Chapter LXV: Rome Eternal
In an instant, the outside world disappeared.
Like the blade of a guillotine coming down, I was cut off from everything outside of the palace. Every bug that remained beyond the walls, no matter how big or small, slipped from my powers at once.
The suddenness of it hit me like an electric shock, and I staggered under the abrupt feeling of having my senses cleaved so neatly in half. It was like someone had reached into my head and scooped out one of my eyes to leave me half blind.
"Senpai!" the twins cried, worried. Arash glanced back at me, brow furrowing, but didn't ask.
The words "I'm fine" were on the tip of my tongue, an almost automatic response, but when I looked back up at Romulus, meeting his pitiless red eyes, what tumbled out of my mouth instead was, "What did you just do?"
"Have you injured one of my comrades before the fight has even properly begun?" Nero demanded. "Mm-mm! Such cowardice!"
"This is the final battle of our civil war," Romulus repeated, completely ignoring her accusation. "It shall remain between us — I on my own, and you with your champions and comrades. From here, none shall have the right to intrude. Not my allies…" His gaze turned towards her meaningfully. "And not yours."
A deathmatch. Of course. He was confident enough in himself to think that he could take on all of us there just then, but whether he was worried about having to fight Emiya and the others alongside us or just didn't want someone else butting in, like his court mage, he'd decided to set things up so that we could have our own private arena to duke it out in uninterrupted.
At least this time it wasn't a stubborn Irish hound making that decision all on his own.
"What's that even mean?" Rika shouted.
"It means he's cut us off from the outside world," I answered her, taking stock of my remaining swarm. Not nearly enough that I could afford to sacrifice them willy nilly for the sake of split second distractions. "We can't get out, but Emiya and Constantine XI can't get in."
We were all completely cut off from all allies. I couldn't even feel the bugs that were outside of the ramparts that had been erected as part of his Noble Phantasm. For all intents and purposes, the outside world didn't exist anymore.
And given where and when we were and who he was? There was little doubt that the only way this Noble Phantasm was going to come down was by killing Romulus himself. It would be too convenient if it was as easy as wearing him down and waiting for him to run out of energy, so we had to assume that this barrier was going to stay up as long as he did.
That also meant that we probably couldn't call for reinforcements from Da Vinci, like we'd planned to do in case of an emergency. There would be no Siegfried or Bradamante to come and lend us a hand. We were going to have to win this with nothing more than the people we currently had with us.
"I see." And instead of being upset, Nero grinned, full of teeth. "Mm! No, this is exactly the way it should be, isn't it? The winner shall be determined by the strength of our convictions! Armies, allies, Servants — it is all down to whose love shines brighter! My love for the Rome I have built, the Rome that will one day give rise to the world my friends hail from, or the love of Rome's Divine Ancestor for his new creation!"
Well, I could give her credit for her spirit, at least. I felt one side of my mouth pull up almost against my will. I couldn't believe the thought even entered my head, but where was she during Gold Morning, when it seemed like almost everyone had lost hope and given up? When I needed whoever had the will to keep going against the impossible and found so many people wanting?
"Well said," Romulus told her, a proud smile curling on his lips. "Indeed, that is precisely the spirit which an emperor of Rome ought to have. I see you and acknowledge you, Nero Claudius."
"Of course!" Nero replied. "I am Nero! I am emperor! This much is only natural!"
"My Best Buddy is the best!" Rika agreed.
A little biased there, Rika…
My remaining swarm could find no weaknesses in his Noble Phantasm. No cracks or crevices where I could slip more in or some out, only impossibly solid walls. Just as I'd thought, we were completely locked in.
If only it could have been so convenient to have been like the walls of Troy, where the legend would have left them vulnerable to infiltration. But no. We weren't that lucky.
"Then we will see here and now…" Romulus hefted his weird polearm, and his relaxed stance tensed into something ready for battle. "Whether that is enough for you to overcome me!"
He exploded away from his throne and into motion, and in the blink of an eye, he was on us.
"Master!" Mash shouted, and she put herself in the way, holding her massive shield out to block Romulus' equally massive spear. It struck with an echoing BONG. "Kuh!"
Romulus sprang back, and Mash slid as she landed, her feet dragging along the tiled floor. Although the hit was heavy, she didn't seem overly bothered by it, at least not to the extent she'd been when we fought Caligula and he essentially manhandled all of us. A quick glance with Master's Clairvoyance showed above average stats all around, but nothing like the utterly monstrous strength Caligula had possessed.
Aífe and Arash didn't wait for the word "go." They leapt into action a bare second after Romulus had, chasing after him after his brief clash with Mash. Arash kept relative distance, using his bow for once, but Aífe jumped straight into the fray with Gáe Bolg. She led with a powerful stab, fast enough that I saw little more than a blur.
Romulus blocked it. With contemptuous ease.
Aífe didn't let that stop her, and she launched into a furious flurry of blows that matched the speed I'd seen of her when she fought Tiberius and Julius Caesar before, moving so fast that she seemed to flicker between strikes instead of actually making them. Romulus didn't move anywhere near as fast, and yet he blocked them, deflected them, and parried them, standing like an oak in the same spot as though he refused to be moved against his own will.
Red spears flashed and arrows flew, but neither side gained ground. I couldn't be sure just watching them that Romulus was actually unable to fight back against Aífe and Arash together or simply choosing not to, but he didn't look strained or stressed, and no matter how fast Aífe moved or how many arrows Arash managed to sneak in between the swings of her spear, Romulus handled them the same.
It was a different kind of power from Caligula. This was not supreme strength that could crush mountains and sink islands, and this wasn't the speed of a hurricane compressed into the shape of a man, but his calm confidence was a kind of intimidation on its own, and the ease with which he defended himself was its own form of overwhelming might.
I refused to let myself blink as I strained my eyes to catch as much of the action as I could. I looked for any opening, any sign of weakness or vulnerability, like a particular focus on defending one side more than the other or a refusal to let Aífe come anywhere near a specific spot, but there were none, and if they were revealed by the furious strokes of her spear, they were there and gone again too quickly for me to see.
He was invulnerable.
Not in the literal sense, because if he was immune to damage then he would have just stood there and let everything bounce off of him, but it was becoming increasingly obvious to me just how much of an advantage it was for a Servant to be summoned into a time and place where their legend was the strongest. His stats weren't the highest ever, but it was almost like he was more there, more real, and because of that, he could keep up with a whirlwind like Aífe who should have been outpacing him.
And somehow, we had to beat him.
Nero, apparently unable to sit on the sidelines anymore, rushed into the fray. "Have at thee, Divine Ancestor!"
She brought her sword down with both hands in an overhead chop, forcing Aífe and Romulus both to step out of the way, and Arash took advantage to nail him with a trio of shots — but Romulus intercepted them with the massive flat of his ridiculous spear. He turned it back around into a swing at Nero's head, and she hastily blocked and was thrown backwards a dozen feet by the strength of it.
Aífe swooped back in, leading with a stab aimed at taking out his eye — or at her level of strength, probably his whole head — and he leaned out of the way and took hold of the shaft with his free hand.
"I see," he said evenly. "It's become apparent that you are the one among the Chaldeans with the greatest martial prowess. Lev Lainur was not wrong to say you would be one of our greatest threats if you decided to intervene more directly."
"When you want to snuff out a wildfire," she replied, grinning that shark-like grin, "you pray to the northern wind."
"Metaphor?" Romulus asked, amused. "Very well. Then a deeply rooted oak can withstand even the mightiest northern wind."
Magical energy gathered, multiplied, condensed, and I wasn't the only one to realize what was about to happen. Arash just happened to be the one who spoke first.
"Aífe!"
"Pierce."
Romulus swept his spear up, and blood splattered across the floor as Aífe flew backwards, her own spear still held in his other hand. She tumbled along the tile, rolling, but she managed to regain enough control to get her feet underneath herself, sliding to a stop in a crouch. One arm hung limply from her shoulder, where a great gash had been torn through the cloth and the flesh beneath and ripped off her pauldron.
And sprouting up from the floor near Romulus' feet, the bark stained red with Aífe's blood, there was a large, thick tree branch, the end pointed and sharp. If Aífe had been a fraction of a second slower dodging, it would have skewered her straight through the heart.
"Super Action Mom!" Rika cried.
"Queen Aífe!" said Nero, alarmed.
"A neat trick, Romulus." Aífe's teeth gleamed. "Should I show you mine, too?"
For the first time since the battle started, Romulus' eyes went wide, but he didn't react quite fast enough to avoid what happened next.
"Pierce, Gáe Bolg."
Thorns sprouted from the red spear, and blood splashed as they ripped and tore through Romulus' fingers. He dropped Gáe Bolg with a loud hiss, but the damage was already done, and he scowled down at his bleeding hand.
Unfortunately for us, when he flexed and tested his range of motion, it seemed that he was largely unhurt. If it was going to have any effect at all on his ability to fight, we would have to find out the hard way.
"First Aid!" I chanted, and Aífe's wound healed over.
She rolled her shoulder, testing it, and then held out her hand. Gáe Bolg lifted off the floor and zipped across the room to smack into her palm like it had been attached to a fishing line and reeled in. Weapon back in hand, she stood back up, ready to go again.
"It seems neither of us accomplished anything with those little parlor tricks," she said to Romulus.
"Parlor tricks?" Romulus echoed. "It was courtesy. My Noble Phantasm is not something which can be confined to the space of this room, so I have thus far avoided using it."
There was a brief moment of pause.
"So you have," Aífe allowed.
"It will take more than drawing a little blood to push me that far," Romulus said. "Come. You have yet to impress me."
"Then how about an arm!"
Black and red cut through the branch that Romulus had used to wound Aífe, and Nero rushed through the space opened by it, swinging her sword down with the aim of hacking off one of Romulus' limbs. Fire trailed in the wake of her sword, as though it were ablaze from inside.
When had that happened?
Romulus blocked her with the barest of effort. "Your spirit is strong, but your body cannot keep up with it. Do you truly intend to throw your life away by attacking me alone?"
Nero growled, teeth bared in a snarl. Romulus flung her back again, and she flew across the room to land on her feet, sliding across the tile.
Arash, keep supporting them! Aloud, I ordered, "Aífe, go!"
They needed nothing more than that, because they were leaping back into motion almost before I could finish giving the order. Nero rejoined them a heartbeat later, and together, she and Aífe engaged Romulus in melee while Arash peppered him from afar.
The addition of a third person proved a bit more of a challenge for Romulus than before, especially because Aífe had slowed her pace and molded her attacks to work around Nero's. What was lost in speed and power was made up for with teamwork, as corny as that might have sounded, because it split Romulus' attention more and it let Aífe conserve more energy.
They were still moving blindingly fast, faster than I thought Nero should be able to, but it let me keep track of the action a bit better, for all of the good that did me. I'd clustered as many of my bugs as I safely could as close to the room as was feasible, but the sheer strength and speed in combination with the inexplicable fire that Nero's sword occasionally belched made it impossible to use them for anything.
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Plus, Romulus had Magic Resistance B, which meant that both my Gandr and my ravens' mana cannons would do absolutely nothing to him. Even the flashbang runestones Aífe had made for us ages ago would probably be more detrimental than helpful, because unlike Aífe and Arash, Nero wasn't a Servant with a contract to Chaldea, so none of us could conveniently send her a telepathic message to close her eyes.
I hated how useless that made me feel. At least in Orléans, I'd been able to do something, even if the final battle was largely me watching the fight just as helplessly as I was now. There were no traps I could lay that would meaningfully trip Romulus up, no threads I could weave that would hold him at all, let alone long enough to actually leave an opening Aífe or Arash could exploit.
"I'm beginning to see through your moves, Divine Ancestor!" Nero boasted. She grinned as she swung, even though Romulus was still blocking both her and Aífe without seeming to break a sweat.
"Indeed, you are," he said calmly. "You truly are a shining star of an emperor, Nero. You should be proud."
"I am! Mm!"
Instead, I had to stand there, straining my eyes for an opening so small that it might be there and gone before I could order anyone to take advantage of it, forced to wait impotently as my magical energy was slowly sapped away.
But the fact that I couldn't hurt Romulus on my own didn't mean I couldn't do anything to impact the fighting at all.
Arash, I began as I reached down the thread connecting us, if you had an opening, could you hammer him with your ten-thousand arrows trick?
The pause in his next shot was so small that I wasn't sure I didn't imagine it.
I don't think so, he replied. The sheer volume of that large a volley would make it almost impossible not to hit one of our allies in the crossfire. Even then, if he can use his spear to summon up another tree branch…
Then all he had to do to defend himself was bring one or more up to use as a shield. There was no way to know the exact limit of how big he could make any of them, but the one that had nearly skewered Aífe was already uncommonly large and thick. Too big not to think that he could manipulate their size at will.
Damn it. It wasn't going to be as easy as turning him into a giant pincushion, was it?
Aífe, I tried, pulling on the other thread, this isn't sustainable. You're going to have to use your Noble Phantasm.
She didn't reply immediately, but she couldn't have been blind to it either. The drain on us Masters was relatively low for how intensely she was fighting, especially since it was spread out among the three of us, but if she got injured too many times fighting in close combat with a man who was one step shy of an actual god, then that was quickly going to change.
You're right, she finally admitted. This guy isn't anything at all like Caesar or Tiberius.
Aloud, she barked, "Nero, break away!"
"Why?" Nero demanded.
"Just do it!"
And reluctantly, Nero did, leaping back and away from the fray. Romulus frowned and turned his full attention towards Aífe, who had flung herself back as well, flipping her grip on her spear.
"I see. So you're beginning to become that desperate, are you?"
"Desperation has nothing to do with it!" Aífe spat back at him. "You're boring, Romulus! If you're just going to stand there and defend yourself, then there's no point in dragging this out any longer!"
Red light lit up the spear. An ominous chill descended over the room, reaching down to the very marrow.
My arm swept up, pointed at her. "Momentary Reinforcement!"
Catching on, both of the twins echoed, "Momentary Reinforcement!"
And Aífe grinned, a thing full of teeth, as the extra power filled her limbs and strengthened her body.
"Gáe Bolg Prototype!"
The red spear flew.
Like a streak of lightning, it flashed across the room — and met a tree branch thicker around than a fully transformed Lung. Wood and bark splintered, cracking and breaking, as the blade of the spear passed through it like a hot knife through butter, but it was enough, just enough, to send that deadly spear off course. It soared over Romulus' shoulder and embedded itself in the wall behind him, thrown with such violence and power that it sank into the stone up to its mounting.
"Shit," someone said. I thought it might be Rika.
"A valiant effort," Romulus praised. "I can see your resolve, Chaldeans, and I can do nothing less than match it. It is obvious now that you will not be dissuaded. And you, Nero? Even now, will you still side with them? Will you not surrender and join with me, to build my new, stronger Rome?"
"This is a battle for the sake of my Rome!" Nero shouted back at him. "I won't sit idly by while it is fought in front of me!"
Romulus closed his eyes briefly, as though those words pained him to hear, but they snapped back open before I could even think to take advantage of the moment.
"Well said!" he rumbled. "Then it is with my Rome that I shall crush all of you at once!"
He lifted his own spear thing, spinning it around so that the tip was pointed towards the ground, and took hold of the black grip with both hands. Magical energy built up inside of him rapidly, surging into his weapon until the jagged fan-like blade began to glow.
"Everyone!" I shouted. "Behind Mash, now!"
Mash stepped forward, hefting her shield, even as Aífe, Arash, and Nero all rushed to get behind it.
"That will not save you!" Romulus roared.
Mash slammed the bottom spoke of her shield against the tiled floor.
"LORD —"
"MAGNA VOLUISSE —"
"CHALDEAS!"
"MAGNUM!"
At the same time, the glowing rampart constructed itself in front of us, etched with lines of power, and Romulus thrust the tip of his spear into the ground.
BOOM was the sound of massive tree branches smashing into the rampart, bouncing off of its surface like water and pushing up and through the ceiling above us. BOOM was the second branch, veering to the side to crash against the palace wall, and Mash grunted under the effort, teeth gritted against the raw power trying to smash us all into dust or rip us all limb from limb. BOOM came the third branch, so soon after the first two that I almost didn't realize it was a third instead of a continuation of the second, and this time, Mash had to brace herself by taking a step back with one foot. A crack formed in the barrier protecting us.
"Master!" she croaked. "I-if too many more of those hit us…!"
A gloved hand came over her shoulder and gently traced a rapid series of runes against the surface of the back of her shield. Mash's eyes went wide.
"Aífe?"
"Spretta."
The runes lit up like a Christmas tree, and the rampart evolved, growling larger and more solid. Extra brickwork sprang into existence above and to the sides, and the single rampart became a sturdy curtain wall instead, the mortar glowing blue and the bricks themselves gleaming white, still translucent and phantasmal but almost there.
"He won't be happy," Aífe told her. "But just for a moment, look and see the next step on your journey, Mash Kyrielight."
The wall grew and grew, stretching out until it filled the room from one side to the other, and the branches of Romulus' Noble Phantasm bounced off like rain on an umbrella. The palace shuddered and threatened to fall as they tore into it, ripping through the brickwork and the tiles and gouging great holes in the floor, ceiling, and walls.
Through it all, Lord Chaldeas stood strong.
"Wait."
No, that was wrong. This wasn't Lord Chaldeas. To begin with, that was just a placeholder name, something to fill the silence because we didn't know the name of the Heroic Spirit inside of Mash. What Aífe had just done, this was exactly what she'd said it was, a glimpse at the true power of the shield Mash held, a peek at what it was meant to be.
A castle. A gleaming castle of white brick and sturdy walls, built as a bulwark against the dark days of post-Roman Britain. How had it taken me so long to realize it? There were many castles in Britain, and many that had stood in the days of King Arthur, but only one that symbolized a bastion of peace and prosperity amongst the struggle, only one that held itself up as a safe haven against the chaos and strife.
"That's —"
Arash's hand landed on my shoulder, and my head whipped around, but he wasn't looking at me, he was looking at Mash.
It's not time yet, he told me. Mash still has too much growing to do. If you give her the answer now, you'll stunt it.
I wanted to call that stupid, but I bit my tongue against it, because I actually could understand the idea. If someone had come to me a week after my first fight with Lung and told me I was going to save every world in the multiverse before I was even twenty…well, if I actually believed them, it would have twisted my head around a few dozen times. Carrying that weight so early into my career might have crushed me.
Mash…wasn't ready either. I wasn't sure I would know what it looked like when she was, but if the Heroic Spirit inside of her was watching closely enough to stop Lancelot from revealing his identity too early, then I didn't have much choice except to trust that he would know better than I did.
No matter how much I didn't like it. I guess I just had to think of it like I had Dinah, to know that I could force the issue, but that I wouldn't like the person it would make me if I did.
The palace rumbled threateningly under the stress of taking so many hits, but it held as Romulus' Noble Phantasm finally slowed to a stop. Ahead of the group, Mash panted and staggered as Lord Chaldeas flickered and disappeared, leaving us to stare into the tangled snarl of tree branches as thick around as an SUV. They veered off at sharp angles where they had slammed into Lord Chaldeas, punching out and through the walls and the ceiling and the floor, with irregular gaps spaced throughout.
It was like something out of Blasto's craziest fantasies. Tree branches bending at perfect ninety-degree angles or backwards at sixty-degrees, growing in ways that were all but impossible in nature.
"Oh my," Nero murmured and stared, eyes wide.
On the other side, my bugs gave me a garbled image of Romulus, who had not moved from his spot as he glared over at the mess that stood in front of us. I didn't know what was going through his head, but he could sense Servants just as well as our own could, so there was no way he couldn't tell that we'd survived that.
"So…am I the only one who's going to ask?" Rika whispered. "What's a tree got to do with founding Rome?"
"I don't get it either," her brother agreed just as quietly.
Aífe. Her head turned minutely my way to show she was listening. Romulus just used an enormous amount of magical energy. We're not going to get another shot like this. Take him out, whatever it takes.
Her lips hiked up on one side. "Understood, Master."
"Wait, what?" asked Ritsuka.
"Go," I told her.
Aífe kicked off the ground, flipping, and landed on one of the branches in a crouch, and then she kicked off again and bounced off the side of another branch like a rubber ball. She built momentum as she went, and this next one carried her up to the ceiling, where she kicked off of the tile and rocketed down, straight towards Romulus.
The palace shook again as she crashed into the floor like a meteor, the tile shattered under her feet, but Romulus had dodged backwards in enough time to avoid the blow and came back around to strike in that moment of vulnerability — except Aífe threw herself back and away, landing on the side of another tree branch, and bounced off of that and back towards him with a punch that probably would have literally knocked his head off.
He dodged that, too, and like before, Aífe was gone before he could counterattack. She used his branches as springboards, zooming in with lightning fast punches and kicks that more than made up for the amount of room she'd lost from all of the branches that now filled it. Even though they were so obvious that he could still dodge them without too much trouble, she was moving too quickly for him to hit her either.
"Very few Noble Phantasms can be tossed around casually," I told the twins as I watched the action with my bugs. "Most of them need lots of energy to use, so Servants can't just spam them one after the other until the enemy dies. That means that the moments after a Servant uses their Noble Phantasm are usually when that Servant is most vulnerable."
"So you sent Aífe to attack while Romulus was weakened," Mash concluded. "I see."
"Is that okay?" Ritsuka asked, frowning. "Even before, Aífe fighting him alone, she couldn't beat him."
"Did you forget, Ritsuka?" I asked him rhetorically. "Gáe Bolg isn't Aífe's only Noble Phantasm."
On the other side of the branches, Romulus snarled. "I tire of your acrobatics!"
He swung that ridiculous spear again, and from the branch in front of him, another, smaller branch sprouted. In the blink of an eye, it had pierced through the spot where Aífe had just landed — but she was already gone, moving so much faster this time that she seemed to simply teleport right in front of him, her right fist cocked back.
"Then let's put an end to this," she said with deathly cold. "Torannchless."
BOOM was the sound of her fist shattering the sound barrier, followed by the CRACK of Romulus' hastily raised branch splintering into a hundred-thousand tiny shards. Romulus recovered quickly, swiping with his spear again to cover the moment of vulnerability, but Aífe, in a feat of agility that would have made gymnasts the world over green with envy, leapt over the blow and landed atop the massive fan-shaped blade.
She sprang off of it immediately, and her heel came down with thunderous force between Romulus' shoulders. The sheer strength behind it threw him to his knees, and he had to brace himself with his hands to keep from smashing straight into the floor. That moment was all she needed to land and whirl about, and this time, when her heel came down on the small of his back, he was driven straight into the ground. The floor beneath them cracked and threatened to give way.
In another moment, she had him pinned, the thumb of one hand pressed into the shoulder joint of the arm that held his spear and the other twisting his other arm behind his back. Her foot pressed down on his spine.
Romulus grunted and tried to throw her off, but somehow, he just didn't seem to have the strength. It was like he'd been tied down with invisible, unbreakable chains.
"What?" he demanded. "What is this?"
Binding of the Noble Hero"Fornadmaim Niad Náir," Aífe said clearly. "One of my martial arts' secret techniques, if you want to call it that. Unfortunately, without the right preparations, the only way I can make sure you don't go anywhere is if I hold you right here."
All the more right then, I wished that she had been summoned with those tutelary aspects she lacked now. Just how many special techniques did those Celtic martial arts have?
"More importantly," Aífe went on, chiding him, "you weren't paying close enough attention earlier. Did you think I was just randomly hopping about for the fun of it?"
And across the room, every spot she'd touched while blitzing him lit up, each one aglow with a different rune. Eighteen in total, they radiated power, oozing energy like the crackle of static electricity, and once I realized the number, their purpose became alarmingly clear.
My foot tried to carry me forward, but there was nowhere to go and no way to reach her. The branches of Romulus' Noble Phantasm blocked us off — protected us.
"Aífe!" I shouted. "Don't!"
Arash, I thought frantically, go —
But it was too late.
"Ochd Deug Odin."
A bomb went off, that was what it felt like. A thunderous explosion ripped through the room, sending the entire building aquiver — there was no way it could survive too many more shocks like that — and the floor beneath our feet shook so violently I nearly fell over. On the opposite side of those branches, each and every bug that was watching the fight died at once, surviving only long enough to see the flash before the boom.
It was over before any of us could do anything.
"Arash!" I ordered anyway. "Go!"
He was already gone, hopping up to find one of the openings. I was following him a bare moment later, climbing up to the nearest one I thought I could fit through.
"Aífe!" the twins cried. They, too, found the nearest branch low enough to grab onto and started to climb their way out.
"What happened?" Nero asked. "Mm! Another one of these noble whatsits?"
"Queen Aífe just used one of hers, yes!" Mash told her, and then she, too, started making her way to the nearest gap, following the twins.
"What is that?" Nero asked. "What does that mean? Is it over?"
I hope not, I didn't say, because if that had been strong enough to take out Romulus underneath her, then it was definitely strong enough to take Aífe out, too.
I'd misjudged my positioning, because when I came out the other side, I tumbled to the ground, rolling down the mass of branches to land painfully on my ass. There was no time to worry about it, so I didn't, just scrambled back to my feet to find that a large portion of those branches from Romulus' Noble Phantasm had been incinerated in the blast. Not all of them, but even the thick tangle that had protected us had nearly been seared away, leaving behind only about half of the original mass of growth. Any leaves that might have been growing on the offshoots had burned away.
"Master!" Arash called.
Somehow, in the middle of all that carnage, there was a body, small and compact, female. Arash cradled her gently, his brow furrowed, and it frankly seemed a miracle that she had survived at all. Half her body was covered in some level of burn, but an alarming amount of it was the black of third degree, charred and sickening. The smell of burnt pork radiated off of them.
"Aífe!" the twins called as they rushed over.
Then the smell hit them and they saw her condition and the both of them recoiled.
"Oh fuck," Rika groaned, pinching her nostrils closed.
"Is she…?" Ritsuka asked.
"Shit."
But it wasn't my mouth that said the word, it was Aífe's.
"That bastard." Teeth gritted, one amethyst eye squinted open, the other burned shut. "He put up a defense at the last second."
"It was the only thing that saved us both," an unwelcome voice rasped.
And from the epicenter of the blast, a body pulled itself out of the rubble, bark and wood chips falling away like he'd just walked out of a lumber store. He was nearly as badly injured as Aífe was, and somehow, he still had a grip on his spear, but he was so battered that it seemed like a miracle he could even stand.
"First Aid!" the three of us Masters called, because it looked like we'd all had the same idea.
Immediately, the burns on Aífe's body receded, giving way to healthier flesh. Even with three casts of the spell, it wasn't enough to fix her even halfway back to normal, but it was enough that she could draw the rune that she used to heal herself before.
"Not hardly," she grunted up at him. Slowly, tenderly, she sat up, and Arash let her go, backing away a little as he summoned his bow. "Those plants of yours messed up my runes. I took more damage than I should have because of that trick."
"Do you expect me to have sympathy for my enemy?" Romulus asked her coldly.
"I expect you to know when you're beaten," I told him, cutting in.
His red eyes turned towards me. "Beaten?" He stood straighter, despite his wounds. "My Rome still stands. I still stand! So long as that is the case, I am not beaten!"
He lifted up his spear, gathering magical power once more — this close, even the twins must have been able to feel it.
"Even like this, I can still defeat you, Chaldeans of proper history! Magna —"
Three arrows sank into his shoulder, right at the joint, and his right arm fell limp. Romulus spun around, honing in on Arash, who had fired those arrows, and he ripped them out of his flesh in a spurt of blood.
"I will not go down so easily!"
A sickening squelch cut off anything else he might have said, and he staggered as more of his blood spilled across the floor. He looked down, disbelieving, at Nero, who looked like she herself could hardly believe what she'd just done. Her ridiculous sword was buried almost to the hilt in Romulus' stomach, ripping through his body and out the other side. It was only the angle that had prevented it from severing his spine, although whether that would even mean anything to a Servant, I had no clue.
"You…Nero…"
"Y-your time…is over, Divine Ancestor!" Nero said shakily. Her voice gained confidence with every word. "Now… Now is the time of my Rome! And I…I won't allow you to trample all over it, even out of love! For I love my Rome too dearly to allow it to be erased! Mm-mm!"
And Romulus…sighed and smiled. "I see."
He let go of his spear, and it clattered to the ground, then burst apart into motes of light. Romulus himself began to fade around the edges, glittering dust peeling away from his body, the way so many other Servants had disappeared in this Singularity and the ones before.
"You are dazzling, Nero Claudius," he said fondly. "It seems your love was indeed stronger than mine, for it brought to you comrades who lent you the strength to overcome even my own empire."
"Yes!" Nero agreed. "Mm-mm! These friends of mine, these comrades of mine, it is only because of their help that I was able to face you! Even if they must go away, merely to have had them… It makes my Rome the strongest, greatest Rome there will ever be! Mm! Even if it too must one day fall!"
"Then there is nothing left for me to do except this," Romulus said. He reached out with his free hand and set it atop Nero's head, as a father might his daughter's. "My beloved child, Emperor Nero, I leave it all to you. I entrust the future of Rome to you and your heirs, whatever form they might shape it into. Even if it becomes something unrecognizable, it is still Rome, after all…"
He smiled.
"Rome is eternal."
And then he disappeared.