FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 80: Quoth The Raven

....

Pigsy huffed in the chapel yard, though not from exhaustion. It was not his body but his mind which raced to control his anger, to find an escape and to deal with his anxiety all at once. At this point, he was hardly more than a pent up ball of emotions looking for an outlet.

From the chapel wall he'd torn apart, two lazy comets flew up and out, forming into shapes vaguely humanoid, but with the lower halves of snakes.

"Ragh!"

He cast a wide, horizontal swing with his rake, the chain extending long and longer to sideline both of the flame golems with a single, spinning strike. Like string along a loom the fire spun and gathered around the tornado as Pigsy brought it up and around. Gripping the shaft with both hands, he slammed down the spinning flames some forty yards behind him, sending a plume of rock and earth into the sky with the sound of thunder; the golem cores reduced to pitiful splinters in the crater left behind.

As the head clacked back into position, he reared up and bared his chest at the sky, "FACE ME LIKE A MAN!"

His high-pitched, nasally voice puttered out into the flat plains around him with nothing to echo off of.

"Fine, -oink-. I'll just have to break down those walls until ya got nowhere left to hide!"

He held his rake in one hand, balancing it on the other, aiming the brass head towards the front doors as if it were a pool cue. It spun dangerously, creating a vacuum that dust and dead grass rushed to fill, and humming resonantly as if heavy rain were falling against a gong.

"Who's hiding?"

"Geh!"

His heart leaped, his focus broke, and the Nine-Tooth Rake of Heaven flew off at an odd angle, smashing through the top of the remaining wall as a shadow emerged from behind the barricade, and another flew straight for Pigsy himself.

Even off-guard, he was no less a warrior, especially with his signature weapon in hand. He lashed the chain like a whip, a great hill rising in the slack and intercepting the arrow in a blaze of fire and smoke. From the cloud, the rake returned to its shaft, and Lancer stood at the ready as his small heart thumped erratically in his chest.

When the smoke cleared, there was Archer: a blot of ink on the canvas of the world, with a ponytail like burning feathers, wearing a loincloth and bracers on his forearms and shins which glowed like dying embers. The black was so black, and the orange so burning, that no matter what light touched him, he always looked the same, as if his body were always in one time and place, and never among his surroundings.

Under Lancer's snout, a mean and toothy smile came from the depths of his animal nature.

"You laugh, Lancer?"

He spun his Noble Phantasm with a flourish, "Why the Hell not?"

"Do you want to die?"

"'Course not -oink-. I'm scared as shit, but that's A-okay. Everythin's under control."

His falcon eyes narrowed, "Really?"

"Yea. 'Cause my Master's free."

His eyes narrowed, "...And what makes you think that?"

"-If she weren't, you'd be usin' her as a hostage, but you ain't. That means we're winning."

"Your definition of 'winning' is a bit too broad, Lancer. " He held his bow defiantly in the air, "Allow me and my bow to show you the tru-"

He strafed to the side, a rush of cutting cold beaming into where he stood and leaving a blanket of frost across the stone. Jumping off the air itself to land, he pulled his bowstring as he ran- biting his lip all the while.