. "Eightfold Prayer Spell: Barrier of Ephemeral Eternity!" A sapphire force field, adorned with Shinto talismans, superimposed itself on Mash's shield, creating a double defense. Her fingers traced seals in the air. "I'll also cast a slowing spell on him!" From her talismans, a viscous mist projected toward Tristan, seeking to numb his muscles.
But Tristan was a master of his art. He played a fast melody, an ascending scale on his harp, and the arrows he emitted created a vortex of wind around him that dispersed the mist. It was as if his music could dictate reality. "Nice try, sorceress," he murmured disdainfully, spinning on himself to dodge a pillar of black fire that Jeanne Alter had launched from his flank.
"Damn it! He's too fast!" roared the Avenger, gripping her sword and throwing herself into the attack. Her fighting style was the antithesis of Tristan's elegance: wild, abrasive and brutal. She launched thrust after thrust, each one enveloped in the flames of hatred that consumed her Saint Graph. But Tristan, without even looking at her, moved between her attacks like a spectral dancer, plucking his harp to launch counterattacks at her blind spots. Jeanne Alter blocked one arrow with her sword, but the shockwave pushed her back several meters, her boots leaving furrows in the earth.
"It's useless. We can't get close enough," the Avenger said, grinding her teeth. "He knows exactly where to attack."
That was when Xuanzang Sanzang entered the fray. The nun, who had been channeling her energy into a mantra, opened her eyes. Her palms, pressed together in a salute, tinged with a golden color. "Secret Technique: Palm of Enlightenment!" She launched a palm strike into the air, and from her hands emerged a giant replica of her own arm, made of golden light, which projected toward Tristan like a guided missile. The Knight of Lamentation, for the first time, seemed surprised. The palm of light was an attack that didn't fall into any of the categories his blessing affected; it was pure energy imbued with the faith of a saint, a conceptual attack more than a physical one. Tristan was forced to interrupt his melody and leap backward to dodge it, and the palm of light struck the rock formation where he had been standing, pulverizing it. The knight landed several meters away, his white cape stained with dust.
"Well done, nun!" Jeanne Alter shouted, with a fierce smile. "At least you're good for something besides distracting our Master!"
"I do not distract him! I instruct him!" Xuanzang retorted, a faint blush on her cheeks that didn't come from the effort of combat. But there was no time for arguments. Tristan rose, impassive, and his gaze fixed on Leonel. A shiver ran down the Master's back.
"The last Master of humanity," Tristan said, his fingers resting on the longest string of his harp, the one that produced the deepest tone. "Your empathy is your weakness. You care so much for your allies, for those pathetic civilians, that you forget the true scale of this war. Let me free you of that burden." He drew the string to the limit, aiming directly at Leonel's command post. He knew that killing the Master would dissolve all contracts and make the Servants disappear. It was the most logical strategy.
"Senpai!" Mash shouted, trying to move her barrier to cover him.
But it was too late. The arrow shot forth with a mournful toll.
Time seemed to slow down for Leonel. He saw the arrow approaching, a bolt of pure light containing enough energy to vaporize him. Tezcatlipoca, without need for a verbal order, manifested in front of him, his golden plates shining with maximum intensity. «It will not pass.»
The impact was cataclysmic. The arrow collided with Tezcatlipoca's chest and exploded in a burst of blinding light. The shockwave threw Leonel to the ground, scraping his back against the gravel. His ears rang, but he was alive. Tezcatlipoca had absorbed the attack, but the Persona had become translucent, flickering like a candle about to go out. The mana cost had been brutal.
"Master, are you alright?" Tezcatlipoca asked, his voice sounding weak for the first time.
"Yes... you... rest a second," Leonel panted, feeling his Magic Circuits burn like overloaded cables. He got to his knees, desperately searching for a solution, a chink to exploit. He watched Tristan, already preparing to launch another volley. He watched Bedivere, who had risen despite his dislocated arm, his face a mask of guilt and fury.
And then, everything stopped.
Not because someone ordered it, but because the world itself fell mute. Leonel felt a shift in atmospheric pressure, as if a gigantic hand were pressing down on the landscape. The wind stopped blowing. The flames seemed to shrink. And a light, a cold, white light, began to grow in the sky above the distant silhouette of the city of Camelot. It wasn't large at first, just a bright point like an artificial star, but in a matter of seconds it grew exponentially, feeding on the ambient magic, until it became a sphere of light the size of a moon, surrounded by concentric rings of golden particles. The sphere elongated, taking a cylindrical, lethal shape, slowly rotating in the sky as its tip oriented itself, with divine and monstrous precision, toward them. Toward the village.
It was the magic of the lance. The true Rhongomyniad. The absolute power of the Lion King, the goddess who held the anchor of the world. It was not a Noble Phantasm unleashed by just any Servant. It was the manifestation of a pillar of reality itself, a lance that in the game could wipe an entire city off the map in a single attack. Its size was colossal, eclipsing the morning sun, and the energy it emitted was so pure and terrifying that the refugees stopped running and simply fell to their knees, unable to process what they were seeing.
Hassan of the Cursed Arm was the first to react from the distance. "The Sacred Lance! The Final Judgment of the Lion King! It's aimed at this place! It's going to eradicate us from the face of the earth!"
Mordred, the enemy, let out a laugh despite being cornered. "Too late, impostors! The king has decided this plague of insects must be eliminated! There's no escape!"
Tristan, for his part, simply closed his eyes. "A final song for those hearts that beat. A blessing. A beautiful death under the king's light."
Leonel felt his heart leap out of his chest. Panic, raw and primitive panic, threatened to paralyze him again. He had forgotten this. In the tension of the battle, in his concentration on the strategies against Mordred and Tristan, in the emotion of the rescue, he had forgotten that the Lion King did not hesitate to use her most powerful weapon to eliminate threats from a distance. The Rhongomyniad in the sky was not a warning, it was a scheduled execution. In a matter of seconds, that pillar of light would fall, and everything for kilometers around—the village, the refugees, his Servants, himself—would become scattered atoms. His entire journey, his plans, his wedding promises... would end here, erased by the indifference of a deity.
But despair was a luxury, and he could not afford it. His strategic mind, driven by adrenaline, launched into motion at dizzying speed. They couldn't run. The radius was too large. They couldn't block it. Not even Lord Camelot, with all its conceptual power, could completely stop an attack of that magnitude without Mash fading away. There was only one option, as outlandish as the situation itself. Counter the sacred lance with another lance.
«Artoria!» he shouted mentally through the bond, his order resonating in the mind of Lancer Alter with the force of a command seal without needing to activate one. «Return right now! Now!»
In the obsidian mirror, he saw Artoria Lancer Alter hesitate for a thousandth of a second. Her gaze tore away from the enemy Mordred and rose toward the sky, toward the divine power growing above them. Her expression showed no fear, but a cold and absolute recognition. She saw the divine Rhongomyniad and, in her golden eyes, a flame of pride and defiance ignited. Without a word, she abandoned the combat; her figure became a streak of dark energy that crossed the battlefield in an instant.
She landed beside Leonel, her spectral mount materializing beneath her with a ghostly neigh. "Master."
"There's no time," Leonel said, fixing his eyes on hers. The wind from the compression of the lance in the sky was already whipping their clothes, lifting dust and rubble around them. "With your own Rhongomyniad, can you erase that? Can you match that destructive power?"
Artoria Lancer Alter assessed the mass of energy in the sky. It was a calculation of power. Her Rhongomyniad, her own, was a dark, cursed version of the lance. It was incredibly powerful, capable of laying waste to fortresses. But the Lion King's... was a needle spun with the essence of the end of the world, one of the anchors that held the texture of reality. The difference in scale was monstrous, like comparing a frigate's cannon to the orbital cannon of a space fortress. Artoria knew it. And yet, her response was immediate, without a shred of doubt.
"Normally, no," she said, dismounting from her steed and planting her feet firmly on the ground, gripping her dark lance. The black armor seemed to absorb the light around her. "She is a goddess on her throne, and her lance is the pillar of the world. I am a tyrant king of storms. Our existences are in different leagues of power." She paused, and her next phrase resonated with the authority of a monarch who has never accepted her limitations. "But I can do it if I have enough power to overload my lance beyond its natural limits. To drive my Saint Graph to the brink of collapse."
"What do you need?" Leonel asked, his mind already a step ahead of his words.
"At least two Command Seals," Artoria replied, without taking her eyes off the sky. "The magic of a Command Seal can work miracles, can allow a Servant to transcend her conceptual limits once. One seal would give me the power to fire my Rhongomyniad at maximum potency. Two seals... would allow me to create a counterattack with the same conceptual energy as hers. It would not be a dark Rhongomyniad, but a direct negation of hers. Light against darkness. Anchor against storm." Her golden eyes sought Leonel's. "But be aware of what you are sacrificing. These seals are finite."
Leonel did not hesitate for an instant. The stain of light in the sky was already beginning its descent, a pillar of annihilation whistling as it tore through the atmosphere. He stood up and raised his right hand, where the three command seals, of an intense crimson red, shone on the back of his hand like tattoos of absolute power. They were a gift from Chaldea, proof of his pact with humanity's destiny. To use one was a major tactical decision. To use two at once was an act of faith.
"By the power of my Command Seals," Leonel pronounced, and his voice boomed with a force not entirely human. The first seal on his hand began to burn with a scarlet light, and the pain was immediate, as if they were tearing a piece of his soul out through his skin. "I order you, Artoria Pendragon: Unleash all your power!"
The seal's energy flowed from Leonel's hand to Artoria's body like a cascade of liquid fire. Lancer Alter tensed, her black armor shining with cracks of red energy. Her Saint Graph expanded forcibly, her spiritual container pushed to the limit by an absolute order. Dark Rhongomyniad roared in her hands, releasing a black aura that rose in a pillar twin to the one falling from the sky.
Leonel did not stop. The second seal began to glow. "I command you a second time! Destroy the sacred lance! Surpass your limits and make your attack equal that of that false goddess!"
The second command seal vanished, consumed in a crimson blaze. Artoria let out a scream. It was not of pain, but of pure, concentrated power. The pillar of dark energy emanating from her lance compressed, sharpened, and stabilized. It ceased to be a release of raw energy and became an impossibly dense and long dark lance, of the same pattern as the divine lance but opposite in its nature. Where the Lion King's light represented judgment, purity and divine sterility, the darkness of Artoria Lancer Alter represented the storm, rebellion, and the defiance of a human soul that refuses to disappear. The sky split into two hemispheres: one of blinding white, the other of absolute black that absorbed the light of the stars.
"Come on, Father... show them who's in charge," murmured Mordred, the ally, watching the scene from her position; even the enemy Mordred had fallen silent, contemplating the clash of powers about to take place. Tristan had stopped playing his harp. Bedivere, with his dislocated arm hanging, remained on his knees, his eyes full of tears fixed on the dark Artoria, seeing in her a distant and terrible reflection of his king. "Arthur..."
"Now! Fire!" Leonel ordered, with the last drop of air in his lungs.
Artoria Lancer Alter planted her lance toward the sky and shouted the name of her Noble Phantasm with a voice that resonated in the mountains like thunder: "RHONGOMYNIAD... STORM KING!"
The dark lance shot upward, a column of impossible obsidian. Simultaneously, the sacred lance of the Lion King accelerated its descent. Both, the divine and the dark, met at a point between heaven and earth, over the hollow mountains. The collision was not a sound; it was a sensory cataclysm. First, the most absolute silence Leonel had ever experienced, and then, an apocalyptic blast. A white-and-black flash that seared the retina of everyone present, followed by a shockwave that swept the landscape with the fury of a thousand hurricanes. The earth shook like a raft at sea. Huge cracks snaked through the rock of the mountains. Boulders the size of huts were torn loose and hurled like pebbles. The air became a whip of dust and energy that dragged everything in its path: small animals, tents, plants, laundry on lines. The refugees farther away threw themselves to the ground, clinging to whatever they could, as a hurricane wind howled over their heads. The secondary shockwaves shook the terrain at regular intervals, like the beats of a furious heart. In the sky, the two twin pillars, one white and one black, fought to annihilate each other in a vortex of energy that tore the fabric of space. The concentric rings of the divine lance tried to crush the dark core, but it expanded like a black supernova, negating the light.
Leonel, shielding his eyes with his arm, felt his mana drain to the last drop. It was as if they were sucking the marrow from his bones. Artoria, her teeth clenched, kept her lance raised, channeling every ounce of the two command seals, her body turned into a mere conduit for a force that threatened to disintegrate her. Her feet sank half a meter into the rock, creating a crater around her.
"I... will not... yield to a false god!" Artoria roared, and with one final push of will, the darkness swallowed the light.
The Lion King's sacred lance imploded. The divine energy was not destroyed, but absorbed and nullified by Artoria's dark storm, which expanded into a dome of shadows over the mountain range before slowly dissipating, as if it had never existed. Both lances vanished from the firmament, leaving behind a strangely clean sky, cleared of clouds and dust, with a blue that was offensive in its tranquility. The sudden silence was as overwhelming as the noise had been before. All that could be heard was the crunch of earth settling, the rumble of stones rolling downhill, and, if one strained the ear, the lament of the wind through the newly formed cracks.
Artoria Lancer Alter let her lance fall a second before she fell herself to one knee. Her breathing was heavy, ragged. Her armor was smoking. But, incredibly, she was alive. Leonel also fell to the ground, onto his hands and knees, gasping like a dying animal. His vision blurred with exhaustion; he could barely feel his limbs. His magic was almost depleted, an empty reserve aching like a torn muscle. Tezcatlipoca had completely withdrawn, reduced to a minimal presence in his consciousness so as not to drain a single extra scrap of energy.
"We... did it," Mash whispered, her own barrier fading as she slumped seated to the ground, exhausted by the psychic effort of standing firm under the pressure.
But victory, though real, had a bitter taste. They had not defeated the Knights. Far from the mountain settlement, hidden by the gloom of a ravine, Tristan and the enemy Mordred watched the cleared sky with somber expressions. They were wounded, their armor dented and their Saint Graphs damaged, but they were still a lethal threat. The enemy Mordred spat blood on the ground and let out a curse. She had been so close to capturing her prize.
"Impossible," Mordred said, her voice vibrating with incredulity and rage. "Father... the Lion King... her lance was stopped. No one can stop the lance."
Tristan, in contrast, smiled in a way that didn't reach his eyes. It was a sad, melancholic smile, as full of sorrow as his arrows. "And yet there it is. An Artoria who embraces darkness. An echo of what our king could have been. It's... moving. And terrifying. We have fulfilled our king's task: to test the enemy. Now we know they are more dangerous than we imagined." He fell silent, stroking the strings of his harp, which still vibrated weakly. "Let us return to Camelot. We shall report this. Next time, it will not be just the two of us."
They vanished in particles of golden light, leaving behind only death and destruction.
Back in what remained of the village, Leonel, still on his knees and with his chest heaving from irregular breathing, raised his eyes. They had survived. But as he watched the refugees emerge from their hiding places, their faces marked by absolute terror, as he watched the Hassans count their dead, as he watched Artoria Lancer Alter try to rise with a stoicism that only she possessed, a cold, hard truth like steel settled in his stomach.
This event, this attack that they had barely managed to repel by spending two of their most precious resources, had been nothing more than a warning. A probe. The Lion King had wanted to test their strength, and now she knew they had power to defend themselves. The next attack would not be with two knights. It would be with all of Camelot. The lance in the sky had been a message, and Artoria's response, a beacon revealing their position and their potential for threat.
They could not wait any longer. They could not hide any longer. The strategy of a war of attrition against an enemy with infinite resources was a death sentence. If they wanted any chance of winning, they needed power, and they needed it now. The option of an alliance with Ozymandias, which until then had been a preference in their war plan, became in that very instant an absolute and urgent necessity. They had to have the faction of the Divine Pharaoh on their side, at any cost. It was not an option. It was the only line between survival and total annihilation.