Chapter XLIV: Rígan Fuilech

The ride was different the second time.

Maybe it was the keener sense of purpose, the fact there was a more concrete goal ahead of me than "go here and wait a week," or maybe it was just because Aífe's chariot was much more crowded when it had to accommodate her, three Masters, and one Demi-Servant in full plate, and that made the whole thing feel more grounded. Maybe it was some combination of the two.

Or maybe it was just that I was too focused on the fight ahead to think about the fact that Arash wasn't standing next to me with his hand on my back and there were no safeties on this chariot.

The rush of bugs entering and leaving my range so quickly was still stomach-churning, but it was easier to distract myself with thoughts of our enemy as I imagined different scenarios for what kind of opponent he would be. The biggest sticking point, of course, was that Arash didn't have Master's Clairvoyance, which meant that he hadn't seen what class of Servant Caesar was, so all I had was a few educated guesses to help me there.

We could probably rule out Berserker, just by the nature of the class. I mean, who would summon a general as famous as Julius Caesar and then hobble him with a skill as detrimental as Madness Enhancement? There wasn't a point summoning a genius tactician and then lobotomizing him.

Caster, I wanted to say, was also out. Julius Caesar had no magic in his legend, and while that didn't automatically shut him out of the Caster class, he didn't fit any of the nonstandard Caster roles we'd encountered so far. Not like Gilles or Shakespeare or Cúchulainn had.

Saber… I remembered there being something about him owning a famous sword, so that was a "maybe," but in Rome, what would he be remembered for best? Not his swordsmanship, but his leadership, his strategic acumen. Saber wasn't impossible, just unlikely.

Lancer and Archer I wanted to rule out just because I couldn't imagine what his Noble Phantasm would be in either of those classes. He was definitely too early for something as ridiculous as the Lance of Longinus.

Assassin, there was almost no chance. It would have to be in a twisted, fucked up way, like he "assassinated" the Roman Republic so the Empire could be born.

Of the standard classes, that left Rider. Again, I couldn't think of anything that would serve as a Noble Phantasm for that class. He didn't really have any famous horses or chariots. A cavalry charge? It seemed like a stretch, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. If playwrights could be Casters and a guy who reproduced bladed weapons was an Archer, then it stood to reason there was some flexibility in how the classes worked.

My money was on what the primers back at Chaldea had called an "Extra" class, like Jeanne in Orléans. A Ruler, with a skillset that focused on coordinating his subordinates and perhaps a Noble Phantasm based upon the crossing of the Rubicon.

I didn't like it, but there was no way to be sure of anything until we met him in the flesh, so to speak, so our plans had been necessarily vague and flexible. At the very least, we were bringing enough firepower between Aífe, Arash, and Emiya that we should be able to take him out without too much trouble no matter what class he wound up being.

Beep-beep-beep!

My communicator chimed to let me know we'd reached our intended destination.

"Aífe!" I shouted over the wind, and then immediately felt a little silly when I could have just projected my thoughts along the bond she now shared with us three Masters.

Nonetheless, she heard me, because she pulled on the reigns, and her horses neighed as they slowed first to a trot and then to a stop. Without the momentum to steady things, the rest of us lurched to the side and had to grab the railing to keep from being pitched over the edge.

"Whoa," Rika mumbled.

"Are you okay, Mash?" Ritsuka asked.

"F-fine, Senpai," Mash answered.

"Arash," I barked out.

Immediately, he materialized behind us, and the twins jumped at the suddenness of it.

"We're here," I told him, perhaps unnecessarily.

He nodded and cast his gaze around, taking in the forest around us. Scrutinizing his sniper's nest.

"Good cover," he commented. "Elevation's good for my sight-lines. I'll set up a good position so I can cover you."

"You can see him from all the way over here?" Rika asked, awed.

"Well, not from here, exactly," Arash allowed with a shake of his head. "But once I get a clear line of sight, I should have a good enough angle to keep an eye on everything, yes. As long as they catch up quickly enough, I should even be able to keep an eye on Boudica and Spartacus."

When he made the suggestion earlier, I finally got the joke from a few days back, that knowing smile when Emiya bragged about being able to pick out buttons on a shirt at four kilometers. In hindsight, I should have made the connection sooner, because I'd specifically looked him up during our month-long break after Orléans, sparse as his legend actually was.

Arash's range wasn't measured in kilometers. It was measured in leagues.

"Wow," Rika breathed. She peered down the side of the mountain, like if she just squinted and strained her eyes hard enough, she'd be able to see that far, too. "Archer Servants sure are impressive, aren't they? Hey, Emiya! Can you see that far, too?"

Emiya appeared off to the side and coughed awkwardly into one hand. "Well. My range isn't quite that far, no, but I make up for it in other ways."

Like being able to reproduce Noble Phantasms. I hadn't forgotten how his alternate self had tried to kill us by firing swords shaped like arrows from his bow. We hadn't seen our Emiya try any such thing so far, but that didn't mean he wasn't just as capable of it.

"We need to keep moving," I said, steering us back onto the matter at hand. "Arash —"

"I'm your overwatch," he agreed. "Like I said, I'll keep an eye on things from here and lend you some long range support, but don't be afraid to call me with a Command Spell if things get too rough, Master."

"You needn't worry," Aífe said coolly. "Nothing a mere Roman general can bring to bear is enough to get through me."

Some part of me — perhaps the tattered remnant of the little girl who had dreamed of flying and beating up bad guys — wanted to believe that. Unfortunately, I had made a habit over the course of my career of defeating those who were supposed to be all but invincible, from Lung to Alexandria to Scion himself. I didn't have it in me to just trust her word and her strength alone, no matter how impressive it might have been.

For better or for worse, it didn't get more impressive than casually erasing continents off the face of the planet.

"I'll keep that in mind," I promised Arash.

A short huff of air left Aífe's nostrils, but she didn't otherwise comment.

Arash gave me an answering nod, and then his bow materialized in his hand and he leapt up into the canopy of the trees. A moment later, there wasn't even the rustle of the branches to mark his passing, like he had vanished completely.

"Let's get going," I said into the silence that followed.

"Right." Mash nodded, and her grip on the rail of the chariot tightened. "We need to go and face Julius Caesar, or else Miss Boudica and Spartacus's efforts keeping the assault team busy will be for nothing."

Ritsuka and Rika, both serious-faced, nodded. "Right!"

Emiya dipped his head and disappeared like a mirage, there one second and gone the next. I would have felt safer with him physically next to us, but the carriage of Aífe's chariot only had so much room in it, and that was why he and Arash had been traveling with us in spirit form to begin with. Easier to fit in a cramped space when you technically didn't have either mass or volume.

Aífe smirked and turned forward again, taking a tighter grip on her horses' reins. "Better hold on, then, because I won't be slowing down until we're right on top of him."

She snapped the reins, and the two divine horses pulling the chariot tossed their heads with a loud neigh, then lurched back into motion so swiftly that I wasn't sure my stomach hadn't been left behind. My own grip on the rail of the carriage tightened until my knuckles stood out as stark white against the rest of my hands.

If she kept the contract and stuck around after this Singularity was solved, I was going to have to get used to traveling like this. Suck it up, Hebert. Riding shotgun on Brutus was way less comfortable than this, and I dealt with that just fine.

I took as deep a breath as I feasibly could and distracted myself again with thoughts of the fight ahead.

An ambush was actually one of the first ideas proposed, but it had been vetoed immediately, and not just because Aífe found it distasteful. No, the problem was that none of our Servants were Assassins, and that meant none of them had that nifty Presence Concealment skill, so none of them could get within spitting distance of Caesar without him knowing it. He would know we were coming at roughly the same time that we would know we were getting close.

Alternatively, Arash could have attempted to snipe him from so far away that he wouldn't even know the attack was coming — except that, at those distances, any attack with enough power behind it to actually kill him had enough travel time for Caesar to sense the magical energy and defend himself. For that matter, since we didn't know his class, it was entirely possible that he could have some form of skill that would let him set up a defensive perimeter on his camp, sort of like Territory Creation, based around his legend as a general, a leader of armies.

If we tried that first and it failed, he might decide to call back the assault force, and the whole point of facing them separately would be soundly defeated.

As frustrating as it was to admit it, our best option was a direct assault, a straightforward attack that let us get close enough to figure out if he had any defenses at all, and if he did, what they might be, with Arash keeping an eye on things from a far enough distance that he would be virtually undetectable. If the opportunity arose, then he could take a shot at Caesar in the middle of the fight, when he'd be too distracted to pay attention to an arrow coming from miles away on the mountainside.

It was a simple plan, but sometimes, simple plans were the best plans.

Hopefully, this would be as simple as letting Aífe pound Caesar into a pulp, and none of the backups or contingencies would be at all needed. We could be done with it, go back to camp, and start making our plans to deal with whatever else the United Empire might have in store while we waited for Emperor Nero to pay us a visit.

Yeah, right. Right after Lung adopts a puppy and Romani gets a full night's sleep.

The rest of the ride was silent but for the beat of the hooves upon the hard ground and the horses' heavy breathing. My thoughts continued to spin off in different hypotheticals for what we might find in Caesar's camp, but there were too many question marks to do more than make a few wild guesses, and those were next to useless as it was.

But some unknowable time later, both Aífe and Mash shifted, looking off into the vague distance. Immediately, I knew what it meant: they had just sensed Caesar's presence, even if they couldn't pinpoint his exact location.

Aífe gave a gentle tug on the reins, and her horses slowed to a much more reasonable canter instead of the all-out gallop that had carried us this far as she carefully steered the two of them in the general direction of where she and Mash had first looked. The thunderous stampede of the hooves quieted to a more subdued clop, but even that sedate speed was still enough to outpace the average family car.

And that was when, as the speedy rush of so many insects coming in and out of my range slowed down, things finally settled down enough to get a handle on what I was sensing through my swarm, and I could see him, a hulking figure in a clearing not far to the northeast of us. The bugs were too scattered to get a clear picture, but the enormity of his bulk was obvious, even if the finer details were too blurry to make out right then.

"Larger than life" seemed appropriate for the man who had such an outsized presence in the Western world even two-thousand years after his death.

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"He's close," Aífe warned before I could even open my mouth.

"About a hundred and fifty meters to the northeast," I added.

"Master," Mash said, but there was a lilt to her voice that made it almost a question.

"I'm ready," Ritsuka replied, voice strong and resolute.

"Let's go kick the Caesar out of this salad!" Rika chimed in with only the barest hint of a quaver.

Mash — wisely, in my opinion — decided not to question the logic of that one. "R-right!"

We went another hundred meters or so, and then the chariot slowed to a stop as the horses nickered and tossed their heads, like they too were eager for the fight to come. Maybe they were, in hindsight. I had no idea exactly how intelligent they were, and right then, I didn't think of asking. It wasn't an important thing to worry about.

Our group dismounted the chariot back onto the dirt road that had been carved through the forest who knew how many years ago, Mash's shield appearing in her grip almost immediately, and once Aífe herself had climbed down, she walked towards the front of it. One gloved hand trailed along the flank of the white steed's shimmering coat, and she gave a grateful pat to the thing's massive, muscular neck, and then the chariot and horses both vanished into glittering dust.

Instantly, the slight tug inside my chest that I'd been ignoring for the past half an hour or so eased. The twins next to me both let out a sigh, now that the burden had been lifted from them as well.

One of the advantages of splitting the contract between all three of us: no single Master had to shoulder the strain of being Aífe's only support.

As soon as the chariot was gone, Emiya shimmered into existence next to us, and both the twins jumped a little at the suddenness of it.

"Don't do that!" Rika shrieked at him.

Emiya smirked and shrugged. "Sorry, Master. I'll keep your sensibilities in mind from now on."

"Don't make me put a bell on you!" she threatened him.

He shook his head, a huff of air that wasn't quite a snort escaping his nostrils, and then turned serious. "His presence is stronger than expected."

"For you, perhaps," Aífe told him, unconcerned. "For me… Well. Maybe he'll actually be something of a challenge."

Emiya arched an eyebrow at her. "You're still going to insist on fighting him by yourself?"

"I'm not so easily intimidated," she replied. "As long as the combat is one on one, I won't lose to an ordinary man, no matter how inflated his legend."

"Underestimating him might get you killed," Emiya chided her, and before she could rebut him, he went on, "More importantly, you can feel that, can't you?"

He looked around the forest, eyeing the foliage like he expected an army to jump out and attack at any second. There was no such thing — the bugs around us showed no sign of any ambush waiting in the proverbial wings.

"This sensation, it's hard to compare it," he said. "But… It's like there's something thick in the air pressing down on me. It's not a defensive bounded field, at least not in the traditional sense, but whatever it is will make it harder to fight at your best."

"I feel it, too," Mash agreed uneasily. Her grip on her shield tightened. "It's almost…suffocating. Like wading through syrup."

"It's likely a Noble Phantasm of some kind," Aífe said, but she might as well have been discussing the weather for how concerned she sounded. "A defensive structure that discourages and disadvantages the enemy so that it's harder to fight. At full power… But it's not at full power."

Emiya's head jerked around so fast that I got sympathetic whiplash just watching him. "It's not?"

"No." She grinned that vicious grin of hers, all teeth. "After all, this isn't his territory, is it? At best, it's contested. At worst, it's ours. All he can do with it is posture and play mind games." She huffed a condescending chuckle. "This has nothing on the Land of Shadows. Compared to a land where death stalks every corner and the restless dead hide behind every tree, this is just pathetic."

"Heh." Emiya smirked. "Even something like this doesn't faze you in the slightest. You really are a monster of a woman, aren't you?"

"I'm the only one Scáthach knew she couldn't beat in a contest of martial skill," Aífe answered. "I'm the only one who surpassed her as a warrior. When you reach the realm of martial arts where she and I dwelled, you've long left the limits of humanity behind. Whether you want to call that monstrous or divine, I don't really care. Fear and worship mean the same thing to me."

"I know I've said this before," Rika whispered to her brother, not nearly quiet enough to go unnoticed, "but she's hardcore!"

"I'm just glad she's on our side," Ritsuka muttered back.

"Enough dithering," Aífe said. "We've kept Caesar waiting long enough."

She started off in the direction of Caesar's camp, and our group fell into step behind her, with Mash at the front, the twins in the middle, and Emiya and I in the back.

"Emiya," I murmured, keeping my voice low. "I shouldn't need to say this, but —"

"I know," he replied, just as quiet. "Pride or not, I don't intend on letting her get killed, either."

I gave him a shallow nod, glad that he and I were on the same wavelength about this.

She wouldn't be happy if he interfered, but I preferred to have Aífe alive and on our side, even if she was angry at us, than to lose her because she refused to ask for help when she needed it. Even I could feel the Noble Phantasm she was talking about earlier. Not as clearly as she, Emiya, and Mash obviously did, but however it worked, it worked well enough that my bugs were moving more sluggishly than they should have been. Like there was a buffer between them and me that was slowing down my control just enough to be felt.

However confident Aífe was, I wasn't about to discount the danger of a single minor slip-up in a fight of this level.

We made the trek through the last fifty or so meters of forest, and then the trees fell back behind us as we entered a clearing, a large, flat swath where the grass had largely been worn away by the trample of feet, hooves, and the wheels of carts, carriages, and chariots, stretching about sixty feet across and shaped almost like a giant almond.

And in the middle of this clearing, reclined on a makeshift bench, was…

"Oh, so you've finally shown up. I was wondering if you had lost your nerve."

…There was no way that was Julius Caesar.

"Holy cow, he's huge!" Rika burst out.

The ornate, gilded armor fit with the image. The red clothing trimmed in gold, the epaulets, the short, dark hair, the skirt, the laurel crown that wrapped around the back of his head, even the sword was resplendent enough to fit the vague description of his "famous sword." Everything else about him would have screamed "Julius Caesar" in big, capital letters.

Except his great bulk had much more to do with his inflated waistline than it did bulging muscles. This did not look like a distinguished veteran of many military campaigns who had marched across the breadth of the Roman Empire, this looked like a middle-aged shut-in who only left his mother's basement to participate in reenactments of famous Roman battles.

The man next to him sitting on an adjacent bench chuckled. "Looks like they've got your number, Caesar."

Caesar sighed. "Of course, it's only natural. Rome is the pinnacle of civilization, bountiful, plentiful. Rome provides for its citizens. That also means that there's no shortage of exquisite food for its people to enjoy."

He hefted himself up and to his feet with an ease and speed that belied his girth, looking us over with a critical eye.

"There are more of you than I was expecting," he lamented. "The three Masters and that Demi-Servant, of course, I knew you'd be here, but that miserable court mage said nothing about that fence-sitter finally getting involved or that handsome Eastern fellow you've got with you, there."

A chill ran down my spine.

"Court mage?" But it was Mash who uttered the words suspiciously. "Could it be…?"

Lev Lainur. Flauros.

No, that was where my mind went first, but there was no guarantee of that, was there? It would be convenient to see him again this soon, a chance to wring some answers from him now that we were better positioned to face him, but it was entirely possible that this court mage was also just a Caster class Servant of some kind.

A part of me wanted it to be Lev, so I could take care of him now and metaphorically serve his head on a silver platter to Marie when she got her body back. Another part of me wanted it to not be him, so that Marie could be there when we finally confronted him again. So that she could get her own closure from him.

"Ah, perhaps I've already said too much," Caesar lamented with a small smile. "But there's still more you yet want to know, isn't there? Perhaps about the Holy Grail as well?"

"And you're going to tell us, just like that?" Ritsuka demanded.

"No," I answered before Caesar could say anything else. "He's goading us. Trying to get into our heads, throw us off our game."

Caesar smiled wider. Like I really needed the reminder that his corpulence did not mean he was any less the genius tactician and strategist who had paved the way for the transformation of the Roman Republic into an empire.

Aífe's lips split into a hungry grin. "Then you really are Gaius Julius Caesar."

"Was it not already obvious?" He took several long strides away from his makeshift bench and brandished his golden sword. "But I shall make you this promise: if you beat me, then I'll tell you where you might find the Holy Grail of this era."

What?

"That's…!" Mash gasped.

"Hey, Caesar," the other man behind him scowled. "What do you think you're doing, you fat bastard? You're going to give away our secrets? His secrets?"

"If you truly think that man cares one wit for our success or failure, you're delusional," Caesar told him. "What his goal is, I can't possibly say, but whether we forge our immortal empire or not matters little to it." He smirked. "Of course, neither can I simply allow you Chaldeans to trample upon the dreams of we Roman Emperors who have given our fullest devotion to Rome. If you want to know where to find the Holy Grail, you must defeat me and prove that your history is the right history."

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself," Aífe said as she stepped forward to meet him. "The one who should be saying, 'don't disappoint me, now,' isn't you, it's me."

Caesar inclined his head. "Now, that's the spirit."

Aífe took off like a rocket without any other warning, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye, and the blade of her spear aimed itself for Caesar's gut, but with the clang of clashing metal, he deflected it using his sword. Effortlessly, she moved with the momentum of the deflection and spun her spear around, stabbing the butt of the shaft towards his forehead, and Caesar ducked beneath it to swipe at her own belly with his blade. She backed away and avoided it without any trouble at all.

All before any of the rest of us could even think to give them more space.

"Mash!" I said.

"Right!" she replied, and she put herself in front of us as we three Masters backed up behind the defense of her shield.

"This is going to be fun," Aífe said with a low, throaty chuckle.

"My dear," Caesar drawled, "for a woman as beautiful and deadly as you, I shall make sure that it is."

They raced towards one another again and met in the middle, and this time, they moved too fast for my eyes to track. The deadly Gáe Bolg flashed in the sunlight, a streak of red, a smear of scarlet that twined and twirled around Aífe's body like a slithering snake. Her arms and legs became a blur of motion and strength, and her body didn't so much flow from one position to the next as she seemed to flicker between them, resolving into existence only long enough for me to catch a glimpse of her and then disappearing.

To compare it to her spar against Emiya several days back was a disservice to her. She was, as she had compared herself to back at Joyous Guard, as the northern wind, a hurricane of force and power that blew away everything in her path without care or mercy.

"Oh wow," Ritsuka murmured. "Look at them go!"

"I would if I could even see them!" Rika told him.

Aífe reminded me of Saber Alter back in Fuyuki. The same speed, the same raw power. This wasn't a human being, but a force of nature shaped like one. Nothing should be able to stand against her.

Except that Caesar was.

Against all reason, his bulk didn't seem to slow him down in the slightest. His golden sword was a streak of yellow to combat the smear of the red Gáe Bolg, flashing with every swing as the metal of the blade caught the sunlight. His arms, too, were blurs, but whereas Aífe's movements were so blindingly fast that they were almost invisible, his torso, his trunk, seemed to mostly stay in one place. The way he fought was more solid, compared to the fluid, almost breezy motions of Aífe's martial arts.

Maybe that was why he could keep up with her. She was a whirlwind of power, so all he had to do was plant himself and weather the storm.

The whole clearing rang with the clash of their weapons, a cacophony of deafening, metallic clangs that assaulted my eardrums. The deep, resonant bong of Gáe Bolg mixed and combined with the high pitched shriek of Caesar's sword, echoing so loudly that I almost wouldn't have been surprised if Boudica came rushing over to see what was happening.

It was a fight at a level I had only seen a few times before. They still had nothing on Scion when it came to raw power — hard to compete with him — and for sheer destruction, the likes of Leviathan and Behemoth had them soundly beat. But the speed was where their superhuman abilities were really obvious.

In one heartbeat, a hundred strikes. Between the next, a hundred more. It happened too fast to count, so fast that their limbs seemed to multiply as they sped up even more.

If I ever thought I could seriously take on a Servant, standing there watching them go would have disabused me of that notion.

With a final, echoing CLANG, they split apart again. Neither of them was so much as breathing hard.

"Truly, you are indeed worthy of the acclaim afforded your name," Caesar praised Aífe. "Even now, you're holding back on me, aren't you? You Celtic barbarians may lack in the class and sophistication of Rome, but your arts of war are no less potent."

Aífe smirked. "Do you bring a mallet to squash a single bug? Of course not, when your boot will more than suffice. Besides, do you think I haven't noticed, too? You're holding back, as well. If you truly wanted to win, you'd bring out that Noble Phantasm of yours."

"You can tell?" Caesar cocked one eyebrow, then shook his head. "Well, it's true enough. My reticence, however, comes not from confidence, it's just that I'm reluctant to risk losing this sword again. I'm quite embarrassed to have lost it the first time, you see."

Aífe snorted and shifted into a lower stance, her hand gliding along the shaft of Gáe Bolg as her foot traced a winding path through the dirt.

"Are you so impolite you'd force a woman to show you hers, first? You should rethink that. There's a reason this spear is considered certain death. You might not survive if you keep holding back."

Caesar inclined his head. "If the lady asks so fervently, then I must oblige, mustn't I? Never let it be said that Julius Caesar was so uncouth a man as to leave his partner wanting!"

He kicked off the ground and wound his arm back, and as he approached Aífe, he called out the name of his Noble Phantasm.

"Crocea Mors!"

He swung. Aífe's legs moved. And —

Clang

The golden sword smacked uselessly against Gáe Bolg's shaft, because Aífe had thrust it out to its maximum length, leaving her body simply out of its range. Caesar had to bat it aside just to avoid having his throat gouged out from his own forward momentum.

And Aífe, like something out of a fantastical martial arts movie, flowed with the force of his strike, using the power behind it to spin about, bring Gáe Bolg under his guard, and press the shaft of the spear under one armpit and across his torso. Caesar, already unbalanced from having to parry so unexpectedly, was caught completely off guard.

"What?"

His face was drawn into a rictus of shock, like he had only just realized how badly outmatched he was in terms of raw skill.

"A sure hit attack that is guaranteed to always find the mark on its first strike…is it?" Aífe said lowly. "An inversion of that brat's ultimate technique, almost. You had good reason to be confident. A Noble Phantasm like that would be devastating if it caught even someone like me completely by surprise."

She huffed a short chuckle.

"Unfortunately, it has the same weaknesses as any technique that relies on a sword. The biggest is, of course, if you're out of the sword's range, then it's all but useless."

"You —!"

Her entire body tensed and she used her spear as a lever to launch Caesar back. Caesar tumbled, rolling over the ground until he came to a stop, but even as he pulled himself to his feet, Aífe was already shifting her stance. She planted her legs, one knee bent, wound back her one arm as her grip on her spear flipped, and her other arm, she held out like a counterbalance, perfectly level with her shoulders. The fingers of her free hand pointed at Caesar like a promise, perfectly parallel with her spear.

It was a textbook javelin throwing stance.

"Gáe Bolg —"

She threw. The red spear flew like a streak of lightning.

"Prototype!"

There was no time for Caesar to dodge. He had barely gotten to back up before the tip of the red spear slammed into him like a missile, the metal of his armor letting out an unholy screech at the impact. Caesar bent double, folding over the spear as he stumbled backwards. For a long moment, he hung there, like the spear itself was the only thing keeping him standing.

"Is he dead?" Rika eventually asked.

"Ugh."

Caesar slowly straightened, one hand gripping the crimson shaft, to reveal the ghastly wound that had been inflicted — except there was no wound, not to his body. The golden armor had splintered, cracked, and split, pulsing, jagged red veins spreading through it from the point of impact like forks of lightning — or thorns — but otherwise seemingly unhurt. There was no blood spilling out from it.

"Remind me to thank Constantine the next time I see him," Caesar said, grimacing. "That spear would indeed have been certain death under regular circumstances."

"You," Emiya began, choking. "No way. You actually —"

"Survived that, did you?" Aífe asked shrewdly. "Then it's as I thought. That Noble Phantasm is strong enough to affect us this much even out here, is it?"

She kicked off the ground, racing towards Caesar with her fists raised. "Then I'll just have to use my bare hands!"

"Think again!"

The other man in the back exploded into motion, a blur of silvery armor and red hair, cape trailing behind him. He reached Aífe before she could reach Caesar, and his gauntleted fist smashed into her cheek with such power behind it that I could feel the blow even from where I was standing.

Mash gasped. "He's a Servant, too!"

Aífe went down, bouncing off the ground once, but she was up just as quickly, ready to keep fighting. She spat out a glob of blood onto the ground.

The other man just laughed, and he drew his sword and brought it down towards her head so fast that all I saw was a flash of silver. Aífe slapped her hands together, teeth gritted and mouth pulled into a snarl, the flat of the blade caught between her palms.

"It's my turn, Caesar!" the other Servant said, grinning madly. "You've had your fun, now let me have some fun of my own!"

He took hold of the hilt of his sword with both hands, and the crimson edge pressed closer and closer to Aífe's head as she struggled to keep it from slipping out of her grasp. Her arms shook, and she slowly bent down on one knee, her eyes wide as she stared up at this new opponent.

Off to the side, Caesar sighed and plopped down, resting. "Do as you want, Tiberius. Gods know I can't stop you once you get going."

Emiya took in a sharp breath. And then he said something that I'd never expected to hear out of his mouth.

"Well, fuck."