[Hereafter] Chapter CCLXII: Return to the Desert (Patreon)

Chapter CCLXII: Return to the Desert

“But you can still detect her Saint Graph?”

Arash’s shot had done exactly what he had intended for it to do. It soared, screaming up into the sky like a bottle rocket, hit the tip of the lance of light, and then the whole thing had unraveled, just…come apart as though some unseen hand had found the loose strings and pulled until the tightly woven streams came free. That simple. And unlike that day in the Trainyard up against Arjuna’s Noble Phantasm, there was no backlash, aside from the blowback of Arash releasing such a powerful shot using everything he had left. Because the lance didn’t even really explode, it just kind of stopped existing silently and gently.

Dry eyes and ruffled hair and nearly getting bowled over was a small price to pay to be there at the end, to have the chance to say goodbye, this time.

In the hours afterwards, there had been a great accounting of the bodies left in the dirt and a communal effort by everyone who remained to douse the fires and clean up the mess. We had all contributed to the grim work of collecting corpses and body parts and gathering them up for burial, the sort of cleanup I had mostly watched from a distance in the aftermath of things like Endbringer battles. Expectedly, it wasn’t any easier having to do it myself, up close, but I had witnessed enough death and seen enough bodies that there wasn’t really space inside of me to feel anything particularly intense about it at all. 

If I was being honest, I think I felt worse about the fact that I didn’t feel worse. This last year fighting side by side with the twins had shown me that a lot of the coping mechanisms and the calluses I had built up during my life as a cape weren’t entirely normal, and some part of me now was beginning to wonder whether any of it was a good thing. 

The twins didn’t seem much better off. There was a numbness in their faces as we worked, like the anger and the sadness and all of the emotion they would have felt back in Orléans had simply fled them. They weren’t unaffected — the blank expressions and the quiet and Rika’s conspicuous lack of jokes told me that much — but there were no tears and shouting, just silent duty.

Mash was affected the worst out of all of us, because she remained the most sensitive of the group, but none of us commented on it. Once or twice, Ritsuka went to her and mumbled whatever words of comfort he could find, and that helped steel her when she was starting to crumble, but no one shamed her or called her weak, because of course not.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, and come the next morning, I couldn’t remember where, I fell asleep. The emotion of the day and the magical energy expended by our Servants must have caught up with me, and at some point, I must have sat down against the burned out remnants of a building and nodded off. The next thing I knew, the sky was the pale gray of dawn, right before the sun crested the horizon, and a grim-faced Okita was telling me that Da Vinci was missing.

“We can,” Romani answered me. “I’m honestly not sure what to make of this, but there hasn’t been any change. Whoever took her hasn’t done any damage to her spiritual core or even anything that would affect her physical state or cognition. That…might change, at some point, but right now, the only reason I can think of why someone would take her is to interrogate her, and that’s impossible in her current state, so…”

So they weren’t doing anything that could hurt her, at least at the moment.

“Who took her?” asked Ritsuka. He still looked wrung out, in that particular way of someone who had been entirely drained and hadn’t yet fully recovered, but he was wide awake. I imagined I probably looked pretty similar. “How did they do it without us noticing?”

“To be fair, you guys were fighting Sir Tristan, so it’s not all that impossible to imagine someone snuck around while you were occupied,” Romani pointed out. “That’s why I didn’t notice until she was already down the side of the mountain and out of range of you guys, too. Rhongomyniad… It kind of took up everyone’s attention.”

“And you didn’t say anything sooner?” Rika snapped. She wasn’t any better off than me or Ritsuka. “Da Vinci-chan got kidnapped! Whose kneecaps are we busting?”

“Mm-mm! No, Best Buddy, we are taking them off!” Nero asserted.

Rika nodded vehemently. “So they won’t have any legs to stand on!”

Ritsuka and I shared a look and a grimace, but didn’t comment on it. It was a weak pun and Rika was very obviously off her game.

Besides, I already had a good idea. “It was Lancelot, wasn’t it?”

Mash stiffened; she didn’t even seem to realize that her lip was already curling.

“That’s my best guess, too,” Romani agreed. “He managed to sneak up on Arash, somehow. He must have found Da Vinci — that invisibility cloak didn’t hide her presence as a Servant, after all — and taken her away while everyone else was distracted with the Enforcement Knights and Tristan. Wherever he’s taken her, there’s a lot more Enforcement Knights hanging around, too, so it’s going to be incredibly dangerous when you go and try to rescue her.”

Ishtar, hovering behind me, huffed and arched an eyebrow. “When?”

Romani laughed a little. “I know better than to try and tell you guys not to go after her. The Director might try and convince you against it, but that’s just because she worries, so she’d give in eventually. Taylor, Ritsuka, Rika, and Mash, none of you are the kind of person to leave someone behind if you can do anything about it, so I fully expected you to decide to rescue Da Vinci, too. Ah, just one suggestion, if you’ll listen to me?”

“If you’re going to tell us to wait,” Rika began impatiently.

“I am,” Romani said, and at her scowl, rushed to add, “N-not forever, obviously! Just…give us a day or two to watch the camp where they’re keeping her and see if we can figure out a pattern in their movements. Lancelot isn’t the kind of opponent you can simply rush into a fight with, so if we can find a pattern in when he leaves and how long he stays, we should be able to create a plan for you to sneak in and grab her while he’s away.”

That…was actually a really sound suggestion. A little flawed, in that I was pretty sure we were going to have to face Lancelot head-on eventually no matter what, but if we could get Da Vinci out beforehand so she wasn’t in the line of fire, or even better, wipe out the rest of the camp and lay an ambush for Lancelot, that would put us in a lot better of a position than just rushing in and hoping we could stage a successful rescue. That way might lead to a hostage situation.

There were still a few problems.

“What do we do if she recovers enough to wake up and they decide to start interrogating her?” I asked. Or worse, “What if they don’t wait and just take her straight to the Holy City?”

Romani’s face froze, then contorted into a complicated expression. “Ah. Yeah. Uh. That’s… Well, that’s definitely a problem, but I don’t see a way around it. I mean, I’d let you guys know if they move her out of that camp, obviously, but I can’t…”

Can’t promise you’ll be able to catch up to them in time to rescue her. A breath hissed out of my nostrils. Yeah, that was the biggest flaw with the idea of waiting. We’d have to bring in Aífe with her chariot to make good enough time to even have a chance of making an interception.

Neither of the twins looked pleased. “But we have to wait,” said Ritsuka, sounding like the idea tasted sour in his mouth.

“If we don’t get her out before fighting Lancelot and the Enforcement Knights, then they might try to use Da Vinci as a hostage,” I told him. The idea of waiting rankled with me, too, but there was no way the whole camp wouldn’t notice if we tried to move Da Vinci before attacking. No way they didn’t have guards posted around wherever they were keeping her, too.

Jackie might be able to sneak in, but I didn’t like how risky that was. She might be able to get in and out even if she was caught, but that would still put us back in the position of them knowing why we were there and exactly what to threaten to get to us. It would defeat the point of staging a rescue.

“What we need is a small, elite team,” Rika began seriously.

I gave her a glance. “What we need is to know when and how often Lancelot leaves that camp. Romani, you have until we’ve finished in Atlas to figure it out. I’m not willing to take chances on leaving it any longer than that.”

It itched at something inside me to leave it even that long, but rushing headfirst into a battle with Lancelot when we had no idea what his Gift was and no idea why he’d taken Da Vinci was its own special brand of dangerous. The guy had held out against the same Gawain who had casually killed Siegfried in one blow. I wasn’t willing to underestimate him.

“Understood,” said Romani. “I’ll do my best.”

My lips drew into a tight line, but I bit my tongue against the rebuke that wanted to come out.

“For whatever it might be worth, I do not believe Sir Lancelot’s intentions to be nefarious,” said Bedivere, and then, he grimaced and sighed. “Of course, that is only speaking of the Lancelot I knew on the Round Table. If Sir Tristan has proven anything, it would be that my own estimation of my former comrades does not hold much weight here.”

Mash’s hands curled into fists so tight that her gauntlets creaked, but she didn’t even seem to be aware of them or even of the dark expression that stole across her face.

“It may wind up being a problem that solves itself,” Romani offered. “Da Vinci made great progress while you guys were out at the western village and rescuing Serenity, so she should be waking up any day now. I wouldn’t put it past her to conjure up some method of escape on her own. She’s resourceful like that.”

It would be convenient if she did, but I wasn’t planning on banking on it. “Just keep an eye on her status and let us know if something happens.”

“Will do,” he promised, and then the connection cut and his hologram vanished.

Cursed Arm approached us then from where he’d been hovering, waiting for our conversation to conclude. “Am I to take it that you are finishing your preparations to journey to the Atlas Institute as the Great Founder bade you?”

“Lord Hassan!” Bedivere exclaimed, one hand going to his chest. “Goodness, I was not aware you were there!”

“I would not be much of an Old Man of the Mountain if my stealth was so poor,” Cursed Arm said with some amusement. Serenity, very blatantly eavesdropping, fidgeted nervously with her fingers.

“What about the western village?” Mash asked. “Was it really…?”

Cursed Arm’s shoulder’s dropped, and he nodded. “Indeed. Not a single trace remains of that village. Just like all of the others to face the Lion King’s Judgment, it was completely destroyed, leaving only a scar in the land behind.” He lifted his head. “Fortunately, it had largely evacuated after we left the other day. I received a message from Hundred Faces a few hours ago, saying that only those whose faith kept them rooted and those too infirm to leave remained behind when the Lion King’s Judgment descended upon it. I will not tell you no lives were lost, for that would be a lie, but the number is small. A tragedy all the same, but far less of one than it could have been.”

Some of the tension left both Mash’s and Bedivere’s shoulders.

“If it is concern for our people that keeps you here now, I will tell you to discard it,” he went on. “Your kindness does you credit, but there is little time left to lose. Both Tristan and Lancelot escaped. One way or another, word of this village and its survival will reach the Holy City and find the Lion King’s ears before long. None of us should be here by then, but especially you Chaldeans. You still have a task set before you by the Great Founder.”

I frowned and pulled up the map we had been given of this Singularity when we first entered the wasteland. Cursed Arm viewed it with interest.

“Do you know where we’ll find the Atlas Institute on here?” I asked him.

He hummed thoughtfully and leaned closer, examining all of the points of interest that had already been helpfully labelled — the techs must have been working overtime to keep track of it all for us — and eventually lifted one long, spidery finger to point at what looked like a blank spot somewhere to the north of the Ramesseum. 

“If I remember correctly, Hundred Faces’ scouts found something of interest in this region,” he said. “Supposedly, there’s a strange ruin that Ozymandias pays particular attention to for no discernable reason. He has several sphinxes patrolling it at all times as though they are guarding something of great value.”

A strange ruin?

“Oh!” said Sanzang. “I remember something about that! Yeah, I wandered across it while I was out there in the desert! I thought it was super strange that a guy like Ozymandias was going through so much effort to guard a bunch of crumbling rocks and broken pillars, but there were too many sphinxes hanging around there, so I didn’t get all that close.”

A strange ruin guarded by a bunch of Ozymandias’ sphinxes — it was as good a lead as we were going to get. Better than wandering around the desert for a week or two and hoping we found something of interest while we walked in circles.

“Of course it’s guarded by a bunch of sphinxes,” Rika muttered. “Of course it is. Ugh.”

That was an inconvenience we were going to have to find a workaround for. Of course, it should hopefully be easier to deal with a couple of sphinxes when we weren’t penned inside a little haven amidst a sandstorm — if nothing else, Altera’s Noble Phantasm might be enough to send them running with their tails between their legs.

“It might not wind up being what we’re looking for, but it’s at least a lead we can follow,” I said. I wasn’t sure where else we could reasonably look if this turned out to not be the place, but I didn’t admit that out loud. “Cursed Arm, are you and Serenity going to stick around?”

Cursed Arm shook his head. “No. Serenity and I are needed here, in the mountains, guiding our people now that the villages where we took shelter are no longer safe.”

“I’m sorry,” Serenity said guiltily. She wrung her hands. “Master Ritsuka… I would like to continue on your journey with you, but my responsibilities as an Old Man of the Mountain come first. Please forgive me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Ritsuka. “You have to do what you have to do. I understand.”

She seemed like she would continue to worry about it, despite his words. Cursed Arm glanced her way, then continued, “We will gather our forces and prepare for the attack on the Holy City. When that day arrives, we shall all meet up here — so long as there are no objections, of course.”

The twins and I traded a look. No objections arose, so Ritsuka shook his head, “That’s fine. If we’re going to meet up before we launch the attack, then this place is as good a place as any for a staging ground.”

If I was being entirely honest, I would have preferred somewhere a little closer to the Holy City, where we could meet up and launch the attack in the same day or the same hour. That sort of thing only worked when the enemy stronghold wasn’t surrounded by what was essentially a flat wasteland for miles around where any movement was more likely to be noticed than not, so I guess this was the only viable option.

“Will you be able to find your way back to the village on your own?” asked Serenity.

“Of course!” said Rika, shaking the wrist with her communicator on it for emphasis. “We’ve got our handy dandy maps, after all!”

“If nothing else, I remember the route, so I can lead us back if I have to,” Emiya added.

“How will we stay in touch if something happens?” Mash asked. “I’m sure we have a few spare communicators we could Rayshift in for you two, but — oh. We would lose connection the instant we entered the desert, wouldn’t we?”

Cursed Arm shook his head. “The sentiment is appreciated, Lady Mash, but unnecessary. The mountain people will hear of you and your deeds from our own mouths, and they shall carry any messages in need of delivery. No doubt, Hundred Faces will also be using her body doubles to reach out to the other groups; if one of our own cannot reach you, then one of hers most certainly will.”

Not as convenient as our communicators, but more reliable than a lot of people probably gave it credit for. I had too much experience with it to dismiss the power of a simple network of people all connected by a common cause, no matter how loose the organization. Of course, it also helped when the one at the head of that organization could be summoned by finding the nearest spider and whispering her name, but that didn’t diminish the principle behind it.

“Would you like one of us to stay with you?” asked Sanzang.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Cursed Arm. “Your talents will be put to much better use with Chaldea than with us. Stay with them.” He cast a meaningful glance at Touta. “We have salvaged enough of the rice so generously gifted to last for the foreseeable future.”

Touta nodded. “If you’re sure about that, then I’ll take your word for it.”

Shirou finally joined us, another new sword hanging from his belt. “Then we might as well get going,” he said. “The sooner we get through with your business in Atlas, the sooner we can get back to defeating the Lion King.”

Emiya stared. “I wasn’t aware you were coming with us, Emiya Shirou.”

“I’m not looking forward to spending more time around you either,” Shirou retorted. “But anyone with eyes can tell that sticking with you guys is the best way to run into more Knights of the Round Table, and that’s where I need to be.

Emiya’s eyes flicked briefly to Shirou’s newly forged sword, and one side of his mouth quirked up. He shrugged. “Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be, then as long as my Master has no objections…”

“If he’s a younger you, then he’s a cooking god,” Rika reasoned. “I have none.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“Just make sure you keep up,” Emiya finished.

Shirou’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

“Is that everything, then?” asked Ishtar. “Or are we going to stick around and say goodbye to every villager we met while we were here?”

“Ah,” said Cursed Arm. “That reminds me.” He reached into the folds of his clothes and produced a small necklace, a modest pedant attached to a leather cord. He offered it to Ritsuka. “Salia asked me to pass this onto you, Lord Ritsuka, as a token of her gratitude.”

Ritsuka accepted it gingerly, looking a little confused. “She did?”

Cursed Arm nodded. “She also asked me to ask you to thank Lady da Vinci for her.” He tilted his head down at Jackie. “It is only because of the combined efforts of her and Miss Jackie that Salia survived, after all. This small token is the most she can offer.”

Ritsuka’s mouth thinned into a line. His fingers curled tighter around the pendant. “I see. Then I’ll take good care of it.”

“Until we meet again,” said Cursed Arm, and then he turned and made his way over to where the villagers were preparing a mass funeral for those who had died in the attack. Serenity lingered for a moment longer, and then she went and joined him.

With nothing else keeping us there and the morning sun starting to rise in earnest, we turned away ourselves and left the village to begin the journey down the mountain path again. The horses we had stolen from the fort where we’d fought Bertilak were long gone, left behind at the western village, so we had to make it on foot, but we had spent enough time in these mountains over the past week and a half that it was familiar enough territory for us to know how to navigate them. The trip that had taken more than a day on the way up was now a matter of a few hours, and it wasn’t long at all before we were back in the wasteland, where we could saddle up on our bikes for at least a little while.

Sanzang, of course, was quite impressed with them, gushing about how “cool” they were and what a “marvel of modern technology” they were, and she wasn’t any less impressed to hear that Da Vinci was responsible for making them. “That makes sense,” was her response. “The way everyone talks about her, that’s exactly the sort of gadget I’d expect her to make.”

And, of course, she insisted on riding with Ritsuka, despite the fact that she could very easily have chosen to just take spirit form the way most of the rest of the Servants were going to.

“It’s the journey, remember, the journey!” she reasoned. “Plus, when am I going to get the chance to ride something like this again, huh? Never, that’s when! I need to do it while I still can!”

Rika, of course, got a kick out of her brother’s discomfort when she climbed on behind him and pressed her chest against his back. Poor Ritsuka spent the first several minutes of the ride sitting ramrod straight and very obviously trying not to think about it too hard. Sanzang’s outfit probably didn’t help very much.

Aside from that, however, the rest of the trip was uneventful. The map showed that we came within spitting distance of the fort where we’d rescued Serenity, but distance and the craggy foothills blocked any of it from view, so Rika didn’t even get the chance to goggle at the crater left behind by Karna’s Noble Phantasm.

We stopped just outside the edges of the sandstorm that bled over from the desert, took a short break to eat a late breakfast, and then Emiya helped me, Ritsuka, and Mash get wrapped up again. My mask went back on. Their goggles and respirators went back on. Every inch of bare skin that could be bound in strips of linen was bound to protect them from the storm. 

“If Imhotep shows up, I reserve the right to say I told you so!” Rika declared.

Her brother just shook his head. “If he actually shows up, I might just let you.”

Before we ventured forth, I retrieved one of my lengths of spider thread and passed it around. The twins, used to this by now, took it without comment and tied themselves off with plenty of slack. Shirou watched with mild interest, but Sanzang’s eyebrows rose towards her hat and her mouth formed a perfect little ‘o.’ 

“This isn’t a race,” I said for the benefit of everyone there. “Remember, the Ramesseum is about a hundred kilometers from the Holy City, which means Atlas should be about fifty kilometers from here.” Rika made a vague sound of distress. “Even at our best pace, that’s still half a day of walking, and we’re absolutely going to stop for the night once the sun sets if we haven’t reached the ruins by then.”

“Is it too late to offer to stay behind?” Rika asked. I gave her a look, and she groaned. “Walking. More walking. I thought we were going to be doing less of that once we got these nifty bikes Da Vinci-chan made, but it seems like the world keeps finding a way to make me walk long distances!”

“Worry not, Best Buddy!” Nero proclaimed. “I shall be by your side the entire way!”

Rika just sighed. “Thanks.”

“Stick together,” was the last thing I offered everyone. “The last thing we need now is to get separated.”

As prepared as we were going to be, we dove into the edges of that sandstorm, and some minutes later, the thin coating of gritty sand sitting atop the dry, cracked earth of the blasted wasteland turned into proper dunes. The wind howled in our ears. The sandstorm raged around us, throwing whatever it could at our bodies with everything it had, and everything it had met the fabric wrapped tight around our limbs and heads and holding the gaps in our clothing tight against our bodies and was forced to give ground.

There was no point in saying it wasn’t miserable. The sandstorm hadn’t suddenly become less of a problem than it was the last time we braved it. It was almost impossible to see more than a foot or two in front of me, the roaring wind drowned out almost everything, making conversation difficult at best and pointless at worst, and every step felt like it took twice the amount of effort it should have. My feet sank into the sand deeper than my brain said they should and the footholds were soft, mushy, and made normal walking something just shy of a pipe dream.

But we made good progress. Several times throughout, the silk line pulled taut when someone wandered off a little too far from the group, but Mash was a dark smudge against the clouds of sand and dust buffeting us with every step, and she was the one reading the map. Small mercies that Chaldea could still send us accurate tracking data to show us where we were, even if things weren’t stable enough to maintain a connection with our communicators.

Time became something of a blur. Without direct sunlight, it was hard to tell exactly how much time was passing except by the alarm I had set based upon Chaldea’s calculation of sunset. We walked and walked and kept walking with nothing except the promise that Mash knew where we were headed and we would reach it eventually, and the hazy light that settled around us like a mist changed so little that it was impossible to tell whether it had changed at all.

Inevitably, it did change. So gradually that it was hard to measure, but somewhere in the midst of all that walking, the light suffusing the sand and winds around us began to dim, and our clouded world began to darken. The whirling maelstrom continued, unabated, completely unconcerned with our place in it or our comfort. When my alarm chimed, I didn’t even hear it at first over the howling in my ears, but the persistent tune finally reached me when I realized that my difficulty seeing through the storm was starting to become a matter as much of the available light as it was the lack of visibility.

I took hold of the thread binding me to Okita and had her pass along the message to Ritsuka and Rika, who passed it further along to Mash and Emiya and our other Servants, and a few minutes later, a large tent manifested out of nothingness around us. Almost instantly, the roar of the storm cut down to something a little less deafening, although that didn’t stop the wind from battering at the fabric of the tent itself.

Emiya (and Shirou, who was determined not to be outdone by his future self) remained outside for several minutes more to secure the tent’s stakes while Rika, Ritsuka, and I shook off the sand that seemed to have gotten everywhere. Altera came in somewhere in the middle of that with Touta and Sanzang in tow. Jackie, of course, had the convenience of simply slipping into spirit form long enough for all of the sand on her to fall to the ground before rematerializing. 

Even the little gremlin shook himself out, a full body shiver that tossed dirt and sand out of its fur like a wet dog. Guess it was too much to hope for that it got lost out there in the storm.

Bedivere seemed to have fared the worst out of everyone, because his eyes were watering and he was coughing and grimacing like he could taste every grain of sand stuck in his mouth and where it had been. I didn’t know why he didn’t just do what Jackie did, because that seemed like an easy solution, but come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him take spirit form at all, ever. Was there a reason why he couldn’t?

“Man, this sucks,” Rika said. “Have I said I hate sand yet? Because I do. It’s coarse, rough, and it gets everywhere!”

“You made that joke already,” Ritsuka reminded her.

“It bears repeating!”

“How close are we?” I asked Mash.

She held up the hologram of the map. “Um, not that far, actually, Miss Taylor.” She pointed out our position on the map. “If the ruins are where Cursed Arm said they would be, then we’re actually only a few kilometers away. Without the sandstorm, we might be able to see them with the naked eye already.”

Beidvere’s head immediately snapped over to her. “You mean we could —” a coughing fit interrupted him, and his voice became wheezy and strained — “make it there in an hour or two, if we wished?”

“Not in the dark,” I said, shutting down the idea before it could form. “The fact we’ve gotten this close without getting attacked by any of those sphinxes doesn’t mean we won’t run into them if we try and sneak in tonight.”

He frowned, but dipped his head, and then was overtaken by another fit of coughing.

“Wow, we made good time, didn’t we?” said Sanzang. “I thought it might take us another whole day!”

“It still might, if our estimates are wrong and we’re farther out than we think,” I said dryly.

“We also didn’t stop for lunch,” said Ritsuka. “I’m…kind of hungry, actually. We still have enough rations to last us for a couple of days, right?”

Touta patted his straw bag, the one he was still carrying. “Don’t worry if you don’t. Rice might be a bit lean for a journeying adventurer, but it’s better than nothing!”

“Um.” Mash rummaged through the pack of supplies, which was a lot smaller and a lot less full than it had been when we first walked up the mountain path to Cursed Arm’s village. “There’s still some dried meat, fruits, bread, and another couple bottles of juice we got from Ozymandias, as well as some cured meat from the, um, the demonic beasts we hunted with the villagers while we were on the mountain, but… I’m not sure they’ll last if we spend more than another day in the desert, Senpai.”

Ritsuka clicked his tongue. “We should have restocked from Chaldea while we were still in the village.”

We should have. We were meant to do a summoning while we were there, too, but between the cleanup after the attack and how eager Cursed Arm was to usher us out of the village before the Knights of the Round Table made a second attack, there just hadn’t really been a moment where that could happen. 

“There’s nothing we can do about it now, so we’ll make it last as long as we can,” I said. I nodded at Touta. “We’ll supplement it with rice to fill everything out. Once we’re back somewhere we can Rayshift in supplies, that’s what we’ll do.”

“I’ll do what I can to make it at least a little bit tasty,” Emiya offered as he came in from outside.

“We will, you mean,” said Shirou, right behind him. Emiya just raised an eyebrow as though the idea itself was ludicrous.

“Mm-mm, I suppose this means I shall have to do without a proper meal for the time being,” Nero said, unhappy. “It can’t be helped! I will not take food out of my best buddy’s mouth merely to satisfy my own appetite!”

Sanzang reached over and patted the straw bag herself. “Don’t worry about it! Inexhaustible, remember? Even if you can only have rice, no one here has to go hungry!”

“That still comes out of my magical energy, you know,” Touta told her. “Inexhaustible doesn’t mean I don’t have to refill it ever. If you make me empty it too many times, then it really will run out!”

Sanzang just smiled, completely unconcerned. “Ah, it’ll be fine! You already fed two villages, didn’t you? A group like this is nothing in comparison! Nothing, you hear me!”

“I just wish you’d stop volunteering me for stuff,” Touta lamented. “What an irresponsible mentor  you are, not thinking of your disciple’s feelings.”

“Hey, I’m perfectly responsible!” Sanzang squawked indignantly.

Touta just rolled his eyes our way, as though to say, ‘see what I mean?’

Nonetheless, Emiya set up a place inside the spacious tent and began preparing a cold dinner for us, because there was nowhere for the smoke to go if he started cooking properly. He took rice from Touta and used that as the backbone, then added some of the meat and divvied up a single piece of bread four ways — for me, for Ritsuka, for Rika, and for Bedivere, who still devolving into small fits of coughing every now and again.

As though to outdo his older self, Shirou summoned up a low table and sets of cushions, around which the twins took a seat with the comfort of familiarity, like it was something they had done every day for their entire lives. Mash adapted without difficulty, and I mimicked them and sat down on one of the plump cushions and found that it put the table at perfect height to eat from.

Must’ve been a Japanese thing, then.

Emiya just huffed a chuckle and shook his head as he served us, like an older sibling watching the younger try too hard over something pointless.

Dinner was lean and fairly boring, all things considered, but not much more so than we had already been experiencing the whole time we were in the village. They, too, hadn’t had much in the way of making things more flavorful or filling, owing to the hardiness of the land, the withering plant life, and the lack of trade, and the only way we had escaped it at all, after all, was because we could call Chaldea and order in something from the supplies left in their larders. 

Once we’d eaten, it was time to talk about what to do next.

“There’s no point in wandering around in the dark, especially with the sandstorm still going,” I said.

“I mean, it’s not like it’s gonna be any nicer in the morning,” said Rika. “Not unless someone’s hiding a sandworm in their backpack.”

“But we’ll all have more energy to deal with whatever is waiting for us out there in the morning,” I pointed out. “Like the sphinxes. Or the traps that might be set out near the entrance.”

Rika opened her mouth as though to argue, but before she could say anything, a jaw-cracking yawn escaped her instead. She seemed to take that as me winning that little argument.

“The question of the sphinxes is, I believe, the most pressing,” said Bedivere. He glanced down at his prosthetic arm. “I would offer my assistance in defeating them, but… If Lord Arash was correct in saying that I have only a single swing remaining, then…”

“Save it,” said Shirou, arms crossed. “You intend to see Saber at the end of all of this, don’t you? Then don’t kill yourself before you can reach her again.”

Bedivere’s head bowed.

“Well, we’re not confined to that tiny space anymore, are we?” said Ishtar. “So we can just use our Noble Phantasms to blast those sphinxes away and be done with it.”

“Not yours,” I said immediately. “We don’t want to destroy the ruins and Atlas itself in the process.”

Irritated, Ishtar said, “I can fire other things from my bow, you know. I do have other options aside from my Noble Phantasm and my regular shots.”

I paused and considered that for a moment. “You can?”

“Of course I can,” she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. “It’s just that this body’s magical attribute works best with charged jewels, so I haven’t exactly had a chance to do anything like that yet.”

Both Emiya and Shirou made identical sounds of understanding. “That makes sense, actually,” said Emiya.

“It’s Tohsaka’s body, after all,” Shirou agreed.

Ishtar favored them both with a gimlet eye, but before she could say anything, Altera quietly but confidently said, “My Noble Phantasm should be enough to defeat the sphinxes.”

For a second, I thought she meant the city destroying one, and then I remembered the drill-like rainbow that had battered Lord Chaldeas back at the end of Septem, and when I pictured that, it wasn’t hard to imagine she was right. It might not have been as powerful, but it was a far less indiscriminate one, and it was diffused enough that it wouldn’t have the problem Okita’s did of needing to hit the exact right spot to get the kill.

“I might be able to help out, as well,” Touta said. “I can’t say I know for sure whether my Noble Phantasm is strong enough to kill a sphinx, but I’m definitely willing to try.”

“See?” Sanzang needled him. “See? There’s a reason you’re here with me after all, my disciple!”

Touta sighed and pushed her away. “Yes, yes, you’re making a bigger deal of it than you need to. If you’re supposed to be my mentor, you should be acting more like an adult, shouldn’t you?”

“Shouldn’t we send someone to scout it out and find the ruins before we go rushing in to fight the sphinxes?” asked Ritsuka.

“Most of us would get detected right away,” Emiya pointed out, but I was already putting the pieces together in my head.

I looked down at the little girl sitting next to me.

“Not Jackie.”

She blinked up at me.

There was just one problem, though, and it was a pretty big one: “It doesn’t matter if she can conceal her presence if they see her somehow.”

Or smelled her or heard her or detected her by some other means. We had no idea how those sphinxes operated, so it was entirely possible they could just follow the trail of magical energy from her to me, to us, and that would be a big problem. The last thing we wanted to do was bring every sphinx in the desert down on our heads, although, now that I thought about it, there had to be some kind of range limitation, because we hadn’t gotten ambushed by any other sphinxes when we fought that first one off back when we landed in this Singularity.

Of course, the problem with having her go in spirit form was that I wouldn’t be able to look through her eyes to see what she found.

“Hey,” said Rika. “Don’t we still have Da Vinci-chan’s nifty invisibility tarp?”

The shape of a plan began to form in my head. “We do. You’re right. That’s not a bad idea.”

Rika smiled, nodding. “Yeah, yeah! Jackie can go scout out the ruins for us and show us where we need to go to enter that Atlas place, and then we can bumrush it and whack any sphinxes that get in our way!”

She made a jerky, whip-like motion with one hand, not unlike a forest guide clearing underbrush with a machete.

“I’m not so sure about the bumrushing part,” Ritsuka said. 

“I think we’ll be fine as long as we’re careful,” said Sanzang.

“Would Jackie be okay, though?” asked Mash. “We’ll be sending her off on her own.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Jackie simply. I wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“Even if she gets detected, she should still be able to slip away and sneak back here,” I said. “Worst case scenario, we still have other options to get her back or fight off the sphinxes, so as long as this doesn’t turn into a long, loud battle that attracts the attention of Ozymandias and all of his sphinxes, just knowing where the ruins are and where to find the entrance to Atlas is a win.”

I hated the idea of having to waste a Command Spell to bring Jackie back if she got trapped or pinned down, but I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to actually do it.

Sanzang clapped her hands together. “Sounds like we have a plan, then! We’ll all get up bright and early tomorrow, eat a good breakfast, and wait for Jackie to find the entrance to this place we’re supposed to be headed. And, if it comes down to a fight,” she winked at Altera, “then we’ll just blow those sphinxes away and stroll into those ruins like we own the place!”

Altera blinked like she didn’t know what to make of the winking part.

“Dunno how well I’m gonna sleep in a place like this,” Rika began, “but I guess I don’t really have much of a choice, huh?”

“None whatsoever.”

She sighed and shook her head ruefully. “Oh well. It can’t be helped, I guess.”

Outside, the sandstorm raged, the wind howled, and the fabric of the tent rippled and flapped like the wings of a giant hawk.

Ominous. What could I possibly mean by focusing on that at the very end of this chapter, I wonder?

Ishtar finally tells everyone that she can actually do other stuff aside from Rin's Bajiquan and shooting energy beams from Ma'anna, because she's been too proud up to this moment to actually admit that she's weaker than she could be as a result of not having any jewels to fling around. I've been trying to find a spot for this for ages, you would not believe it.

There's still a handful of surprises waiting, but we're actually getting fairly close to the end now, aren't we? Looks like my original estimation about when this story would be finished is holding, for now. Camelot is probably done by New Year's and Babylonia likely starts next March.