A Wicked Girl

While they had been in the hospital, snow had begun to blanket the city of Vodnyisad in a heavy sheet of white. If the streets had not seemed completely dead before now, then the empty boulevards and boarded up windows lining the entire city left the impression of a bombed-out ghost town, abandoned to the war and left silent save for the slapping of the turgid sea water against the docks. Walking down one of those streets, bare feet crunching in the fresh snow, a young woman tugged the front of her loose-fitting kimono to cover more of her bandaged chest, the bottle of rice wine in her hand sloshing noisily as she did.

“Eeeyaaah…this city feels like a burial ground…” she sighed, taking a long drag from her bottle. The thousand-year old alcohol scorched her throat on the way down, bringing a blush to her cheeks as her body struggled to process a liquid that was practically poison at this point.

Summoned under the contract of the Jester, the purviews of illusions, awareness, and trickery enabled through magic were hers to command. Frail of body and unsuited for direct confrontation, it was some small consolation to those of her kind that ambush was virtually impossible, no matter how inattentive or inebriated they might be.

The long metal dart split the air with a crack, thrown at a speed exceeding that of any modern rifle. Smooth and carved into a warped bodkin at the end, the dark-haired woman realized in that instant what it was that had pierced the sides of the animated tanks that had besieged them at the Amrillary Wall.

And with speed that made the darts look static in the air, Koi arched backwards, whipping one arm back to protect the bottle of wine, and the second catching her trailing hair before the metal spike could shear through it.

With a grunt of discomfort, she straightened her back, and blinked drearily, looking from her bottle to the source of the projectile – the woman sitting atop a streetlight several blocks away.

“Your competence exceeds your presentation, Miss Jester,” the woman said with a faint smile, dropping to the pavement and bowing deeply. She was of average height and lithe build, tanned skin exposed save for the long, tattered cloth wrapped around her waist as a skirt and the bandages around her chest. Her hair was wild and the color of oak and earth, held back by a glimmering circlet of gold, but what dominated her profile was her eyes, wide and brown and burning with anticipation that her grin failed to mask.

“My competence is sorely misrepresented by my luck,” Koi replied thickly, speaking slowly to avoid slurring. One pale hand rubbed awkwardly at the back of her neck, and she flicked a lock of her floor-length hair back over her shoulder. “…’s the duty of the Jester to get lucky, after all. Never enough to win, of course, but just enough to keep other second-tier heroes from making it any further.”

The ebon-haired girl could not help but grin as the smile on the other woman’s face gave way to a frown, and those intense auburn eyes hardened into a glare.

“Heroes honored by this generation we may not be, but those of us with honor and determination do not require the fame and approval of these people and their idolatry in order to win. The character of the individual is all that matters.” Involuntarily, as if to punctuate her words, prana surged through the air like a flame, swelling around the girl in a vortex of subtle power begging to be released. Koi cocked an eyebrow, recognizing the inability of someone to control their magic – she was certainly not a magician.

“Lucky for you, I guess,” Koi sighed, taking another long sip from her bottle before leaning forward in an exaggerated motion, “…because between you and me, this makes it twice that you’ve chosen to fight for the wrong man.”

A Servant was a Heroic Spirit bound within a shell of prana and magical energies and nonlinear laws. Actualizing the powers and triumphs of their lives into crystalized miracles known as Noble Phantasms, the wartime axiom of knowing one’s enemy held a particular emphasis for their kind. Knowing another Servant’s identity was an undeniable advantage.

“…Camilla of the Volsci.”

Without waiting to gauge the woman’s reaction, Koi brought the bottle up to her mouth and took a deep gulp of the rice wine, prana flooding into her body starting at her toes. The snow around her exploded into a heated mist as the power warped and twisted, funneling into her body and surging up into her throat as she spat out the wine. The nine darts that Camilla of the Volsci, ally of Turnus and the Archer of the Vodnyisad War, had thrown were melted instantaneously as the wine and pseudomagical energies sparked and exploded, a column of fire roaring down the street in front of the woman called Jester. Cars, store windows, and parking meters all turned to slag and melted into the blackened mush of what had been a central boulevard.

Seconds later, Camilla landed lightly in the center of the wave of destruction, having thrown herself upwards higher than the tallest building in the street to avoid the flames.

“Ooooiiii…don’t take it so badly, this sort of thing is my specialty,” Koi sighed, corking the bottle and looping it into the belt of her kimono, not noticing as it tugged the loose garment awkwardly and snow began to fall into her clothing. “…my name is Lady Koi of Suwa, if knowing something like that will do you any good.”

It wouldn’t. The first thing Koi had done upon being summoned was go drinking with her Master. After that, she had asked Nadia to provide her with a set of encyclopedias and journals so she could memorize as many world myths and articles of folklore as possible, and she was willing to gamble that none of the other Servants had done the same.

Even her own countrymen would not have heard of her.

Camilla of the Volsci was a warrior princess, an analogue whose powers of form rivaled those of any of the Argonauts. Greatest ally of Turnus, her sword was one that was worth an army. Koi had read about her, knew full-well the scale of what it was she was up against. She was up against someone who had a lifetime of martial skill over her.

“Time to see how unlucky you are…” Koi murmured.

The stamping of Camilla’s feet against the pavement sounded like sledgehammer beats against a stone, and a blur that even Jester struggled to follow surged towards her, pavement erupting into fountains of black gravel behind her. The first kick came in high, the prana in the woman’s leg crackling and singing the air around it. The second one burned away the tips of a lock of Koi’s hair as she twisted back into the arc of the first. The third impacted loudly against her arms, crossed over her chest, with enough force to split an automobile in two. It knocked the wind out of the woman and sent her hurtling down the street, spiraling in a whirlwind of hair and sleeves.

“That hurt,” she grumbled, twisting around in the air to reorient herself. Camillia was already on the ground beneath her, prana wreathing her fist like an enormous spike, arm cocked back and ready to cleave straight through her as soon as she fell another two meters.

Weak of body and lacking skill at arms, Koi did not possess the ability to run so fast as to leave a body of water undisturbed, nor did she have the strength to cleave through armor with her hands. She was a schemer and a liar and a master of annoying parlor tricks. In lieu of agility she possessed dexterity, and in a flurry of motion, her hands slipped up into the sleeves of her kimono and grasped at the sheaves of paper talismans hidden on her person.

Alcohol and saliva, the material fuses that allowed her to create fire from her prana – there was not enough time for her to spit on a talisman or to take another drink from her bottle. Sharpening the air into a razor edge and slicing her index fingers, she swiped a line of blood across two handfuls of talismans. The contract of her spell surged to life, the characters on the papers blazing to life.

“Ink, with me.”

Two handfuls of a dozen talismans each, blazing with the character for “fire” and curling at the edges flew out in front of her. In a flash of purple light, the flames became violet before twisting into themselves and exploding outward, each becoming ten bolts of purplish fire flying out in a fan-shape.

Camilla’s eyes widened as, for the second time, the entire street exploded into a plume of fire.

The foundation of a department store was blasted inwards, the metal doors having been unable to keep the explosion from destroying the first floor, and the eight-story stone building tilted into the street before crashing to the ground in a heap. At the same time, the magical flames tore into the pavement, leaving no less than a hundred small craters smoldering in their wake.

The damage was minor, considering what would inevitably happen, and Koi threw out another burst of flames, cleaving through the bus that was flying towards her and sending it flying away in a burning heap. From her place standing sideways against one of the walls of the buildings that had not been destroyed, Camilla smiled darkly before dropping back down to the street.

Her leg drew back, and with it the city seemed to take a breath, the air funneling through the valleys of steel and glass, wrapping around the woman’s leg and layering itself with the tremendous wells of prana in her body. Darts aside, perhaps this is part of what qualified her as a member of the Archer archetype.

Her leg lashed out, and the spiraling vortex of air and destructive prana flew forward. A wave of power layered behind a massive shockwave of air tore down the street, and a dozen trees and cars and half-ruined slabs of pavement followed. This was an attack that could shatter a cargo freighter, and in the fraction of a second it took to execute it, Camilla had already jumped backwards and ripped a parking meter out of the pavement, thin fingers crushing into the metal as she dashed behind her shockwave, makeshift club wound up behind her.

“That will probably kill me,” Koi murmured in the language of magic, the words occurring simultaneously and instantly in the manner of supernatural beings. A white streak appeared in her hair, paler than snow and twisting around seven feet as it pooled at her feet. Violet light danced in her eyes as she summoned forth her own prana; it was not just the small amount she needed to unlock the power she had sealed into the Houshiki talismans.

One tail, one artery to the ichor of the divine; magical energy suffused her being sending tremors through the shell of prana that made up her body.

“One tail, twist and flicker.” Simultaneous words, the language of ghosts and devils. Her voice was slurred with alcohol and the weight of a thousand curses and spells. Violet fire sprung up at her feet, the tips of her hair alight like countless candlewicks, and the power in her body sunk into a pool at her feet before beginning to swirl. Instantly the scream of wind whipping around at unnatural speeds echoed through the ruined valley of buildings, and the flames in her hair where ripped loose and added to the vortex.

The screaming vortex of fire formed a bubble around the young woman just as the first projectile, a military transport truck, slammed into the protective spell. The sound of steel being melted and shredded tore through the air and joined with a hundred others as the shockwave broke upon the powerful curse.

“Jester!” Camillia shouted, her voice strong and clear even through the screen of noise, “Do not mock me by summoning only a fraction of your power. Do you think this to be a challenge that we will both endure? That we will have to give anything more than our all!?”

In a rush of air, the vortex died down, and Koi’s hair fluttered back into place, pooling around her feet, the ends quickly repairing themselves from where they had been burned. She met the wide eyes of her opponent with the same dreary stare as before.

“I am the Jester. It is my nature to be very inconvenient for the people around me,” Koi responded, her expression weary, “I came here to prevent you from advancing on the Auriga Tower.” There was a pregnant pause in the air before she let out a loud sigh. “But we both know that your assault is only a distraction that cannot be ignored. Capable of such collateral damage, one of our merry band of fools would have to come and stop you, pulling us away from the tower, and you could kill or at least wound whoever was unlucky enough to volunteer, right?”

Koi threw her arms out in mock exasperation.

“Summoned by heroes of this generation, what choice do I have but to come protect this hospital?”

Camilla glared at her, fire in her eyes sparking more than before. “Do you possess no motivation whatever, Jester? Motives certainly, but no personal drive to see them executed? To protect for no other reason than your contract…I may raze this city for the sake of a new empire, but are you so completely devoid of honor? Of the loyalty that drives women such as us to madness?”

“I guess so,” Koi replied in as unrepentant a tone as she had ever spoken, flashing Camilla a bright smile as she did.

Camilla scowled, and power began to gather around her legs once again. Koi’s smile remained, but in her mind, she was forced to make one concession to the furious woman – she could not keep playing around like this forever. Not only would the city be left in shambles if she did, but quite simply, Camilla was the Archer, one of the classes given the designation of “Knight” for their superior martial abilities. As the Jester, she possessed tricks and informative ability, but her only real chance of matching a furious Camilla in a battle to the death would be her trump cards.

In all likelihood, she reasoned, Camilla’s ability to concentrate the magical vortexes around her legs was a Noble Phantasm, given her identity. She could match Camilla one-for-one, but it would be a sparing effort – she was far more reliant on her magical reserves than Camilla, and what’s more, Camilla had been summoned under the archetype of the Archer, the one whose body would not decay immediately upon expending the sum of its magical energies.

Well, what was a Jester that could not cheat a little?

“Kitsune no Yomeiri.”

No triumphant shout, no grandiose gestures, and no flood of prana, it was a sharp contrast to the spectacle of most Noble Phantasms. As the words left her mouth, the sky simply broke and parted. Black clouds of winter were thrown to the side and the sun flared in the sky, sending golden shafts of light spearing down through the still-falling snow. Below, Koi shuddered faintly as the warm light fell onto her skin.

In light, her skin was as pale as bone, and her hair a river of ink. She was every bit the beautiful corpse she had been the day of her death.

Twenty meters from her, Camilla looked up at the sun, her expression of concentration overtaken by a wild grin. Fighting beneath a raging sun; the warrior’s blood of a thousand years ago surged through her veins as strongly as ever.

“Show me your greatest tricks, magician.”

“Hah.”

Like a flare, prana rushed up through Koi’s body and into the clear circle that had appeared in the clouds. The sunlight bent and swirled as the magic began to fill in the space that had been cleared in the sky. Where there had been grey clouds was now an enormous lens of arcane energies, sunlight swirling behind it as if viewed from underwater.

“Weep, mother in the sky.”

Nadia Kan would have had a good laugh at the show her Servant was putting on, as the sun suddenly became an orbital array, and sunbeams became a heavy bombardment when focused through the lens of the Jester. Shafts of sunlight suddenly became columns of magic and fire and impacted light that slammed into the earth like jackhammers, firing down indiscriminately with only the barest assumptions of where their target would be.

“You will destroy this city!” Camilla shouted around an ecstatic laugh, a blur of movement as she dashed and leapt and whirled around the cascading beams of arcane power.

“Then I suggest you leave it,” Koi countered, and drew back her arms as if heaving a heavy tow line backwards. The lens in the sky began to tilt, and Koi noted dully to herself that had there been anyone left to watch, every mundane for sixty kilometers would have been able to see her spell – sleight of hand or spectacle, she was a Jester of both extremes, after all.

Granted, Nadia would probably be displeased if she leveled the entire east sector to protect the north, so with a heave, Koi sent the beams of light slicing down the already-ruined street. Forced purely to use her inhuman speed to avoid the spiderweb of solar beams, Koi’s opponent could not continue to throw those ridiculous shockwaves her way. Though she was not forced to spend prana to maintain her bombardment, she could not move while manipulating the mirror, and so Koi did not fool herself into thinking that this assault would tip the scales in her favor.

It was the means to an affordable stalemate and to forcing Camilla to be the first to reveal her next trump.

“Jester!”

Camilla’s voice was Koi’s opposite, warm and brash and burning with passion, belonging to a girl who had led with her heart rather than her head.

“It is not a phenomenon of an age or era, nor is it the power of a Noble Phantasm – strength of heart and will of fire is what guides me! Your half-hearted sleight of hand may shatter armies, but it will never conquer a worthy champion!”

Koi felt the prana surrounding Camilla finally begin to take shape, instead of whirling on the vortex that encircled her body. At the same time, the arcane blueprint of a spiral that twisted the vortexes around her legs suddenly entwined, both appearing in the young woman’s right leg as the prana began to flood into it. It was decidedly not a Noble Phantasm, but a feat of primitive image-magic that reshaped the Noble Phantasm in her legs, molding the channels of output into a different spearhead. Simply put, she was condensing the same power of that shockwave into a smaller, sharper point, then flooding it with vastly more power than before.

That would be more than enough to vaporize Koi’s prana shell upon impact.

“What a dreadful time to be stuck turning this mirror,” Koi droned with a sigh, still holding onto a phantom rope as the lens in the sky continued its bombardment.

Yet despite her tepid reaction, Koi recognized the danger immediately. What she had been expected from Camilla was a contest of pure muscle, a competition in which Kitsune no Yomeiri excelled. Provided with sunlight, the lens would generate a constant bombardment in any given direction for no additional prana beyond that used to summon it in the first place. Matching Camilla’s shockwaves with her own power would not have been an issue, and inevitably she would have worn the woman down.

If the skirted girl were to sacrifice her own mobility for some reason and gain power in excess of the Kitsune no Yomeiri, however… It was a Noble Phantasm limited not by reserves, but by output – it could raze a city in a matter of minutes, but the power in Camilla’s leg would crack through the thickest part of a mountain and leave only dust behind.

That was a problem.

Like an enormous hooked blade, the swirling energies and blades of air swept out of her leg as she kicked forward. The vacuum blade bisected the street and rubble and buildings on either side in the instant before Camilla’s power flooded the empty space behind it, vaporizing everything it touched. On par with and beyond many of the high feats of High Thaumaturgy, the blade of magic and air swept through the city, rendering everything it is wake into the killing fields that Camilla had once walked.

Kitsune no Yomeiri vanished, and the gloom set over Vodnyisad once more as the clouds quickly hid the sun. The prana in Koi’s body twisted and flooded up her legs and into her breast and neck in a tingling rush; her hair went from ink black to shimmering white in the time it took for the hook-blade to close half of the ground between the two combatants.

Koi winced as she felt both of her arms pop out of their sockets and her elbows reset. With a loud snap, her skeleton suddenly warped and contorted, her hair writhing like so many snakes. With an explosion of magical energies, she ripped asunder the template of the prana shell that she had been summoned into, piecing it back together in a form that held powerful symbolic meaning for her.

Mythical amongst the nine-tailed tricksters, the White Kitsune of Suwa walked the earth once more. Radiant white fur that glowed in the light of unseen faerie fire, Koi’s nine tails fanned out behind her, each thrumming with the power of a sovereign leyline. The dust and grime of the city drew away from her, and the pavement bleached itself white as all of the rubble receded from where she stood, leaving a bubble of white around the nine-tailed fox that stood where Koi had been.

Koi’s lupine eyes flickered, and she threw herself into the air. Running nimbly along the side of a building that had not yet been demolished, she became a streak of white along the city skyline, arcing over the explosive wave of power and bounding around the rubble it threw up in its wake.

Camilla laughed brightly as Koi moved within arm’s reach of her for the first time. Dispelling the technique that had granted her so much destructive power, the princess of the Volsci realigned the vortexes to both of her feet and matched the tumbling slam of Koi with a powerful kick. Twisting about as they met again, burning eyes met lupine ones blazing with alien fire.

The fox, unlike Koi, understood the thrill of savagery.

As they whipped through the air, the snow appeared to be floating in place. Sound seemed to fall away from them as they fought, air exploding in their wake too slowly to keep up with their movements. With every clash, someone received an impossibly small scratch, or a bruise too light to be noticed, yet no true wounds were drawn.

Suddenly, when Camilla drew back and summoned a fistful of heavy metal darts to each hand, Koi reverted to her human form, throwing forth her talismans before her kimono or hair had even properly returned.

“What a terrifying Jester, to be able to fight as a monster of legend,” Camilla chucked, pushing back a lock of hair heavy with sweat. Resting her hands on her hips, the combative air about her suddenly seemed to evaporate.

With a sigh, Koi replaced the talismans in her sleeves and adjusted her kimono. If Archer was trying to trick her, then she would be able to tell. It seemed like the warrior girl had something she wanted to say.

“Time for a speech before you bring out your favorite Noble Phantasm?”

Camilla shrugged, grinning.

“I just wanted to give you some credit before we go down the path of no return, Koi of Suwa. Honestly, I had bought into your reputation and that of your class – that you really weren’t much besides a liar and schemer, incapable of valor or holding your own in a fight.” The warrior paused to lick at a cut at the side of her mouth. “…but this is good, very good.”

“To coin a phrase of the century, are you coming on to me?” Koi asked, deadpan and tapping her fingers lightly against the bottle at her side.

“Heh…” Camilla chuckled faintly, more to herself than at the Japanese girl’s quip. Slowly, she brought her hands before her, palms skyward, and exhaled.

The world seemed to hold its breath, and Koi was suddenly aware that the snow had literally stopped still in the air.

“Trace the lines of Helios and wash away the glory of fifty-thousand brave souls; each soul is a torch in the night, but the fires of heart and heaven walk with me.”

It was not an incantation for magic, but a mantra uttered before battle.

Then, Koi, whose eyes could see the lines of magic in the air that showed the power of the world, stiffened as she saw the swirling orb of power envelop half of the city and the bay. Like a bubble, distorting the weak light filtering down through the clouds and sending colors dancing around its surface, it radiated a strange, untouchable power. At the same time, glowing red tattoos in the patterns of flames and lions spiraled around her legs, a warped and ancient power radiating in the lines.

“The true face of your Noble Phantasm,” Koi said, tone even.

Camilla smiled, and then vanished.

Several kilometers away, out over the frigid waters of the bay, a streak of light arced across the sky, almost at the very edge of the barrier. Crossing the dome from one side of the city to the other in the matter of a heartbeat, the sea and sky became fire it its wake, and as it descended into the city, the world began to shake. Camilla of the Volsci was running on the air, and the world was burning in her wake. The fastest legend of the War of Vodnyisad, whose Noble Phantasm was simply to run and herald the shockwave that would level any battlefield, had poured all of her power into those powerful legs, and she was coming to kill the Jester.

There was no catching Camilla of the Volsci now. Beyond the speed of any spell or sword, building a shockwave that could shatter cities, there was little doubt in Koi’s mind that the warrior princess possessed the raw power to match most any Servant in a raw contest of arms. Linear and savage, it was the epitome of Camilla’s legend and identity.

A small, metal sphere dropped out of Koi’s sleeve, clinking faintly against the ruined pavement. Instantly, power flooded forth from Koi’s body in a wave, wrapping around the metal sphere, and around it formed the latticework of a rifle. Flicking her wrist, Koi willed the rifle to hover before her, level with the approaching form of Camilla, and with an explosion of bluish smoke, fired the shot within.

Camilla veered to the right, smashing through a park and an entire avenue as she did, and the shot flew wide. The streak of blue light slammed into a tall building and tore through it in a narrow beam, leaving a hole the size of an adult where it had passed through.

“You’ll never hit me,” Camilla’s voice rang out across the city.

Koi shrugged as the rifle disappeared, and suddenly metal spheres began to rain from her sleeves. They piled around her in a mound that reached up to her knees, spilling into the cracks in the street and rolling in every direction. Her prana flared up around her, and the city began to quake.

“I am the Jester,” Koi said evenly, voice echoed ten-thousand times in the language of magic, “…and to make a single lucky shot is my purpose.”

Her power exploded around her in a whirlwind of bluish light, and two-thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine rifles appeared around her, all pointed in Camilla’s general direction.

“…who needs to aim?”