Anomaly Ch. 70 (Patreon)

The journey to the palace was supposed to be an easy one. The distance from the Imperial Senate and the Imperial Palace was fairly short, all things considered. While it was technically bad practice to place two important locations in such close proximity to one another, it was also a sense of practicality that likely warranted it. The Emperor would always need to attend the senate hearings, so placing the palace across the capital, or vice versa, would just waste time as the Emperor goes back and forth.

As such, the travel time between the palace and senate was somewhere around twenty minutes of leisurely walking. A light jog would let them reach it in around ten.

The sheer number of bodies that blocked the path, however, made that impossible. Or rather, what had been bodies.

What was once a horde of mindless infected had dissolved into a sickening, purple slurry that seeped right into the cracks of the stone. Parts of them could still be seen in the middle of dissolving, faces and limbs slowly liquefying into the mud. The sheer density of it dragged at their boots, turning a simple sprint into a grueling march.

Shirou and the others were forced to go around it all, taking to the rooftops to avoid touching the mud. Unlike the straight shot to the palace, this path had the secondary effect of forcing them to go in a circular path towards the center of the capital. Thankfully, the senate building was more or less isolated from the flooding of the purple mud, having been built on top of a fairly elevated piece of land.

Knowing that it was safe, Shirou had instructed Anatoly to have his Yaga carry what survivors they had found to the senate building. Normally, he would have expected some reluctance. While yes, these individuals weren’t the ones that had enslaved them, they were still Imperials, and the feeling of guilt-by-association was a hard one to ignore.

Therefore, he was surprised to find that the Yaga were all too eager to do so.

No, that was wrong. The Yaga weren’t eager to save people - they were eager to get away.

Whatever Servant had been summoned, the Yaga had felt intimately. Their senses were well above even his own Reinforced ones, and they knew that the Servant, even if they didn’t know what it was, was in the Imperial palace. Their instincts were screaming at them to run away, to get away from the predator that would put them down without a moment’s notice.

That’s what Anatoly had said, when Shirou had asked.

Anatoly was no coward. The wolf-man had gladly thrown himself at a massive flesh golem just minutes ago. But whatever Zouken pulled out of the Throne of Heroes had the Yaga completely spooked. Shirou didn't blame them. He felt it too.

Every time they jumped a gap between two clay-tiled roofs, that spiritual gravity seemed to push down harder.

Tyuule landed lightly next to him on a wide balcony overlooking the inner courtyard. The warrior queen barely made a sound when she moved. "If this Servant is as powerful as you say, why hasn't it come out to hunt us?"

Shirou checked his grip on Kanshou and Bakuya. The married blades pulsed with a dull, steady heat, keeping his hands from going numb. "Because killing us isn't the primary goal. Zouken needs the Servant to hold the Grail. If it leaves the ritual site to fight us in the streets, the whole thing falls apart."

"So it is just a guard dog." Rory vaulted over the balcony railing, her heavy boots cracking the marble floor. She rested her halberd on her shoulder, completely unfazed by the oppressive weight in the air. She actually looked bored, "I was hoping for a real fight."

"Don't underestimate it." Shirou warned. He stared at the massive spires of the palace looming a few blocks away. The purple miasma, invisible to those who couldn’t detect the mana in the air, swirled around it, "It won't hold back when we breach the doors. It will throw everything it has at us."

The whirr of helicopter blades above them stopped Rory from responding. With a glance, Shirou saw that the JSDF were still doing their best to evacuate people, and not just the Japanese citizens trapped by the Imperials. This was a full blown humanitarian crisis, one that may not have been in the training regimes of any JSDF personnel, but one that they still recognized the need to help their fellow man.

Strangely, Zouken had stopped sending any more swarms towards the helicopter where Lady Barthomeloi was. Even he must know that she wasn’t one to be underestimated, so he must have a plan to deal with her. The problem, just how confident was Zouken in his plans that he’s-

It was the ozone that hit his nose first.

Not the mana in the air from how Lady Barthomeloi’s magecraft was scented by. No, it was the smell of actual ozone, the type your nose picked up when it was about to rain.

The light hit second, and sound third.

“Get down!”

A massive bolt of lightning came down from the sky. Blue, arcing lightning, infused with such a mana density that Shirou’s nose practically burned.

The shockwave hit like a brick wall. Shirou tackled Tyuule to the marble floor. The roof right next to them exploded, and clay tiles shattered into flying shrapnel. The air pressure dropped so fast his ears popped.

He rolled over and blinked through the dust. Lelei, having been thrown off her feet and into Tuka, waved her staff from her prone position. A small gust of wind blew away the debris, allowing them to see what had happened.

High above, one of the JSDF transport helicopters was spinning out of control. The rotors were just gone. It fell fast, dragging a tail of thick black smoke behind it. It slammed into the merchant district, and a heavy boom echoed across the city a second later. Shirou grimaced as he understood that it was unlikely that anyone on it would have survived.

He hoped Itami wasn't in that one.

"What was that?" Rory asked, eyebrows raised. Among all of them, she was the only one that had stayed upright. Her dress was somewhat singed, but she herself was already healing from the lightning blast, "Was that the Servant?"

“Most likely.” Shirou grunted as he pulled himself up, “Not a Noble Phantasm, though.” He narrowed his eyes. That lightning was closer to a spell than a Noble Phantasm, though it could also be argued that maybe the lightning was just an aspect of a Noble Phantasm instead.

He looked up at the sky. The thick clouds of purple miasma clinging to the royal spires were swirling faster now, churning like a bruised storm. The lightning strike wasn't a random shot. It was aimed right at the airspace Lorelei and the JSDF were trying to clear. Whoever Zouken pulled from the Throne of Heroes didn't just have raw power. They had the range to act as a lethal anti-air battery.

A Caster, perhaps? It would make sense. If Zouken was looking to fortify a position in a short order, a Caster with a high rank Territory Creation would be ideal.

Tyuule frowned, her long ears twitching as she tracked the falling debris, "If it can shoot your flying machines out of the sky from inside the palace, we are sitting ducks up here."

As if on cue, another blast of lightning, towards another of the helicopters. This time, however, was different. Shirou knew that this one was where Lady Barthomeloi was, as the blast was met by a solid wall of wind. 

The sky lit up again, a blinding white flash that left purple spots in Shirou's vision. The impact between the lightning and Lorelei's barrier sounded like a mountain cracking in half. The shockwave pushed the air straight down into the streets, rattling the loose tiles under their boots.

"Testing her." Lelei pointed out. She got up, shaking the grit from her hair.

"They are." Shirou nodded with a grimace. As strong as the Queen was, even he could definitively say that she still wasn't on a level of a Servant. That the lighting strike was held back was a testament on how far ahead of magecraft she held, yes, but that still didn't hold a candle to a crystalized legend.

Which meant that the Servant was only being cautious, testing the waters so to speak. Once they got serious, even the Lord of Policies would not be enough.

Shirou hoped that she'd be able to keep it up, long enough for them to deal with Zouken.

"We can't stay up here." Shirou frowned at the others. He stepped back from the ruined edge of the roof. The air was still vibrating from the thunder, "If that Servant decides to drop a blast on us, we have zero cover."

Tyuule nodded. Her long ears twitched as she scanned the streets below. "The covered colonnades. They lead straight to the palace courtyards."

Shirou nodded as he swung himself over the low wall and dropped. He hit the cobblestones hard, his Reinforced legs absorbing the shock, but his boots splashed into a shallow puddle of the muck. It smelled like rotten meat, as if things had been decomposing for a few days, not a few hours. Tuka landed a second later. The elf immediately gagged, her hands flying to her mouth.

"The spirits." Tuka whispered. She hugged her arms tight, looking completely sick, "They are suffocating."

Lelei floated down beside her, tapping her staff against the dry ground, "Mana density toxic. Need to move."

Rory landed with a heavy thud, her massive halberd cracking the stone. She just grinned, entirely unbothered by the deathly atmosphere. Since Anatoly and his Yaga had split off to secure the Imperial survivors at the Senate, it was just the five of them left.

Above them, the sky lit up with another blinding flash of blue lightning. This one, accompanied by the roar of thunder. Louder than before, and eerily closer in quality to the Red Dragon's lightning that Shirou had experienced way back when.

The wooden structure above their heads groaned as a blast of wind hit it. Carefully, they made their way through, avoiding the mud as much as they could. In the distance, Shirou could tell that the JSDF had started to use the weapons on their helicopters, as the rapid machinegun fire drowned out the sound of the dying city.

The heavy thump-thump-thump of the JSDF autocannons echoed over the thunder. The military was finally shooting back. Shirou knew 20mm rounds weren't going to kill a Servant. Standard bullets rarely worked against a Ghost Liner, but against Zouken's regular familiars?

They were more than enough. It was honestly a miracle they hadn't started shooting earlier. Or maybe it was because they still held onto the hope that the people could be saved.

Unfortunately, even Shirou knew that they were too far gone. He had seen humans be turned into shambling ghouls, and there was no cure once one was turned. The JSDF, while they probably had some knowledge of Dead Apostles thanks to Zelretch's machinations, were still human enough that firing into a crowd that once had been regular people was more than a little difficult.

Yet another part of him that had been killed during his tenure as an Enforcer, he thought with a grim frown.

As they passed through the colonnades, Shirou couldn’t help but notice that the bodies that they saw were more and more…formed. That is to say, many of them weren’t being converted into mud. Instead, many were kneeling, heads bowed down in submission. Even as they were clearly dead, they had not moved from their poses.

Many of these corpses were wearing obnoxiously extravagant tunics, more than one having an excess of jewelry adorned on their still forms. They were kneeling a pattern, that much was obvious. Arranged in several concentric rings, surrounding a single other body in the middle.

Cautiously, they approached this one. If this was another part of Zouken’s plans, then it was in their best interests that they disrupt it. Or, failing that, they needed to know what Zouken had already done.

As they did so, Tyuule stilled for a moment, before realization echoed on her features. She approached the body in the middle, peering at it.

“I recognize this one.” The Warrior Bunny Queen narrowed her eyes, “One of Zorzal’s personal bodyguards. Supposed to be, this guy was going to be one of the officers in his little secret army, the Oprichnina.”

That she hadn’t said anything about that before irked Shirou slightly, but he supposed it didn’t matter now.

“Guess that didn’t pan out, did it?” Rory chuckled darkly.

Shirou ignored her, leaning down to see the body for himself. The body was withered, husks of its former self. Skin that should have been there, pulled taught enough that you could see the bone structure of the body. His Circuits flared as he used Structural Analysis on the body. Not as efficient compared to a weapon, but it got the job done. 

"No Crest Worms." He frowned, extending the Analysis to the other, intact bodies as well, "None in them either."

He Reinforced his eyes, looking towards the connected connelades. The bodies were arranged the same. Always with another body, garbed in the same manner as the one they were inspecting, at least another set of three.

Ominous. And yet, for some reason, the patterns made the back of Shirou’s mind itch, finding it all too familiar. Regardless, they didn’t really have time to dawdle, especially since the lightning blasts were getting more and more frequent. They had to move on.

They reached the end of the walkway. The steel-reinforced doors to the inner gardens were blown completely off their hinges. Thick, purple fog spilled out of the archway. It froze the air in Shirou's lungs and smelled heavily of old blood.

Shirou stepped through the wreckage, Tracing his twin blades. The royal gardens were totally leveled. Smashed fountains and dead hedges lay scattered across the gravel.

And there, in the middle of it all, was the source of the deafening lightning. Standing well over five meters tall, completely dwarfing the ruined statues of the Saderan garden. Skin that resembled crushed ice with jutted metal. It looked like a walking fortress shaped like a monstrous beast. Heavy, curved tusks jutted from a helmet that elongated into a thick, armored trunk. Blue lightning violently arced across its massive shoulders, snapping and hissing in the freezing air.

In its hand, a gnarled staff, yet one that should have been far too ornamental than practical. That didn't stop the sheer volume of lightning spilled forth from the damn thing.

This was supposed to be a Caster? Shirou narrowed his eyes. The physical weight pressing down on his shoulders said otherwise. The sheer, brutal density of its mana felt like a Rider. Or a Berserker. Zouken hadn't just summoned a magus to manage his ritual. He had summoned a tyrant meant to crush resistance underfoot.

Even now, the sheer presence of the Servant thundered in his head. Whatever, whoever it was, this wasn't an ordinary foe. Not even Berserker, Heracles, in the Fifth War ever made his heart thump in fear as much as this Servant. Little wonder then, that Lelei and Tuka both immediately collapsed in a dead faint.

Unfortunately, this caught the attention of the Servant.

The giant slowly turned its heavy head toward them. The blue lightning flared, spiraling down the length of a massive, frozen scepter in its right grip. The temperature in the courtyard dropped instantly. White frost crept across the shattered cobblestones, freezing the toxic purple slurry into solid, jagged spikes.

Shirou shifted his stance. He fed more magical energy into Kanshou and Bakuya. The twin blades flared hot, fighting off the biting cold that was already numbing his fingers. He quietly thanked Tyuule's quick response of dragging away Tuka and Lelei's prone forms, having not been affected by whatever aura the Heroic Spirit had.

"Looks like a real fight after all." Rory whispered. She spun her heavy halberd, her smile stretching wide. Unlike all of them, it seemed that she took the presence as a challenge more than anything.

He didn't have much time to think on that, however, before their foe moved.

The armored giant let out a low, rumbling breath that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. It raised its scepter toward them, and the sky above began to scream.

…

A/N: I'll save my complete thoughts once everything is wrapped up, but I will say that that last scene has been in mind since as early as chapter 5 or so.