#demimagus

It will probably be my WIP in which Rafal is very displeased at having turned to piracy in desperation, or a different WIP in which he is the manipulated instead of the manipulator for once. That second WIP may involve other povs, not just Rafal’s though. A third potential option is my WIP with Sophie complaining in it. And a fourth might be one with Rafal touring the Woods and monologuing. I haven’t completely decided on which will be the next yet.

So far, the titles are:

“Return of the Inagrotten” (one-shot)

“Author of a Golden Opportunity” (one-shot with scene breaks)

“Evil’s Victory” (indeterminate number of chapters; it depends on how I divide up the plot.)

“Eye on the Woods” (potentially seven very short chapters or vignettes, including one (Diversity win! /s) of Rafal being indiscriminately mean about mortals and genders in Borna Coric.)

This was coming. The other Servants on this mission had already fallen, faded and no doubt arrived back in Chaldea. Haru doesn’t have that luxury. If he dies here, he dies. No time for reinforcements. Chaldea wouldn’t be able to sort out the rayshift soon enough and get the spare Servants where they needed to be.

It was going to be fine, Alter is reliable. Alter can take down the enemies before him.Or he could. Until the reinforcements arrived, another cavalcade of soldiers intent upon finishing the task at hand. Alter could respect their ruthlessness if he weren’t the one dying from it. He holds his own until there’s one too many lances sticking out of him and his hands are too bloody to keep a grip on his handguns. Even as he falls, he’s fighting. He can barely aim, but aiming doesn’t matter when he’s firing into a crowd, haphazardly generating swords in the body of anyone he catches in the crossfire and trying to shoot through anything that he can see as moving in his rapidly tunneling vision.

But it’s not enough. It wouldn’t be. He doesn’t have the energy left over to use his Phantasm again, and there’s still more soldiers to kill. Blood wells in his throat and he realizes he can’t breathe as his legs buckle underneath him. Alter doesn’t feel himself hit the ground.

He does hear Haru’s command. More importantly, Alter feels it, the surge of magic that sears like lightning, conducted along the fracture lines, firing off every nerve in his body and forcing him to move when every fibre of his being says he should be dead or worse. 

Alter dimly realizes he’s screaming. It takes a while after that to realize that it hurts. There’s too much magic, too much energy, whatever molten plasma coursing through him and making him look alive. --Fight beyond his limits.

So he will.

Liquid metal bursts from one of the golden lines in his side, as if the pressure has mounted too much to contain it, the forge that lies in place of Alter’s ‘soul’ working overdrive. The gold oozes down his size, like blood but thicker and hotter, steaming as it hits the ground. The blood it contacts boils even though the gold congeals quickly. 

The soldiers are only surprised for so long -- a few seconds to adapt to the fact that they are no longer fighting a human but a white-hot burning monstrosity, forge with gold and lead melting from its mouth and wounds.

The first sword gets stuck in his chest, caught in the stream of gold. It burns the soldiers if they get too close and Alter laughs wildly, hysterical and without feeling. He doesn’t know where he is, who he is, what’s happening -- all he knows is that people are before him and he will flatten every living thing in this battlefield and he will die as he does it. A lance hits his arm and the blade of it breaks with a sharp metallic screeching against his skin. It sends sparks and pieces of scrap metal flicking to the ground.

Alter tries to pull up his weapons, but -- he can’t feel his own hands, can’t tell if he’s grabbing anything or even if he could grab something with the gold blood slipping over his palms. The shackles on his hands don’t melt, but they heat up enough to send more fractures for his skin with an audible crackling. So, if he cannot pull his weapons: he manifests them into the entire surrounding area before him, aiming for every single signature of even slight magical energy, all but that of Haru’s. Swords manifest in thin air, fired at random towards where the soldiers probably are. He hears something scream, probably the other soldiers, possibly him. He could be the one screaming too, until the molten gold spills out of his mouth and ruptures his throat. He coughs, sending a spatter of gold to the ground.

An arrow hits him in the shoulder, which he does not feel. It connects with a fissure and sinks into the metal, catching on fire but creating enough of a pressure difference to send his arm to the ground with a heavy metallic thud, breaking again into pieces when it hits the dirt.

He slogs forward anyways, arm forgotten. His other hand fractures too and he doesn’t notice, it doesn’t matter until every single soldier on the field is dead. It doesn’t matter so long as he can still generate blades. And he does, because he is a forge, and that is all forges do.

He makes swords. He drops them into any body with a magical signature that gets close enough to him. So what if he can’t see, can’t breathe, pieces of him keep falling off because it is the job of metal to sink. He does his job. The sound of metal becomes indistinguishable; what is the death of soldiers or his own death he cannot tell. It also doesn’t matter.

Alter fights beyond his limits.He does what he is made to do.

He fights on, bleeding, and with an increasing pile of carnage around him until he can’t tell anything more that moves. Haru should be alive. None of the soldiers ever got close to his Master. Alter did as ordered. He thinks, he thinks, he did his best and fought as well he could.

Until his knee breaks under the strain and Alter collapses into a pool of his own molten blood, gasping for breath that doesn’t come. He tries to stand back up again and slips once more. His chest shatters and there are no more swords to be created. A supernova, forge that burnt itself out and cooled into ash.

All on top of the bodies of a battalion of soldiers. If there are more, maybe it’s been enough time for Chaldea to triangulate the location and send reinforcements. Maybe he killed them all. He feels as if he did.

PLEASE DON'T!!!!!!

his entire face is just gonna, go very red,

Hand raised, descends in a light rap of knuckles against Haru’s head. “Are you trying to make people hesitate about joining your battle?” At least he doesn’t sound too harsh, though the words alone have a bit of bite. Too bad for Haru -- that look in his eyes when he glances over at some of the other mages is simply . . . vexing.

She pitter-patters over, making a point to ensure her footsteps are noisy. (Well, as noisy as they get with Koshka, which isn’t much.) A platter is held in her hand, a teapot full of a rosy-red brew and two cups on saucers that do help contribute to her approach’s audibility. As soon as Haru’s eyes meet hers, she straightens up with a little jerk, expression quite serious as if she holds grim portent rather than a tea set.