Violet and gold flashed, melding together in a burst of white that illuminated the whole forest, overpowering sight, sound and touch.
When it died down, a golden ship hovered above both Artoria and Medea, its emerald wings casting a glow over the overturned soil below.
Artoria tightened her grip on Invisible Air as that ship began to float down at an unhurried pace.
Hum. Hum. Hum.
The magic circles behind Medea started to interlock with one another, fusing into an enormous, singular construct composed of countless smaller rings.
Vimana descended and halted an inch above the ground, hovering there for a moment. Then its hull began to dissolve into particles of molten light. Its body followed—wings flanking its sides dissolving into emerald specks in turn.
Step.
The thud of a footstep resounded from within those specks of amber and green, followed by another, and another.
Flakes of gold and green parted as Gilgamesh walked out, eyes trained on Artoria with open appreciation, ignoring Medea and her enormous magic circle aimed directly at him.
"Well now, we meet again, Saber."
He came to a stop some distance away from her, shoulders relaxed like someone out on a casual stroll. A haughty smile spread across his face.
Artoria's muscles tensed under her armour, brows furrowing and eyes turning grave.
"Ten years. A mere blink for one such as I, yet I see those eyes of yours still burn with that delightful defiance." Gilgamesh continued, extending a hand toward her, palm upward like a king offering his subject the privilege of kneeling.
"Come. Cease this pointless resistance and accept what you already know to be true. You are a treasure beyond measure, and all treasures worthy of a name find their way to my treasury eventually."
His voice dropped, rich and calm, carrying an absolute certainty of someone who had never been denied.
"Become mine."
Artoria looked at his offered hand, then his relaxed shoulders and self-assured expression.
"I refuse."
Her voice was firm, carrying the dignity of a King.
"I am no treasure to be claimed, Gilgamesh. I am a king, and I will kneel to no one, least of all one who sees his people as possessions."
Gilgamesh's smirk froze in place, his hand hanging mid-air for an instant longer before he pulled it back.
A breath of silence passed.
"Twice now, you bare your fangs at this King." His voice turned flat, expression cooling into something blank.
"Do you truly comprehend what it is you are refusing, woman? I offer you the world, and you cling to the ashes of a kingdom that crumbled to dust?"
Artoria did not reply. Instead, Invisible Air's tip tilted upward, pointing straight for Gilgamesh's heart.
"...Mongrel," Gilgamesh spoke. "If you will not be mine, then you are merely another obstinate wretch who has failed to recognise her place. And failed treasures—"
He gestured, a single, lazy motion of his fingers.
"—have no place in this King's sight."
Gate upon gate opened behind him, spreading outward like the wings of a colossal, golden bird unfurling.
Blade after blade pointed out from each gate, all squarely aimed at Artoria.
A sword that had bathed in dragon blood. A sabre that had pierced a dragon's heart. A longsword that had executed a dragon.
All lethal against Artoria.
Medea's magic circle started to blaze. Violet first—then darker, darker still, until the light pouring from those interlocked rings was less colour and more pressure.
Artoria bent into a stance. Gold flickered beneath her heels.
Gilgamesh's finger twitched.
Air tore apart. Multiple trees blew back. A shockwave flattened grass for thirty meters in every direction, the soil beneath it reduced to powder, particles drifting upward.
A deluge of Noble Phantasms screeched toward Artoria.
...
Three minutes left.
I moved toward the sofa, kicking its frame to turn it upside down.
The ink solution was ready. I had to finish engraving and connecting in three minutes to reach Artoria and everyone else on time.
I swiped a finger at the sofa. A line traced my finger's path across its surface
More lines appeared across its frame at speed. Horizontal. Vertical. Diagonal. Each stroke of my fingertip carved through wood, and the sofa bisected, then bisected again, and again—geometric precision reducing furniture to raw material in seconds.
Splinters flew in all directions as I shaped thousands of thin wooden pins, each one uniform, exactly as long as my design required. They piled beneath my hands in a mound that grew faster than thought.
Then, I bent into a stance and threw a kick.
BAM!
What remained of the sofa flew aside, crashing against an adjacent wall and breaking apart completely, its remnants barely recognizable.
With three measured steps, I reached the vat full of a now-black ink solution and gripped its rim.
A downward tilt and all that ink spilled below, over thousands of wooden pins, drenching them in dark ink. The liquid swallowed them, then slowly released—each pin emerging coated in a thin, uniform layer.
My hand went to my coat, shrugging it off.
...
Artoria moved.
Her surroundings ceased to be a place and became lines.
Green. Brown. Gold.
The world stretched into horizontal lines of colour. Soil erupted beneath her heels in a continuous geyser, chunks of earth hanging suspended mid-air as if gravity beneath her feet had simply given up.
A dragon-slaying spear was metres away from her.
Then it was at her throat.
No—she had reached it.
Her body moved before her mind could, tilting her head by a fraction as that spear passed just beside her cheek, vaporizing a shaking tree behind her into ashes.
Invisible Air was already rising, catching another greatsword mid-flight, the impact shoving her back. Radiance boomed beneath her back foot, force travelling up from her heel through her spine to her arms, deflecting that greatsword aside.
She couldn't breathe.
Four weapons. Four directions.
A halberd from left. A dagger from right. A sword from ahead. A scythe from behind.
Artoria stood on the balls of her feet, folding her other leg up. Molten light burst from her bent knee—a concentrated burst that spun her around. Invisible Air carved a full circle around her, compressed wind screaming as it sheared through air itself.
The halberd's shaft snapped. The dagger was shoved aside. The sword met Invisible Air tip to tip for a heartbeat before being flung away. The scythe—
The scythe cut into her shoulder.
Her arm jerked. Blood splayed from where that Anti-Dragon scythe had bitten her.
More gates. More blades. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
The sky behind Gilgamesh became an enormous, resplendent wall of light, gates overlapping one another, leaving no space between them.
Artoria was soon drowning beneath countless Noble Phantasms.
...
Two minutes left.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, torso bare, surrounded on all sides by black ink and wooden pins drenched in it.
My eyes closed as I took [Wind Blade] and dismantled the boundary field of wind to its bones.
From there, I synthesised the concept of 'Movement' and grafted it onto [Wind Blade]'s inherent properties, simultaneously stripping away its 'Concealment' aspect. The resulting magecraft was rudimentary but functional: a wind-based telekinesis.
[Wind Movement].
My eyes snapped open as I grabbed a wooden pin. [Wind Movement] activated as an unstable sheath of wind wrapped around it. I gestured, and it started to float up while wavering.
I looked at that, then at the thousands of other small pins surrounding me.
Then—
A Command Seal on my hand ignited.
Tremendous mana flooded my body, filling every inch of it.
I closed my eyes again. [Ultimate Tattoo Maker] awakened.
Thousands of wooden pins floated up in eerie synchronisation around me, aligning themselves along my face, chest, arms and back, forming the outline of Sukuna's tattoos with their arrangement.
Without a change in expression, I willed, and—
Thousands of wooden pins pierced into my skin simultaneously.
My expression did not change. It never did.
...
Artoria's heels hit the ground—and kept sinking.
Soil cratered beneath her as golden weapons closed in from every direction like an enclosing ring. Her lungs burned. Her shoulder screamed where the scythe had bitten. Blood ran down her arm, pooling in the gaps of her gauntlet.
More. There were always more.
A lance. A broadsword. A curved blade that her instincts screamed against.
All three arrived at once.
Artoria planted her weight on her feet and detonated.
Radiance erupted beneath her soles—a concentrated explosion of mana that launched her sky-high, air screaming past her as she tore through the tree line.
She twisted mid-air, her body now angled toward the ground. Facing toward him. Gilgamesh stood below, face tilted upward, crimson eyes tracking her movement with idle curiosity.
His smirk had returned.
Artoria's shoulder blades tightened. She felt the wound there tear wider as—
Gold.
Mana ignited from the back of her shoulders.
A column of golden light exploded from behind her, the sheer force propelling her downward like a meteor, streaking straight toward the King of Heroes with Invisible Air raised high.
Distance collapsed.
Thirty meters became twenty. Twenty became ten.
Gilgamesh's eyes narrowed in amusement.
"So you still have fangs after all—"
His hand rose. A simple flick of his wrist.
Three gates opened directly in her path.
No time to dodge. No angle to adjust. The velocity that carried her forward now became her enemy—she was fully committed.
A Noble Phantasm in the form of a jagged shortsword reached her first. Invisible Air moved on pure instinct alone to block.
It did not need to. A violet beam from behind her collided with that shortsword, pushing it away from her path.
Another spear left sparks in its wake as she shoved it aside from her sword's cross guard.
A gladius met another violet beam.
Five meters.
A heavy mace clipped her forearm as she swung Invisible Air in a wide arc to deflect.
Three meters.
A dagger opened a line across her cheek.
One meter.
Artoria was close. She could see his unchanged smirk, his pristine armour, his hand—
Everything slowed down to a crawl. An incomparably cold chill shot down her spine. Her Instinct, which had saved her life countless times, shrieked.
Gilgamesh's fingers were inside a gate.
He was pulling something out.
Centimetre by centimetre. First a pike-like tip, silver as moonlight. Then a shaft etched with countless complex runes, each one pulsing with a multi-coloured light. Then more shaft, more runes, a weapon emerging like a blade being unsheathed from the world itself.
Gungnir.
The Spear of God That Never Misses.
She could see her own distorted reflection across its body—warped, fractured, a king reduced to a smear of silver and blue across divine metal.
Gilgamesh sneered, and pulled the spear back under her wide eyes.
Then—
He threw.
Cause and effect reversed.
The spear was released.
No—It had always been released. His throw was a formality that the weapon itself did not require. Before Gilgamesh's fingers had even left its shaft, before the motion of his arm had completed its arc, an outcome had already been concluded:
Gungnir strikes its target.
Artoria felt it with certainty. She was going to be pierced. She had already been pierced.
Countless futures flashed through Artoria's mind like an armory with different swords. Each sword reflected a different future—each one a possibility, each one a death.
In one reflection, Artoria jerked right. Gungnir adjusted mid-flight. Death.
In another, she turned left with a mana burst. Gungnir curved. Death.
Another, Medea's beam intercepted it. Gungnir passed through that beam like sunlight through glass. Death.
Artoria did not think.
She moved.
Gungnir reached her in a fraction of a heartbeat.
Excalibur stood in its path.
Invisible Air shattered, exploding outward in a detonation of wind and light, flattening any remaining trees in a twenty-meter radius, their trunks snapping outward like brittle matchsticks.
And there it was.
Excalibur.
The Sword of Promised Victory.
Gungnir clashed against Excalibur.
Light bloomed from their point of contact. Gold from Excalibur. Silver from Gungnir. Two colours spiralled together, rising in a pillar that punched through the clouds above and split the night sky in two—one half gold, one half silver.
Artoria's arms shook. Hundreds of violet beams bombarded Gungnir without pause, yet they could not even scratch it. Artoria was being pushed back mid-air, having no ground as an anchor.
Gungnir pushed. The concept of never missing pressed down on her like a mountain, demanding its rightful outcome. She could feel Excalibur's edge groaning under a battle of contradictions—victory against certainty, promise against inevitability.
Her teeth clenched.
She had faced certainty before.
She had faced the certainty that her kingdom would fall. That her knights would turn on each other. That her dream would end in blood and fire on a hill she would die upon.
She had faced all of that—
—and she had still drawn her sword.
"GRAAAH—!"
Mana exploded from every point of her body. Gold erupted from her heels, her shoulders, her spine—turning her into a figure of radiant light.
Artoria pushed.
Gungnir was pushed back.
Gungnir was pushed back.
Then—
The light surrounding Artoria died.
Silence.
And—a wet, final squelch.
"Saber!!!"
Her mana ran out.
Gungnir had pierced into her stomach.
It had aimed for her heart, yet she had turned at the last moment, letting it tear into her stomach instead.
Artoria fell down from above, barely managing to land on her feet
Medea tried to descend, but more Noble Phantasms screamed toward her.
Artoria steadied herself, Excalibur's blade burying into the soil below to support her.
Gilgamesh walked toward her. His face now expressionless.
"I'll ask one last time, Saber... Become mine." He once again offered her his palm.
"No." Artoria replied, coughing up blood in between.
"... Die then."
Some gates adjusted, aiming straight for her vitals.
"...No." Artoria whispered.
"Hm?" Gilgamesh tilted his head.
"I said no... I won't die." Her voice rose, echoing across their surroundings.
"Oh? And how?" He asked, an eyebrow raised in intrigue.
Artoria smiled.
A pure smile. A brilliant smile. A beautiful smile.
Gilgamesh froze.
"Because... My Master is coming."
...
..
.
Fifty seconds.
Black, circular marks wound around my shoulders.
Forty seconds.
Identical lines spread outward across my shoulder blades and ran down my spine.
Thirty seconds.
Markings in black ran down my forearms and upper arms. Band-like patterns wrapped around my biceps.
Twenty seconds.
Two thin lines ran vertically along my jawline, alongside a mark on my forehead.
Ten seconds.
Finally, these black markings moved across my upper back, connecting to an ouroboros tattoo already etched there.
The moment these two connected with one another.
CRACKLE!
Every single black carving across my body awoke like a slumbering reactor coming to life.
5 seconds.
360 magic circuits.
Each with an output around A-Rank.
All of them stirred.
1 second.
Thunder rumbled.
From within me.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Ultimate Tattoo Maker]: An OC talent I created. Basically someone on the superhuman level in tattoo making, meaning that they know exactly how much skin to puncture and how deep to puncture, creating perfect tattoos without causing an ounce of pain, which should generally be impossible.
...
[Gungnir(Proto)] - The Allfather Odin's spear that never misses. It is a prototype for Gae Bolg and has a conceptual effect of never missing a target once released. Gil has this in his treasury, though a prototype version which looks rougher than that one used by Brynhildr. It's sure hit affect is also weaker, if Allfather himself thew it, Artoria would not survive without [Avalon].
...
[Authors Thoughts]
Tattoo creation was the easiest part. [Ultimate Analyst] and [Ultimate Tattoo Maker] made sure of that, now comes the last and the most hard part, which would stump most people, but what Izuru did was to connect these newly created circuits to his Emiya family crest or rather his Ouroboros crest, allowing these psuedo-circuits to access a thaumaturgical foundation indirectly through that crest. Though that connection is not as strong as it can be, that crest being only a part of the original, but we can brute force it with mana.
Now, for those who do not know much about fate, I'll explain how it works. So... magic crests are basically a bundle of magic circuits passed down in a magus family from one generation to the next, and since they are a separate set of magic circuits than a magi's natural circuits, it goes to reason that they can connect to a foundation on their own, right?
So Izuru connected his new circuits to those separate circuits, getting indirect access to a foundation via the magic crest he has. Besides that is not the only way he can connect to a foundation, he can also connect to it via Angra Mainyu he has used as an ingredient, getting access to the magic foundation of curses through Angra, and his original circuits will get healed with time too, so now he has three different ways to access a foundation.
In fact, with a foundation of curses, using Dismantle will become easier for Izuru, and he might even create many new spells because you know cursed energy generally has the same root as All the World's Evil and curses in general. Both being born from human negativity and all.