Chapter 27 Hidden Arrow, Refusal of Reunion
"It has begun."
A husky voice confirmed the fact.
The extremely faint fluctuations of magical energy, just before being brushed aside, tried desperately to slap against the Heroic Spirit's face. Yet, they could not prevent his gaze from easily pointing toward the desert zone twenty kilometers away, seeing the noble phantasms, as numerous as the stars, striking one another—shattering in a distant radiance within a meaningless battle.
The man named Alcides stood still, watching everything of the war between the gods of Uruk.
He had the power to intervene, and he had the power to snipe the Golden King from right here.
However, he abandoned that idea, because inserting himself into the battlefield now might cause the spears of two Heroic Spirits of equal caliber to both turn toward him.
Alcides was cautious. He possessed no redundant self-confidence that he could simultaneously oppose two Heroic Spirits of the same specification as himself.
Even if using his trump card under the premise of surplus magical energy might make it possible, it was not a reason for him to give in to unnecessary arrogance.
Alcides concealed his presence to the utmost, carrying out the role of the "onlooker" he had planned from the start.
—That is, if two humans huddling together had not appeared in the area behind him.
How unfortunate it was for them. From the beginning, the situation wasn't that Alcides had sought them out, but rather that they had unconsciously intruded into Alcides's domain.
However, their luck was actually quite good. Toward ordinary people who would not affect the Holy Grail War, Alcides adopted an attitude of indifference.
"..."
It should have been so.
Alcides's gaze, peering through the cloth wrap, halted upon the silver-haired girl favored by the moonlight.
After a beat, he finally realized it.
He could not look away; no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't do it.
Out of control, his defiled body trembled slightly, as if trying to forcibly dig something out.
"What... is happening..."
Alcides covered his face with his broad palm through the cloth.
As if his head were throbbing with pain, things that should not have surfaced began to emerge.
It was as obscure and separated as the very bottom of a lake, but one phrase appeared in his mind with absolute certainty.
That cry didn't exist at all. It was impossible for it to exist.
"Impossible... The mechanism of the Holy Grail War makes it impossible for previous memories to appear..."
Within a few seconds, Alcides understood.
It was the Command Spells.
The Master he intended to kill, Bazdilot, had used three Command Spells and "something" to cause him to degenerate.
Alcides had been reduced to a mere Avenger.
—"Do not cover it up."
—"Recall the [humans] you have witnessed."
—"Accept... the Raiment of the Earth (the essence of man)."
Originally, in extremely rare circumstances, Heroic Spirits in a Holy Grail War might have slight, déjà-vu-level impressions of their experiences from when they were previously summoned.
Coincidentally, under the reinforcement of Bazdilot's Command Spell instructions, the "humans witnessed"... memories matching this condition were overwhelmingly strengthened.
Now, as long as Alcides had the resolve to think until his brain bled from the effort, he would surely be able to know who this girl was—the one who made it impossible for him to avert his gaze.
"?"
But before he could act on that, Alcides had calmly and unconsciously dropped to one knee.
Intuition told him: do not think about it.
Those few pictures in his mind, like landscape paintings—he must not know whether they were true or false.
Because...
Once he truly remembered, he would never be able to forget again.
—The source of magical energy used by the Master was not normal. Although he had not yet officially told him, Alcides deduced it was magical energy extracted from countless human bodies.
—What then are the humans being consumed right now to maintain your existence? For what purpose were those humans, who turned into kindling, sacrificed? This ignited flame must lead somewhere.
Alcides silently watched his palm, which had been trembling until just a moment ago.
He was shaken. Even though Alcides knew he was in a state of degeneration, he was still shaken at this moment.
Yet, whether it was something to be grateful for or a pity, this agitation lasted only an instant.
The being formerly known as Heracles was a Great Hero of resilient spirit. This trait, in his current degenerated state, became a simple statement of fact, carrying neither praise nor derogation.
Very slowly, he rose again from his low, crouched posture.
"I see."
His voice no longer held emotion.
The past events that might have been recalled were suppressed to the deepest part of his memory, submerged to become ruins on the seabed.
Judgment altered—these two were not ordinary people with no impact on the Holy Grail War.
Quite the opposite: as long as the girl existed, Alcides would be unable to move forward normally.
No, it should be said that he must never let her approach Alcides.
She must not be allowed to get close, she must not be allowed to speak to Alcides personally, she must not be allowed to let her red eyes shine at close range, she must not be allowed to open her mouth and call out that name.
Because once she did that, Alcides would become—
A giant longbow, of a murky color compared to other archery equipment, appeared in Alcides's hand.
That girl was too beautiful.
However, Alcides would no longer watch the girl blending into the moonlight from afar until she completely destroyed his current self.
Alcides was feeling pity. Pitying that because she failed to immediately destroy him—a polluted existence—she would be destroyed by him, who had become cruel.
If... the Holy Grail War did not sequester memories of other Holy Grail Wars to the point where it took a Command Spell, Memory Correction, and a special situation—and even then required active effort—to remember, then Alcides could finally have ended it.
Regrettably, for them, it was just a hair's breadth away.
Black-red magical energy exploded outward uncontrollably. Alcides no longer hid his magical energy—it wasn't that he didn't want to, but that he no longer had the luxury to do so.
Dark red clouds burst forth in the air.
He could only strike before he remembered.
"And yet, it is almost... Heh, heh-hahaha!? Such irony, that even now, this world still desires for the gods of Olympus to be trampled!!"
The fact that Alcides still existed here represented just how great the flaws in the Holy Grail War mechanism were. The true Archer, now an Avenger, laughed aloud with a hellish timbre, like one who had gone mad with cold calculation.
The drawn longbow, a second later, fired a resolve that exceeded Mach speeds.
A frantic color announcing the end shrouded the sky and plummeted toward the earth.
A hidden arrow, a refusal of reunion.
.
.
.
"Illya..."
Shirou climbed up from the ground, feeling embarrassed.
Upon feeling the toxicity completely neutralized, Shirou immediately did a sit-up to escape from Illya's lap pillow.
Illya's teasing was terrifying; it easily made the softest part of one's heart spiral out of control.
"Shirou, won't you lie down for a bit longer~?"
Just like now, Illya wore a little devil's smile.
"Not today."
Shirou brushed off the dust he had accumulated, shifting the topic with a dry mouth as if fleeing the scene.
"Speaking of which, I really didn't expect to meet up with Illya in this way."
Two people naturally bumping into each other in a city of this immense size—the odds were also miniscule.
"It proves that Shirou and I have a telepathic connection."
Illya said teasingly.
Yeah. Perhaps that was it.
Shirou couldn't help but fall silent, his lips slightly parted, preparing to say something—
"!?"
It was a sensation of a single instant.
He felt the sky behind them fill with a strange turbulence of magical energy, followed by a premonition of death, like a falling waterfall.
One second.
A length of time anyone would miss, but Shirou alone was accustomed to the feeling of life and death beginning to invert. It was like the intuition of death Saber taught him at the start of the Holy Grail War: "This next move is about to go wrong."
Merely out of instinct, he turned his head back, and then subconsciously reached his hand out behind him.
"—[Rho Aia—"
The release of a Noble Phantasm also required exactly one second.
Fear and anxiety hadn't even managed to fully form; he couldn't even finish chanting the True Name. His arm was despairingly slow; for the first time, he felt that the activation of a Noble Phantasm was so delayed.
Without a honed "Mind's Eye," Shirou surely would have been unable to even react, standing there dazed until everything was over.
In a makeshift, emergency state, the generally released violet flower petals barely emerged.
Something collided with it on its path of penetration, letting out a loud boom.
A draft cut through, and the bath of cold wind and sand made him feel as if he had fallen into a cellar of ice from head to toe.
Death was held back behind the wall. The sonic boom chased into his ears with a sideways roar, and the sound of glass shattering echoed from somewhere.
The feeling of collapse that arose in that instant made it seem as if all the results of his nearly ten years of training were for the sole purpose of blocking this one strike.
The fake petal shield dissipated. The incarnation of death that exceeded Mach speeds fell to the ground, turning into fragments of magical energy.
Shirou's raised arm remained frozen in place, his stunned gaze fixed on the shattered incarnation of death, motionless.
If there hadn't been that one second of magical energy being emitted beforehand... he would have died. This fierce assault would have claimed at least one life. But the one claimed would not have been Shirou.
However, a being capable of using an attack of this level could not possibly be unable to hide their magical energy! What on earth was that being thinking, to give Shirou the chance to intercept it?! Even while using such a ferocious attack?!
Breaking into a cold sweat, Shirou looked up toward the direction from which death had once galloped.
A Heroic Spirit with his upper body wrapped in cloth looked down at Shirou from a distant rooftop closest to the moon, as if frowning in surprise.
Vast magical energy, like a waterfall, vibrated in the air. He retracted his stance from drawing the bow a moment ago—his killing intent became serious.