Chapter 33: A Necessity
(A/N: As promised.)
Standing with her arms limp, Medusa couldn't help but click her tongue at the situation she'd found herself in.
When Rin Tohsaka had appeared at the Academy, Shinji had wanted to approach her for some unknown reason but she managed to steer him away. When Lancer's Master arrived, she'd been able to appeal to Shinji's cowardly nature with ease and in doing so, avoided conflict she had no way of coming out on top of.
BUT,
"Rider! RIDER!!"
Ignoring the screams of the manchild that was her current Master, Medusa silently observed the difference between the hard-working, the gifted and the Gifted Hard-working.
The blazing heat of flaming explosions prickled at her pale skin, the crack of dancing lightning reminded her of unfond times and the clanging of heavy metal armour and spell chants made her clench her fists in desperate frustration.
Lancer, Aston, was an absurd monster, one even she would rationally avoid but for all her efforts to that end, she found herself facing him all the same.
Those disgusting bugs the Matou family seemed so proud of amounted to all of jackshit. She could HEAR their armoured shells rattling off the knight like rain against shelter, not to mention the agonising screeches they let out as they were burnt to ash.
For all that, the Knight of Atrocity truly did deserve his moniker.
"Why is.." She muttered to herself, feeling Shinji inconsequentially tug at her clothes to get her attention, "He using magic?"
He was a Lancer! A LANCER! Why in the name of Zeus was he releasing streams of searing flames as if it was no big deal? And how?
At the same time, she couldn't help but worry for her actual Master, Sakura.
And so, Medusa steeled her heart and raised her chained daggers to either side, putting one foot before the other as she leaned forward just slightly, ready to enter combat even if she believed it to be futile.
She simply had to.
The girl deserved that much.
"O...Oh, so you're finally listening." Shinji Matou crossed his arms and smirked at the knight standing idly at the centre of what remained of the Matou Compound, "Grandfather, is he still alive?" He wondered idly, he surely was.
Though, all confidence and hubris aside, he felt the slightest bit of need to move farther from the scene considering all that remained after the enemy bombardment was a charred plot of land one would think got firebombed, which it was what with Aston adopting a, "Kill it with fire!" mentality.
So he did, chalking it up to be the wiser decision as compared to being anywhere NEAR a servant battle.
Medusa, in a display of speed befitting a Rider, shot through the distance between her and the idle, thinking Aston at imperceptible speeds, with a dagger pulled back and ready to rip open her all too powerful foe.
"Huh.." She felt peace for a singular moment and wondered why it was so, perhaps because she knew with Aston's character that Sakura would be saved or maybe it was just an understanding of inevitability, or the knowledge that she had truly meant well for her Master, "Wh-"
"I hold no intentions of harming the girl." Aston spoke calmly, turning to face Medusa at a speed surpassing her own, the visor of his helmet glowing dimly,
"And I am too tired to harbour grudges.. But,"
The knight lowered himself, holding out his jagged spear to the left,
"I am not sorry."
His morals and codes were dictated by himself and not by societal norms and in accordance with them, the actions of the old codger he'd just burnt to death deserved all Aston had done.
Any who chose to clash with him over the death of a monster would also suffer the same, regardless of their reason.
He'd given up trying to truly understand a long time ago, lest he be swallowed up by his own compassion and become a bumbling fool.
Aston's nature however, forced him to strike in such a way that Medusa never saw it coming.
In the singular moment that she'd leapt for him, the Lancer had thrust forth, right through her chest and blown her heart apart, tearing open a hole that she didn't even feel as she was thrown back the way she came, passing by a running Shinji before ultimately crashing into a wall, bringing it down on top of herself.
Something strange happened too though.
Aston made no cheeky remarks, no smug jokes and expressed no ridicule for the dying servant. Instead, he walked up to her with slow steps, moving by a fearstruck, stuttering Shinji and stared down with curious eyes, "I feel like you were someone to be respected."
"....." Blindfolded as she was, Medusa didn't quite get the chance to see the face of her killer but looked up in an attempt to meet his inquisitive gaze all the same, "T..The girl."
They were living on borrowed time, long dead beings, she knew that and so it didn't truly upset her to be cut down this way.
She was a monster too, slaughtering those that sought her & her sisters in a bid for glory and had lost herself to bloodlust, slaughtering those she sought to protect in blind rage.
"I swear upon my honour, she will be saved." It was what he intended to do anyway, reassuring a dying woman cost nothing.
"H..Huh."
Medusa coughed blood, holding onto life through sheer will combined with her current semi-spiritual nature and shuddered, feeling her burning insides.
It was poetic.
The Gorgon falling to a Knight of legend.
"Don't look like that, I was named the Knight of Atrocity." And not without reason either, Aston would never deny the horrendous nature of his acts.
That was all he said, before going completely silent.
War was just as such, people died, even people who'd done nothing wrong.
That fact would never change either.
Medusa let a smile find it's way across her paling lips, "I.. see."
Well, that was poetic too.
A monster falling to a greater monster.
It would be a lie if Aston said he truly felt something as the woman dissipated into particles of light right before his eyes.
With his newfound relationship with his Ki-, former King, personal victory had become a necessity.
To that end, he would do what he needed to.
With that in mind, he grabbed onto Shinji's face with his armoured fingers digging into the frightened teenager's jaw as he screamed and kicked in pain in a desperate but futile attempt at escaping the tall knight.
"W-Wai-" Shinji wanted to appeal to the servant but random stutters were all he could let out before he felt his flesh burn and char under the intense heat that had suddenly started emanating from Aston's palm.
The multitudes of runes inscribed into the dark gauntlet did their work, ensuring that the heat from the one rune he'd carved onto it's palm, "Ansuz", wouldn't burn him away too.
A primordial rune taught to him by the same woman who honed his spear to it's current degree. The only one he COULD learn and appreciate.
It was a Rune that symbolised 'God' and as such, changed shapes and forms according to one's interpretation of God with each casting, expressing their supreme power.
Created by God King Odin of the Norse, these runes displayed the authority of a God that could be considered Almighty. Authority that could play around with the very fabric of reality with as much ease as a human breathed.
Something entirely unfathomable.
It was only par for the course then that Shinji, who was subpar even by human standards, couldn't even scream as a burst of flames instantaneously burnt through his face, killing him painlessly.
Aston threw the corpse aside and vanished entirely, the times he'd grown up in had had very different standards for 'appropriate age' when becoming soldiers.
Compassion wasn't meant for enemies.
He also had to attend to the girl he'd just rescued and begrudgingly, he accepted that Medea would have more insight about the situation. Insight that might just have proven pivotal to her survival considering the worm in her heart had tried to crush it, failing only because he'd paralysed her body.
* * *
Aston has 'Ansuz' engraved onto his gauntlets.
Also, leave it to Shinji's dumb ass to get Medusa killed.
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You can find up to 7 chapters ahead of this one at patre0n.com/Bleap
A bit behind cause of no internet for past few days (fuck you exams) but rest assured, I'm trying to fill it back up as soon as possible.
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