Disclaimer: I do not own the Fate franchise it belongs to Kinoko Nasu and Type-Moon.

Three Jewels

Chapter 15

A barrage of bright purple beams rained down from the skies, leveling buildings and leaving molten tracks and craters across the ground. Debris and flame plumed into the air, and then to Caster's surprise the enemy Servant leapt clear through the smoke, mounted on a great charger with red hair.

"A Rider who's also an archer?" she thought, still opening up with the Rain of Light while sweeping through the air to avoid presenting a stationary target. "I shouldn't be surprised though. While not as versatile as the Archer Class, the Rider Class is also quite versatile in its own right, given they make up for their lower statistics with powerful Noble Phantasms."

Rider fired several blasts from his bow, Caster dodging and returning fire each time. "Just who is he?" she thought.

The answer came soon enough, as Rider used an explosion to boost his mount's leap to clamber and jump up higher and higher on several buildings, and then jumped up at Caster, who belatedly realized she was flying too low. And then her eyes went wide, as Rider's bow mechanically reconstructed itself, like an intricate piece of clockwork, into a great golden halberd.

Rider thrust it forward, and then swept it up and sideways, potentially cutting into Caster's flank had not Rider's mount begun its downward arc even as Caster herself rose higher into the sky. Horse and rider fell through a roof, and as the building exploded from Caster's counterattack, leaped out through a wall on the ground floor, flames licking at and firelight gleaming off bronze plate.

"Could it be," Caster hissed. "A weapon with multiple forms that its user may switch between at will, and horse red as fire with a nigh-unnatural jumping ability…"

Rider chuckled, and then began to laugh, his horse slowing to a canter before coming to a halt, pawing and snorting. "Then," he began with an amused tone in his voice, looking up at Caster and the skies with his halberd resting on a shoulder. "Who do you think I am?"

Caster didn't answer, staring down at her enemy instead. Rider chuckled again. "Not very talkative, are you?" he asked. "How unlike most women,"

"Well I'm not like most women." Caster replied.

"Indeed," Rider said with a nod, looking up at her with a surprisingly respectful expression. "And yet you are, are you not, Witch of Betrayal?"

Caster's eyes blazed. "How dare you?" she shrieked, sweeping her staff and sending a ground-scouring barrage of beams earthward.

I'm not her!

I…I was besotted…!

Bewitched…!

Tricked…!

Me…Hecate's prized disciple and priestess…bewitched by one commanding greater power than I could ever wield…

But… even so…I…!

I…

I…I'm not her…I'm not…

…not yet…

Caster closed her eyes, teeth grit in frustration. "The gods," she thought. "Fate…they're so cruel…but here and now, they don't exist. They don't…that's why I…!"

Raising her staff once more, a much larger array of magic circles flashed to life, and with a sweep of Caster's staff, rained down amethyst death.

And through it all, Rider's laughter echoed through the night.

Utter carnage.

There was no way it could be called a battle. If the Galliasta guards could put up at least a semblance of resistance, then perhaps it could be called a battle. A pathetic one to be sure, but a battle for all that. As it was, the Galliasta guards could do absolutely nothing as Luvia and Marika tore into them like a hot knife through butter.

The two girls were like blurs through the air, leaving afterimages behind them as they carved their way through the opposition. Luvia through a combination of physical reinforcement and earth element-based gravity manipulation, and Marika through a similar combination of physical reinforcement and time alteration magic.

Equal in speed and lethality they left a trail of corpses behind them, the states of which reflected the difference in combat style between the two magi. Luvia was precise and elegant, delivering powerful punches, elbow and knee jabs, kicks and blows that conserved energy and motion but delivered murderously-concentrated and magically-augmented force to targeted points on her victims' bodies.

Her attacks didn't seem to cause too much damage on the surface, but inside they ruptured organs and shattered bone to a terrifying degree, causing painful deaths from massive internal bleeding and organ failure. In a way it was a rather sadistic way to fight, as while many of her victims fell unconscious from shock and died in silence, others writhed in agony on the ground, vomiting blood and ichor as they moaned and groaned in death's torturous embrace.

Marika by contrast was pure brutality. With a pair of knives, she carved limbs from bodies, split men open, sheared heads off, and in one case actually split a man in two from crown to groin. Blood fountained and erupted wherever she went, leaving behind a trail of dismembered corpses lying in pools of blood and spilled organs.

And yet for all that it was a merciful way to fight, as her victims didn't live long to suffer before passing out from shock or simply dying on the spot.

"M-monsters…!" one survivor gasped out, blood draining from his face as he saw one of his friends literally cut to pieces as blood and organs exploded in a crimson shower as a blur sped around and past.

"T-they're not Human!" another screamed as two of their friends went limp and collapsed gurgling, blood pouring from their mouths as Luvia – ever so briefly still on the scale of a fraction of a second – delivered powerful blows to their chests that utterly liquefied everything in their chest cavities.

"R-run!"

"We can't stop them!"

"They'll kill us all!"

The surviving guards broke and ran, faces twisted in terror as they fled, a pair of blurred figures closing from behind. And then with the sharp crack of displaced air and the harsh actinic glare of lightning, they screamed as they bathed in raw current.

Marika and Luvia jumped back as one, putting some distance between them and this new development. Gravity manipulation and time alteration shut down, the two girls staring at the scene in front of them.

Moments later and the lightning vanished along with the screams, charred corpses falling to the ground. And then a tanned young man with long blonde hair casually dressed in a white, long-sleeved and collared shirt with dark trousers and vest stepped over their corpses.

"Worthless incompetents…" he spat as he unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.

"You!" Luvia hissed, eyes going flat. "I should have known it!"

"Yes, me, Atrum Galliasta." The blonde young man spat. "And if it isn't Luviagelita Edelfelt and her henchwoman of a cousin, Marika Edelfelt!"

"I prefer the term 'retainer', thank you very much." Marika said, pulling a jewel out.

Atrum's response was a shouted, near-incoherent command, lightning exploding around him in response. A moment later, and the lightning shaped itself into the form of a winged dragon, and hurled itself at the two Edelfelts.

Marika hurled the jewel at the dragon, the explosion tearing up the surroundings and forcing the two girls to jump back a couple of meters. It took a few moments for the cloud of debris to clear, exposing once more the glowering visage of Atrum Galliasta.

Luvia laughed at the sight. "Is that the best you can do?" she asked. "If my cousin – who is a branch member I might point out – could counter your little dragon, do you really think you have what it takes to take me on?"

"You impudent blonde brat…!"

Luvia's smile faded, and her eyes turned to Marika. "I'll take care of this." She said softly. "You take care of that eyesore."

Marika nodded and crouched down. "Maximum Relativity," she murmured.

"Don't think…" Atrum began only to trail off, wide-eyed, as Marika sped past in a flicker of afterimages. He nearly looked back over a shoulder after her, but refrained from actually doing so at the last minute.

"Not bad, not bad," Luvia said with a smile. "It seems you have enough of a brain at least, not to turn your back on an enemy in front of you."

"Brat…!" Atrum shrieked, hurling a crackling stream of lightning at Luvia. Luvia smoothly dodged to one side, eyes narrowing suspiciously at Atrum's triumphant expression.

Behind Luvia, the lightning bolt struck a blood-splattered lamppost. The blood hissed and sizzled as current partly reduced the lamppost to slag, the bolt surging out to strike another lamppost across the street, also partly reducing it to slag.

It did all this in the blink of an eye, the lightning again surging out to strike Luvia in the back.

Atrum grinned as Luvia staggered forward several steps with a cry, bathed in shadow and light as lightning danced around her. And then the grin turned to shock, as the lightning died, and a panting and grim-faced Luvia regained her footing before she could fall, smoke rising from her back.

"That hurt." She said with a glare, straightening up as she did. "Don't do that."

Atrum fired another blast of lightning, only this time Luvia caught it with her left hand. The girl briefly staggered as she did so, but held her ground afterward, forks of lightning leaping out from the pool of blue energy in her palm to lash out at their surroundings, the pool connected by a writhing thread of energy to Atrum's hand.

For over a minute the standoff endured, until with a snarl of hate and frustration Atrum relented. As the flow of energy ceased, Luvia slowly closed her left hand, the energy within flickering out with a 'pop' of air rushing into a vacuum.

"My turn," she said with a small smile, and then in a blur swept towards Atrum. She jumped up a few steps before him, flipping through the air with the aim of delivering a kick at his face.

At least, that was the plan.

Atrum smugly smiled as Luvia came to a halt barely half a step from him, literally standing on one foot against a crackling barrier of pure energy. Lightning and displaced air danced around them, and with a jerk of her body Luvia kicked off the barrier, flipping through the air to land a few meters away.

"Earth grounds lightning." Atrum said softly. He nodded once. "I should have seen that coming. Yes, it's a very simple but effective defense."

The magus paused and narrowed his eyes. "But," he said. "I wonder how much current your body can channel to ground it, or how much can you take before you have to ground what you've taken."

"Who knows?" Luvia asked back, stamping her right foot a few times as though working a cramp out of her muscles. Atrum smirked.

"Leg cramp?" he asked mockingly, and Luvia's eyes narrowed.

"You wish." She said, before raising her foot and then bringing it down hard. With a sharp crack, the ground broke in a line from Luvia's foot towards Atrum, moving quickly enough to audibly displace the air above.

Atrum narrowly avoided the crack, jumping to a side, eyes narrowing as he saw the corpses on the ground lying along the spell's line of fire literally torn apart. "That spell would have literally stripped the flesh off my bones." He thought with grit teeth. "God damn it! I don't care if the brat is from an older bloodline with a more-developed magical system, the noble wind element and its lightning sub-element shouldn't be so easily countered by something as lowly as earth!"

"Let I be the bridge between Heaven and Earth," Luvia began, light glowing between her fingers from the jewels in her hand. Atrum fired blast after blast at her, Luvia dancing around and over them as they tried to catch her from front and back. "And demonstrate Heaven's displeasure to the people of the World: Heaven's Wrath!"

Luvia threw the jewels to the ground, the glowing gems shattering and causing the ground to abruptly heave and break. Atrum gasped and then cried out and shouted as he lost his footing.

Luvia leapt up and away, nimbly avoiding the breaking earth and the collapsing buildings as a magnitude six earthquake shook the waterfront for several hundred meters around. Crackling and explosions erupted, the former and part of the latter from Atrum's defensive mystery as it defended him from falling debris, the magus struggling to avoid getting killed by the area-of-effect spell or becoming vulnerable to a surprise attack.

Other explosions were caused as fuel and other volatile materials in their surrounding were disturbed and set ablaze by sparks caused by tearing and clashing metal, and from damaged underground power lines. And even as the magically-induced, locally-limited earthquake came to an end, the air and ruins shook as a thunderous explosion erupted nearby, flame pluming several meters high as a ruptured gas line ignited.

"Damn you," Atrum growled as he recovered his footing. "You…brat…!"

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Atrum whirled at the sound of Luvia's voice some distance behind, just in time to see a throwing dagger fly at him. Had it not been for his defenses, it would have buried itself into his forehead. As it was, there was a bright, blue-white actinic flash, the dagger flying away smoking.

Atrum retaliated with alacrity, a dragon-shaped blast of lightning launching itself at Luvia with a harshly-snapped aria. The dragon tore apart the structure Luvia had been standing on, the girl jumping off shortly before it could strike, flipping through the air with glittering diamond powder trailing behind her as she freely fell.

"In the darkness before the dawn," she whispered, eyes fixed on the lightning dragon in hot pursuit of her. "The stars shine the brightest."

At once, Luvia's body dissolved, turning into glittering diamond powder that flew on the wind, Atrum's dragon expending itself against the ground. "She can't possibly have literally dissolved into diamond powder." The magus thought to himself, eyes and other senses reinforced and pushed to their limit to find his enemy. "It's just an illusion of some sort."

Atrum blinked, and then gasped as around him, hanging in midair, a set of figures coalesced into existence. "Well," Luvia asked, or rather sixteen of her asked as they looked down on Atrum from the air. "You've managed to hold out against one of us up until now, but I guess it's time to step up our game, isn't it?"

"Petty tricks…!" Atrum hissed, to which the sixteen Luvias responded with mocking laughter.

"Sleight of hand is the most basic of all magic, Galliasta." Luvia mocked, her images raising their hands and knives materializing in them. "Before any magus learned to channel prana and reenact miracles in such a way, they were pulling off the impossible – or what passed for it – with nothing more than trickery."

As one, Luvia threw their daggers, the blades flying straight and true towards Atrum. They shattered against his defenses, but the magus covered his mouth and nose at once. "If I breath even so much as the smallest fraction of that diamond powder in," he thought. "I'm done for!"

Mocking laughter echoed through the night. "Smart, aren't you?" Luvia asked, longer blades appearing in their hands before they seemed to jump off invisible surfaces, falling in a spiral with weapons aimed at Atrum.

"Impudent brats…!" Atrum roared, channeling prana through his circuits and manipulating his defensive mystery's concepts in a certain way. Lightning exploded around him, spreading out in a forking carpet that choked the air with ozone even as it scoured the ground and air.

The images shattered as the lightning tore them apart, and Atrum was moving forward, keeping his mouth and nose covered as he leaped through the clouds of diamond powder left behind. As he flew through them, the diamond powder seemed to twist, forming miniscule blades that cut tatters through his clothes and left blood leaking from numerous small, but painful cuts.

A sound of disappointment seemed to echo through the air, and moments later three more Luvias appeared and leaped at Atrum, carrying what looked like falchions or machetes in their hands. They just didn't charge in this time, instead seeming to test the range of his defensive mystery with their weapons.

"Gotten cautious, haven't you?" Atrum asked with a bloody grin. He held up a hand, and speaking an aria, hurled wildly-forking ball lightning at Luvia. The lightning shattered two of the images, before its forks and tendrils shot towards Atrum, merging with those of his defenses.

Atrum gestured, and blew the last image to dust. "Is this the best you can do, Edelfelt?" he shouted into the night.

As though in response, the diamond powder rose up, and again formed another set of Luvias. "I can keep at this all night, if I have to." One said with a mocking smile, eliciting a shouted aria from Atrum and three winged dragons made from lightning blazing out in response towards Luvia.

In a secluded spot, Luvia was nursing her injured back, while keeping an eye on the battle through her reflections. Thankfully, the magically-resistant nature of her dress' material, along with earth element-based anti-lightning passive defensive mysteries had reduced the damage greatly, but it still hurt.

As it was, a hole was burned by the lightning through her dress, leaving first-degree burns over a patch of her back and a small number of second-degree burns from the smoldering edges of the hole. There was also some minor nerve damage too…for a given degree of minor.

"It was rather hard standing up again after that last hit, much less actually performing mysteries of any kind." Luvia thought as she finished patching herself up. "If not for my crest, I couldn't have done it."

The girl sighed, putting the spent jewels she'd used to heal herself in a pocket. "Undoubtedly," she thought, evaluating the performance of her mystic code in the battle thus far. "It could use a lot more work. That damn Galliasta threw himself through the powder way too easily. He hurt himself doing so yes, but it could have been lethal. And…"

Luvia made a sound of disgust at herself. "The control connections are too easily disrupted." She thought, thinking of how Atrum's lightning field unexpectedly expanded outward from his defensive mystery had disrupted her control over the diamond powder so easily. She'd reestablished control quickly enough afterwards, but still. "I'll need to work on that some more."

"Now then," Luvia said aloud, getting to her feet and looking around the ruined wall, focused on a series of bright flashes in the distance. "How should I take action from here on?"

And then she blinked, looking at the truncated pyramid a good distance away, and then at a series of purple beams blasting down from the sky even further away, though in the opposite direction from the truncated pyramid. "And," she found herself thinking. "How are Marika and Caster holding out so far? And of course, what about Elsa and her team?"

"I did say I could keep at it all night," Luvia said at the bloody-looking Atrum below. "But this is getting boring. Can't you do anything more than throw lightning?"

Atrum's response was a blast of lightning that shattered Luvia's image and part of the ruin she'd been standing on. A barrage of diamond blades flew at Atrum in response, only to break against his defenses.

"You're one to talk about boring, Edelfelt." Atrum sneered. "Can't you do anything more than create illusions and throw daggers?"

"Oh touché." Luvia admitted, three of her again charging in falchions held low. Only this time, they didn't shatter against Atrum's defenses.

Instead, Luvia's – all of them – eyes widened as Atrum crafted a whip out of lightning with a whispered aria, and with a crackling sweep, shattered the images. Laughing low with satisfaction, Atrum swung his whip again, its coils crackling sharply through the air and against the ground and surroundings.

"Well?" he shouted. "Still bored, Edelfelt?"

"A whip?" Luvia asked. "Really? That is such a cartoon villain-ish weapon. I mean who uses a whip as an actual weapon, really?"

"Shut up!" Atrum shouted, leaping forward with speed he hadn't shown before. "Stop looking down on me, you wretched Edelfelt!"

"It's not like I can, you know." Luvia answered cheekily. "I am standing above you."

That image was shattered with a crack of Atrum's whip, the magus leaping past and lashing out at each and every image in reach. Luvia counterattacked, throwing diamond daggers that only broke against Atrum's defenses, and making it seem as though Luvia was bored and uninterested in actually fighting the battle.

"Always," Atrum snarled. "Always…each and every time…I'll make you respect me! I'll make you acknowledge my power, you impudent blonde brat!"

"Respect is earned, not given." Luvia replied dryly. "And you have not earned it, considering how you always seem to act like a child. Indeed, if there's anyone here who's a brat it's you, with your impression that you always have to have the best and biggest toy in the room."

"SHUT UP!" Atrum shrieked, lightning exploding around him and further breaking the ruins up further. "I will not be looked down on by an inbred brat like you!"

"Oh yes, real mature." Luvia answered from where she was lying atop a ruined and sagging metal skeleton. A blast of lightning shattered the image, and brought the skeleton down with a resounding crash and a cloud of dust.

"Back to just throwing lightning out, aren't we?" Luvia asked.

A blast of lightning answered her question, and then a magic circle appeared under Atrum's feet. "Very well!" he shouted, lightning crackling over his body. "If that's the way you want it I'll show you my real power!"

Luvia's images all looked surprised and even slightly alarmed at this development, even more so as Atrum began more than just a single-count spell. Diamond blades were thrown and falchions swung, but they each kept breaking against his defenses.

As he cast his spell, the magic circle below his feet flashed three times, two replicas rising revolving around him, one staying around his chest and the last over his head. Finally, with a shout, Atrum finished his aria, and a blast of light shot up into the sky. The clouds overhead rumbled, and then lightning rained down all around him, further tearing up the ruins and shattering the images en masse.

For several moments, the lightning rained down, and then vanished. For a few moments, there was only the sound of smoke and steam rising from the ground, of debris falling, and Atrum's heavy breathing. And then slowly, he began to laugh, the laughter building until he was laughing at the top of his lungs.

"Now, Edelfelt!" he shouted. "Who's bored now? Who's laughing now? You might have broken my bounded fields, but this place is still my territory! I can still call upon the power of the crown jewel of my family's magecraft for my own personal use! I…!"

A powerful explosion in the distance interrupted him, and Atrum turned to look in disbelief at a tongue of flame and a column of smoke coming from near the top of his array's node. "That's impossible!" he said.

As though in response to his words, another explosion erupted, right below the spot of flame and smoke near the node's crown. And then another, and another, and another, until there were was an unbroken line of flame and smoke running in a line down one corner of the node from its crown to its base. And then there was a larger explosion, ripping the burning corner out and leaving a blazing crack in the node behind.

"A fuel cell detonation?" Atrum said with grit teeth and bulging eyes. "T-that…that damn Edelfelt henchwoman…!"

"She prefers retainer." Luvia unexpectedly said from above, and causing a surprised Atrum to look up.

Five Luvias jumped down from the sky, in a pentagon formation around him. Atrum's defenses crackled and shattered them, but five daggers fell straight and true and stabbed into the ground around him.

A magic circle briefly flashed, and Atrum gasped as he felt his defensive mystery shut down.

Impossible! She grounded it…!

There was the sound of quick feet crushing rock beneath them, Atrum half turning to see Luvia running towards him from the back, and then there was pain, sharp, angry pain, as the blonde girl buried a dagger into his back.

A/N

And the battle continues.