Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction ❯ Escaping Fate ❯ Heaven's Feeling ( Chapter 16 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Zekk_Skywalk 
Determination.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 337 | Status: Completed
Determination.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 337 | Status: Completed
AN: Comments for recent chapters have filled me with joy. The kind of joy Kotomine gets from suffering. Rejoice, readers!
Actually, that’s about the only reason I’ve ended up on the BL forums. Comments there are funny. But distracting. Terribly, terribly distracting.
Music on Youtube for this chapter: watch?v=huUiTYcWwYY
Escaping Fate
Chapter 12
Heaven’s Feeling
We ascended the stairs, but Yumi was not in the front courtyard. Tohsaka immediately started erecting a boundary field herself in the vague chance of warding people who would come to the temple away at least temporarily. I hoped nothing had happened to the handful of monks that lived here with the Ryuudou family.
“Do you think she went inside?” Sakura asked.
“I have a sneaking suspicion not,” I said. Taking a quick look around, I started for the lake off to one side of the grounds. I didn’t know if she had, but, considering how sneaky she’d been before…
We rounded the temple proper and indeed, found her in the place I had been trying to exercise the Reality Marble out of my mind. Yumi stood right where Kirei Kotomine had met his end. She stared up into space, in the general direction of where the Grail had once hovered, and wavered in place as if in a trance.
I cringed at the way she moved.
If we get you out of this, I’m never letting you watch horror movies ever again.
The shadowy-something that had tried jumping me earlier was not in evidence. Instead, it was clear, if Caren’s demon detection was a kind of sympathetic effect, why it emanated from her right hand, as Yumi’s right arm was flickering with what looked like a haze of black. It grew and receded, and though it currently had no discernable anatomy, I could just feel the fact that it was watching us, like a black cat in the crook of her arm.
“Yumi-chan!” Sakura called out.
No response. Yumi just stood there, no different from the trees swaying in the breeze.
Caren brandished the throwing swords she had called Black Keys. “In nomini patri—”
That provoked a reaction, and Yumi’s arm, moving on what looked like its own accord, shot up and seemed to rip open. Instead of blood, shadow oozed out of her, gathering on the ground and swirling into the shape of the beast. It opened something like a mouth, but instead of a roar, it was like all the sounds in the air were sucked into its gullet, leaving the air feeling dry and stagnate.
And then charged.
Foregoing the remainder of the prayer, Caren sent her swords flying.
Making a very human-like choice, the dragon dove laterally and rolled over its shoulder to both avoid the weapons and keep its momentum going. With barely a change in gait, it charged straight for the priestess, who tried reaching for more of her swords, stored who-knows-where.
Not enough time.
I took a step out in front of her, hefted the Evelake Aegis by one end, and tried hitting the thing across the face with the cross.
The thing ducked low beneath the swing, then jumped right up at me, bounded off my shoulders, over my head, and landed behind us. With a dime-turn that would be impossible for an actual animal to replicate without snapping its spine, it spun around and leapt maw-first for Caren.
Tohsaka tackled Caren and Sakura tackled me, leaving the beast to jump right over both of us. While I could hear Tohsaka distantly shout at Caren to watch herself, my attention went to Sakura, who came up in a crouch before me.
Something that resembled a ribbon of cloth—because it flexed—but also a lance—because it shot out like a javelin—went flying from Sakura’s hand. It nicked the creature’s hind leg, and for the first time the beast seemed to flinch, pausing to regard Sakura like it might another predator.
“Matou-san,” Caren said; I could hear her slowly rising behind me. “If you attempt to seal it away, it will do the exact same as exorcising it, killing the host.”
Although she sounded like this was the last place she wanted to be, Sakura had enough conviction in her voice that she sounded prepared, at least. “I don’t want to seal it away. Just hold it in place until senpai or nee-san can figure out a way to rescue Yumi-chan.”
I chanced taking my eyes off of the creature to look Yumi’s way, but the girl had not moved, still staring up at the sky in a daze. I had to wonder what, if anything, was going through her mind and whether she even realized what was going on around her.
My stare turned back to the dragon just in time, as it decided to charge once more, this time going toward Sakura. The same lance-shaped flurry of magic shot from Sakura’s hand, though this time in a rapid-fire succession that, for the briefest of seconds, made her look extremely like Tohsaka.
Tohsaka herself had raised her left arm, and, with the crest on it glowing, started chanting.
Small explosions started ripping at the feet of the beast, first to its right, then left, and I realized Tohsaka was attempting to box it in while Sakura shot her own spells. Caren began throwing more of her swords in—where were they coming from?—and the creature slowly moved in a straighter and narrower channel as it charged.
I planted the shield before Sakura, though enough out of the way to not obscure her vision. If we could seal its movement and stun it like Sakura suggested, Curtana might be able to hold it completely until we figured out what to do—
Finally, one shot from Tohsaka sent the dragon stumbling hard onto its left legs, right into the path of Sakura’s spell. The lance skewered the beast in the left shoulder and even I could feel the flow of energy from it begin to reverse, the feeling of stagnation in the air receding as mana spewed out of its body.
“Now, senpai!”
I Traced Curtana and brought it down on the creature’s head.
It passed through with the same kind of resistance one might get when thrusting a fork into a cake or other light confections—resistance was present, but only at a level where it read as resistance and not much else. The thing seemed to break apart like a gust of wind might break apart a fog cloud, and before I knew it, there was nothing at my feet.
The shadow reformed identical as before, now with one on either side of me.
“Shi—”
Both pounced, and I unceremoniously dropped where I was to avoid being hit.
Lances and explosions started to sound again, and I rolled up to my feet just as Caren swept past me, swords in hand, prayers on her lips. She charged right past the creatures and—
Toward Yumi.
“Senpai!” Sakura shouted again, though this time I could hear more than just words. Trusting Sakura to hold these things and Tohsaka to look after her sister, I slashed at the nearest one as it tried to crowd me and ran after the priestess.
Caren had too much of a lead, and the distance to Yumi was not great. As she raised her hands to throw her weapons, I could think of little else, dropping Curtana. “Trace, on!”
Kanshou and Bakuya.
The triplet swords left Caren’s hands.
I threw Kanshou and Bakuya harder than Caren had the capacity for, crossing my arms as I did. The paired weapons flew out, crossed right behind Caren’s flowing robe, then helixed back to intercept the Black Keys. All five weapons clattered against one another, then against the ground not a meter in front of Yumi.
Caren spun to face me, and before I could think of what to do next, her hand whipped out a red cloth that snaked its way toward me. Although there was no malice behind the move, for some reason, in this place, I could not help but think of Kotomine throwing Angra Mainyu my way.
I tried ducking out of the way, but the cloth seemed to have its own mind as well, circling around behind me and grabbing me by the shoulder. The moment it had a grip on me, I felt it cling to me like a leech and the rest of the length swirled about me until my hands were tight to my hips. I fell to my knees before the cloth snaked down and around my legs, locking me in place.
Caren paused to regard me as I pushed as hard as possible, trying to even wiggle my hands. The cloth not only held me tight, but I could feel a disruption in my magical circuit, interference from whatever conceptual weapon this was. The moment I tried bringing a blade to hand, I felt feedback in my prana flow and the weapon refused to appear.
“Shirou, those creatures are going to continue to multiply and start to warp the environment,” Caren said, softly and sadly. “Your…friends can fight them now, but if this continues on much longer, the mutation you see on Yumi will spread not only from her body, but into the very existence of this city.”
I tried another blade, but it failed once again. Digging my knees as hard against the ground as I could, I tried using the friction to pry the cloth off, but that too did nothing.
“Demons are born from wishes,” Caren said. “I fear the souls of the victims before her cry out for salvation, and that wish has now consumed her.”
…What?
Victims before her?
Wait…
“If you wish to blame me for this act, then so be it,” Caren continued. “But I can hear the pleas now, the agony, and the desire for release. Even the demon born here understands, though it fears its own demise. At this point…there is nothing that can be done.”
Turning back, she drew three more of those Black Keys.
Victims.
Tohsaka had said the magus that had experimented on her was researching souls. Researching the viability of transferring magical circuits from one body to the next, and why bodies rejected that normally. As magical circuits are a reflection of the soul…
Sakura had said Yumi had needed a seal on her circuits because they were irregular. That the prana flow had been wrong and only after that cloth on her arm had been put there could she focus enough to manage her Alteration.
And her Alteration…
Additions…
“Look away, Shirou Emiya. I would not want to watch this either,” Caren said.
No.
At this point…there is nothing that can be done.
No.
Fire had once surrounded me, like the fires of hell. Nothing but destruction, nothing but pain, nothing but despair and horror and the conclusion that all is suffering and then death. There was nothing else there but the screams of tortured souls desiring rescue or the release of an end to it all…
And one boy who was saved, and his savior.
Nothing was absolute.
In that fire, I was saved. It was tiny, absolutely insignificant to the lives that were lost, but…
I thought of those tortured souls that had been kept in the basement of the church.
They too, had accepted it.
Even if they desired release…
“NO!”
I pushed.
I pushed.
I pushed until I felt my bones dislodge, my muscles tear.
“You are just going to hurt yourself,” Caren said, sighing, looking back my way again. “If you continue to struggle against that cloth, it—”
—will just tear itself apart.
I know.
Prana, unable to escape the circuit, found elsewhere to escape my body.
Blades ripped out of my nerves, around my broken bones, through my torn muscles, and pierced my skin, my clothing, and the cloth surrounding it.
It was not enough to tear the bounds completely open, nor even enough to give me any further room to move. But I could feel the concept behind the weapon fail, feel the presence of magic break about me, and through the haze of pain as I was impaled from within, managed to pull myself out of the wrapping.
Caren looked on in horror and I charged past her.
Shadow leapt from Yumi’s body and at me.
Between the pain staggering me, the lack of prana now still running through my circuit, and the single target in my mind’s eye, there was little else I could do. I swung at the creatures that charged me with my limbs, now resembling something more like a ball mace, blades protruding from my arms and fists. It was enough to dissipate the creatures before me, though each swing felt heavier and heavier as these things sucked the life right out of the air before them.
It didn’t matter.
All I could do…
It really didn’t matter.
Saber was gone, so it was hardly anything. A replication of an image, something my body still remembered like a phantom limb, something my eyes would never forget. Without Saber, it had nothing resembling the power it could. If Angra Mainyu were to spring out of the air right now, it would have been more than useless.
But…
It was all I could do.
Within Angra Mainyu, I was saved. The faint spark of hope from her voice, reminding me of what I was to her…
No despair or evil or darkness was absolute. If you looked hard enough—
I smashed past the last creature, grabbed Yumi while trying not to skewer her, and remembered.
“Trace, on.”
I had no healing abilities. No sealing abilities. Nothing like a real magus, nothing like an Executor of the Church, nothing like a Heroic Spirit. But I had this image, this perfect image, and though I was not Saber, I had energy, and I had a wish.
I fed every last ounce of prana into it, fed every last thought and desire for this girl into it—
I had done so once before, when we had first found her. I wasn’t even sure it had done anything, but as Tohsaka was not present when we found Yumi, and Sakura had no knowledge of healing magic as well, it was all I had in me to do.
Whether it was by this act, or by some other miracle…
Here, it was all I could bet on.
That my feelings, and that perfect image, would somehow work.
Darkness and light both formed, and for the briefest of moments, darkness was expelled.
Like animals fleeing a fire, the shadows crawled out of Yumi, crawled out onto the ground, writhing in agony.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
Avalon’s image was gone, and while expelled, the shadows remained, and looked to simply reattach to Yumi like a lost mother.
My body burned and moving felt like dragging a whet stone over a sword, harsh and scraping every nerve in my body to rawness.
The image was enough to have expelled it, but not enough to have purged it.
My body burned, and every nerve screamed at me to stop, but…
My body wasn’t made out of swords for nothing.
“The horned demon’s fang cries out in agony.”
Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar was an anti-demonic sword of Persia. Encrusted with emeralds on the hilt and at the base of the blade, the mere sign of light glinting from it caused the shadow to halt.
I heard a series of consecutive clangs, and Black Keys appeared, embedded in the shadow of the shadow. The dragonish thing once more reared its head and looked like it was to roar, but the air thickened instead.
Ripping itself away from the conceptual blades, and warded by my weapon, it turned on its tail and ran.
I managed to see Caren’s white hair pass by my peripheral vision and chase after it, but a sudden coughing fit kept me from anything more. I hacked, my lungs trying to expel the blades piercing them from within. Blood came, and I tried, but failed, to turn away from Yumi’s prone body beneath me, speckling her with red.
Yumi stared up at me, breathing shallowly, though aware. “Shirou?” she muttered.
I probably looked vaguely horrific to her, half-human, half-sword porcupine. Still, I forced a smile despite it all. “You are so grounded,” I told her.
Converting /tmp/phpjmhhOD to /dev/stdout
Actually, that’s about the only reason I’ve ended up on the BL forums. Comments there are funny. But distracting. Terribly, terribly distracting.
Music on Youtube for this chapter: watch?v=huUiTYcWwYY
Escaping Fate
Chapter 12
Heaven’s Feeling
We ascended the stairs, but Yumi was not in the front courtyard. Tohsaka immediately started erecting a boundary field herself in the vague chance of warding people who would come to the temple away at least temporarily. I hoped nothing had happened to the handful of monks that lived here with the Ryuudou family.
“Do you think she went inside?” Sakura asked.
“I have a sneaking suspicion not,” I said. Taking a quick look around, I started for the lake off to one side of the grounds. I didn’t know if she had, but, considering how sneaky she’d been before…
We rounded the temple proper and indeed, found her in the place I had been trying to exercise the Reality Marble out of my mind. Yumi stood right where Kirei Kotomine had met his end. She stared up into space, in the general direction of where the Grail had once hovered, and wavered in place as if in a trance.
I cringed at the way she moved.
If we get you out of this, I’m never letting you watch horror movies ever again.
The shadowy-something that had tried jumping me earlier was not in evidence. Instead, it was clear, if Caren’s demon detection was a kind of sympathetic effect, why it emanated from her right hand, as Yumi’s right arm was flickering with what looked like a haze of black. It grew and receded, and though it currently had no discernable anatomy, I could just feel the fact that it was watching us, like a black cat in the crook of her arm.
“Yumi-chan!” Sakura called out.
No response. Yumi just stood there, no different from the trees swaying in the breeze.
Caren brandished the throwing swords she had called Black Keys. “In nomini patri—”
That provoked a reaction, and Yumi’s arm, moving on what looked like its own accord, shot up and seemed to rip open. Instead of blood, shadow oozed out of her, gathering on the ground and swirling into the shape of the beast. It opened something like a mouth, but instead of a roar, it was like all the sounds in the air were sucked into its gullet, leaving the air feeling dry and stagnate.
And then charged.
Foregoing the remainder of the prayer, Caren sent her swords flying.
Making a very human-like choice, the dragon dove laterally and rolled over its shoulder to both avoid the weapons and keep its momentum going. With barely a change in gait, it charged straight for the priestess, who tried reaching for more of her swords, stored who-knows-where.
Not enough time.
I took a step out in front of her, hefted the Evelake Aegis by one end, and tried hitting the thing across the face with the cross.
The thing ducked low beneath the swing, then jumped right up at me, bounded off my shoulders, over my head, and landed behind us. With a dime-turn that would be impossible for an actual animal to replicate without snapping its spine, it spun around and leapt maw-first for Caren.
Tohsaka tackled Caren and Sakura tackled me, leaving the beast to jump right over both of us. While I could hear Tohsaka distantly shout at Caren to watch herself, my attention went to Sakura, who came up in a crouch before me.
Something that resembled a ribbon of cloth—because it flexed—but also a lance—because it shot out like a javelin—went flying from Sakura’s hand. It nicked the creature’s hind leg, and for the first time the beast seemed to flinch, pausing to regard Sakura like it might another predator.
“Matou-san,” Caren said; I could hear her slowly rising behind me. “If you attempt to seal it away, it will do the exact same as exorcising it, killing the host.”
Although she sounded like this was the last place she wanted to be, Sakura had enough conviction in her voice that she sounded prepared, at least. “I don’t want to seal it away. Just hold it in place until senpai or nee-san can figure out a way to rescue Yumi-chan.”
I chanced taking my eyes off of the creature to look Yumi’s way, but the girl had not moved, still staring up at the sky in a daze. I had to wonder what, if anything, was going through her mind and whether she even realized what was going on around her.
My stare turned back to the dragon just in time, as it decided to charge once more, this time going toward Sakura. The same lance-shaped flurry of magic shot from Sakura’s hand, though this time in a rapid-fire succession that, for the briefest of seconds, made her look extremely like Tohsaka.
Tohsaka herself had raised her left arm, and, with the crest on it glowing, started chanting.
Small explosions started ripping at the feet of the beast, first to its right, then left, and I realized Tohsaka was attempting to box it in while Sakura shot her own spells. Caren began throwing more of her swords in—where were they coming from?—and the creature slowly moved in a straighter and narrower channel as it charged.
I planted the shield before Sakura, though enough out of the way to not obscure her vision. If we could seal its movement and stun it like Sakura suggested, Curtana might be able to hold it completely until we figured out what to do—
Finally, one shot from Tohsaka sent the dragon stumbling hard onto its left legs, right into the path of Sakura’s spell. The lance skewered the beast in the left shoulder and even I could feel the flow of energy from it begin to reverse, the feeling of stagnation in the air receding as mana spewed out of its body.
“Now, senpai!”
I Traced Curtana and brought it down on the creature’s head.
It passed through with the same kind of resistance one might get when thrusting a fork into a cake or other light confections—resistance was present, but only at a level where it read as resistance and not much else. The thing seemed to break apart like a gust of wind might break apart a fog cloud, and before I knew it, there was nothing at my feet.
The shadow reformed identical as before, now with one on either side of me.
“Shi—”
Both pounced, and I unceremoniously dropped where I was to avoid being hit.
Lances and explosions started to sound again, and I rolled up to my feet just as Caren swept past me, swords in hand, prayers on her lips. She charged right past the creatures and—
Toward Yumi.
“Senpai!” Sakura shouted again, though this time I could hear more than just words. Trusting Sakura to hold these things and Tohsaka to look after her sister, I slashed at the nearest one as it tried to crowd me and ran after the priestess.
Caren had too much of a lead, and the distance to Yumi was not great. As she raised her hands to throw her weapons, I could think of little else, dropping Curtana. “Trace, on!”
Kanshou and Bakuya.
The triplet swords left Caren’s hands.
I threw Kanshou and Bakuya harder than Caren had the capacity for, crossing my arms as I did. The paired weapons flew out, crossed right behind Caren’s flowing robe, then helixed back to intercept the Black Keys. All five weapons clattered against one another, then against the ground not a meter in front of Yumi.
Caren spun to face me, and before I could think of what to do next, her hand whipped out a red cloth that snaked its way toward me. Although there was no malice behind the move, for some reason, in this place, I could not help but think of Kotomine throwing Angra Mainyu my way.
I tried ducking out of the way, but the cloth seemed to have its own mind as well, circling around behind me and grabbing me by the shoulder. The moment it had a grip on me, I felt it cling to me like a leech and the rest of the length swirled about me until my hands were tight to my hips. I fell to my knees before the cloth snaked down and around my legs, locking me in place.
Caren paused to regard me as I pushed as hard as possible, trying to even wiggle my hands. The cloth not only held me tight, but I could feel a disruption in my magical circuit, interference from whatever conceptual weapon this was. The moment I tried bringing a blade to hand, I felt feedback in my prana flow and the weapon refused to appear.
“Shirou, those creatures are going to continue to multiply and start to warp the environment,” Caren said, softly and sadly. “Your…friends can fight them now, but if this continues on much longer, the mutation you see on Yumi will spread not only from her body, but into the very existence of this city.”
I tried another blade, but it failed once again. Digging my knees as hard against the ground as I could, I tried using the friction to pry the cloth off, but that too did nothing.
“Demons are born from wishes,” Caren said. “I fear the souls of the victims before her cry out for salvation, and that wish has now consumed her.”
…What?
Victims before her?
Wait…
“If you wish to blame me for this act, then so be it,” Caren continued. “But I can hear the pleas now, the agony, and the desire for release. Even the demon born here understands, though it fears its own demise. At this point…there is nothing that can be done.”
Turning back, she drew three more of those Black Keys.
Victims.
Tohsaka had said the magus that had experimented on her was researching souls. Researching the viability of transferring magical circuits from one body to the next, and why bodies rejected that normally. As magical circuits are a reflection of the soul…
Sakura had said Yumi had needed a seal on her circuits because they were irregular. That the prana flow had been wrong and only after that cloth on her arm had been put there could she focus enough to manage her Alteration.
And her Alteration…
Additions…
“Look away, Shirou Emiya. I would not want to watch this either,” Caren said.
No.
At this point…there is nothing that can be done.
No.
Fire had once surrounded me, like the fires of hell. Nothing but destruction, nothing but pain, nothing but despair and horror and the conclusion that all is suffering and then death. There was nothing else there but the screams of tortured souls desiring rescue or the release of an end to it all…
And one boy who was saved, and his savior.
Nothing was absolute.
In that fire, I was saved. It was tiny, absolutely insignificant to the lives that were lost, but…
I thought of those tortured souls that had been kept in the basement of the church.
They too, had accepted it.
Even if they desired release…
“NO!”
I pushed.
I pushed.
I pushed until I felt my bones dislodge, my muscles tear.
“You are just going to hurt yourself,” Caren said, sighing, looking back my way again. “If you continue to struggle against that cloth, it—”
—will just tear itself apart.
I know.
Prana, unable to escape the circuit, found elsewhere to escape my body.
Blades ripped out of my nerves, around my broken bones, through my torn muscles, and pierced my skin, my clothing, and the cloth surrounding it.
It was not enough to tear the bounds completely open, nor even enough to give me any further room to move. But I could feel the concept behind the weapon fail, feel the presence of magic break about me, and through the haze of pain as I was impaled from within, managed to pull myself out of the wrapping.
Caren looked on in horror and I charged past her.
Shadow leapt from Yumi’s body and at me.
Between the pain staggering me, the lack of prana now still running through my circuit, and the single target in my mind’s eye, there was little else I could do. I swung at the creatures that charged me with my limbs, now resembling something more like a ball mace, blades protruding from my arms and fists. It was enough to dissipate the creatures before me, though each swing felt heavier and heavier as these things sucked the life right out of the air before them.
It didn’t matter.
All I could do…
It really didn’t matter.
Saber was gone, so it was hardly anything. A replication of an image, something my body still remembered like a phantom limb, something my eyes would never forget. Without Saber, it had nothing resembling the power it could. If Angra Mainyu were to spring out of the air right now, it would have been more than useless.
But…
It was all I could do.
Within Angra Mainyu, I was saved. The faint spark of hope from her voice, reminding me of what I was to her…
No despair or evil or darkness was absolute. If you looked hard enough—
I smashed past the last creature, grabbed Yumi while trying not to skewer her, and remembered.
“Trace, on.”
I had no healing abilities. No sealing abilities. Nothing like a real magus, nothing like an Executor of the Church, nothing like a Heroic Spirit. But I had this image, this perfect image, and though I was not Saber, I had energy, and I had a wish.
I fed every last ounce of prana into it, fed every last thought and desire for this girl into it—
I had done so once before, when we had first found her. I wasn’t even sure it had done anything, but as Tohsaka was not present when we found Yumi, and Sakura had no knowledge of healing magic as well, it was all I had in me to do.
Whether it was by this act, or by some other miracle…
Here, it was all I could bet on.
That my feelings, and that perfect image, would somehow work.
Darkness and light both formed, and for the briefest of moments, darkness was expelled.
Like animals fleeing a fire, the shadows crawled out of Yumi, crawled out onto the ground, writhing in agony.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
Avalon’s image was gone, and while expelled, the shadows remained, and looked to simply reattach to Yumi like a lost mother.
My body burned and moving felt like dragging a whet stone over a sword, harsh and scraping every nerve in my body to rawness.
The image was enough to have expelled it, but not enough to have purged it.
My body burned, and every nerve screamed at me to stop, but…
My body wasn’t made out of swords for nothing.
“The horned demon’s fang cries out in agony.”
Shamshir-e Zomorrodnegar was an anti-demonic sword of Persia. Encrusted with emeralds on the hilt and at the base of the blade, the mere sign of light glinting from it caused the shadow to halt.
I heard a series of consecutive clangs, and Black Keys appeared, embedded in the shadow of the shadow. The dragonish thing once more reared its head and looked like it was to roar, but the air thickened instead.
Ripping itself away from the conceptual blades, and warded by my weapon, it turned on its tail and ran.
I managed to see Caren’s white hair pass by my peripheral vision and chase after it, but a sudden coughing fit kept me from anything more. I hacked, my lungs trying to expel the blades piercing them from within. Blood came, and I tried, but failed, to turn away from Yumi’s prone body beneath me, speckling her with red.
Yumi stared up at me, breathing shallowly, though aware. “Shirou?” she muttered.
I probably looked vaguely horrific to her, half-human, half-sword porcupine. Still, I forced a smile despite it all. “You are so grounded,” I told her.
Escaping Fate, Heaven’s Feeling, End
Actually, one is not “grounded” in Japanese culture, but “kicked out” and forced to wait outside. But the equivalent in Western culture is grounding, and presumably it wouldn’t sound quite as right to a reader otherwise.Converting /tmp/phpjmhhOD to /dev/stdout