It didn't take long to reach the Ryuudou Temple after leaving those stairs behind. There, I found the same seam that Artoria and I had fallen through to reach the Grail last time.
That seam still remained, soil and dust crumbling over its edge, plunging inside from the vibrations of my footsteps as I halted an inch away.
Looking down at the bracelet of silver threads clutching my wrist, I held my gaze, then shifted it toward Illyasviel, who had nearly become a Lesser Grail. Maybe she had a day, or half of one, before her body finally gave out.
My legs tipped forward, body following a second behind, and I plummeted. Rushing air lifted my hair like a banner as darkness swallowed us whole.
...
..
.
Moonlight fell across Fuyuki in silver curtains, shining across the city's skyline, a complex honeycomb of different lights that clustered in some places, absent in others, all of it small and irrelevant from here.
Medea rode her staff sideways, both legs hanging off the left side, one hand resting on its length ahead of her knee. Violet circles behind her screamed with each revolution, their radiance escalating with each breath.
A shape covered the moon.
Her eyes followed it. A stingray gliding at an angle that would bring it to her in about six seconds. Its wingspan blanketed the stars overhead as it passed, thirty meters of wing membrane stretching between joints that flexed in sequence, each one pulling air and ejecting it in a soundless stroke.
Medea's hand adjusted on her staff, eyes narrowing at it.
The stingray's head tilted. Luminescent spots pulsed along its belly in green-blue, running all the way to the end of its tail, their radiance intensifying in cyclic breaths.
"Hmph. I don't have time to play with you."
She snapped her fingers, and the circles behind her cranked toward that creature, erupting with shafts of violet that tore the clouds between them, etching across the sky like horizontal claw swipes.
The stingray's left wing folded, right wing extended. Its entire body rotated on its axis, one wingtip pointing at the stars, the other at Fuyuki, and it slid between the first two shafts.
Less than a meter of gap existed on that creature's either side, wing membranes tensing from the proximity, edges singeing where violet light skimmed them, dissolving its skin into trailing wisps of smoke that wind sheared away.
"Tch."
Medea's fingers curled. A third circle fired.
Another shaft of violet ripped horizontal, cutting across the space between those first two.
The stingray's wings contracted. Both of them simultaneously, membrane pulling tight against itself, and it dropped, sinking beneath the third shaft, beneath all three in a single, controlled motion that looked like swimming through air.
Three parallel shafts of violet light stretched across the sky above it, close enough that their edges bled into a collective corridor of mana.
Open-palm pushing down, Medea smirked. Those circles followed her movement, tilting forward, their alignments shifting from horizontal to vertical, and the corridor of violet light swept downward.
Right wing folding, left wing extending, the stingray glided upward to meet that vertical swipe. Its wingtip brushed the violet light and curved alongside that corridor's edge, body riding around that attack while its wings pulled in short, tight strokes that sent it tracing an upward crescent.
It curved around the corridor for five seconds, body reaching to the top of it, wings tensing, joints locking, membrane pulling taut—
A flap.
Medea's eyes constricted.
The creature was already on her, wings spread full, tail arcing behind it, barbed tip coiling and lined up, belly spots blazing in a synchronized pulse from abdomen to tail.
Its barbed tip snapped forward.
Her hand wrenched the staff, and its nose rose, rear pitched straight down, both of her legs swinging. Violet circles detonated above her, their explosions' thrust slamming into her.
She dove.
The stingray dove with her.
Her hair ripped upward, robes billowing behind her, and Fuyuki grew in her peripheral vision. Rooftops enlarged from blurs into shapes of towers, buildings, and the ribbon-like gaps between houses where streets ran below.
That stingray was right above her. Its wings folded halfway, membrane catching air in controlled deceleration, each stroke shortening the distance between it and her back.
Her legs swung, and the inside of her knees hooked around the staff's length, calves locking around its underside, weight shifting. She pivoted on her torso, body rotating until her back faced the city below and face pointed straight up.
The staff went horizontal beneath her. Parallel to the ground now, its length cutting across sky like a bar she was draped over sideways.
Medea's free hand rose, palm open, fingers spread.
Behind her, three circles vortexed into existence, violet light pooling between them in dense, spinning rings that cast her shadow on the staff's surface.
Three became six. Six became twelve. Twelve became twenty.
Air behind her spiralled, then tore skyward, her hair snatching up in the current. Each circle fed into the next, light bleeding between their boundaries until the space behind her body was a wall of churning violet.
The stingray's wings filled her line of sight, stinger coiling again.
Medea's fingers tightened. All circles fixed.
Her hand closed.
Twenty shafts of violet blasted in unison.
Both wings folding tight against its frame, the stingray spun on its vertical axis like a drill bit, wing membrane stretched to the limit as its entire body became a narrow cylinder diving through air.
The first shaft scraped its belly. The second grazed its right wing joint. The third clipped its tail.
It swam through Medea's volley, body undulated in the same rhythmic strokes it used in open air, just more compressed, each movement smaller and faster, rotating as it advanced.
Violet shafts punched past it on all sides, below, left, right, close enough that smoke trailed from different points along its body in thin streams of glitter.
Fifteen shafts spent. All missed.
The stingray's rotation threaded between gaps that shouldn't exist, wings flexing in micro-adjustments that shifted its profile by centimeters at a time.
Twenty spent.
It emerged from the bombardment, smoking from five points along its body, membrane ragged, still descending.
"Persistent little thing."
Warm air from below flicked her cheek, the exact spot a pair of lips had touched days prior. Her lips curved slightly. I'll demand more kisses for this when Master's done.
Then, Medea's face snapped downward.
Fuyuki's skyline had stopped being one. Rooftops were surfaces now, defined shapes and tiles, alongside the geometry of apartment buildings separated by narrow alleys. Streetlights were no longer dots, they were poles, each one casting a cone of orange that she could see.
Close.
Enough that the wind from her descent had started peeling roof tiles. They ripped free at her landing spot in a spreading wave, shattering against neighboring rooftops in sharp cracks.
The stingray was within reach, its wounded wings beating in uneven strokes, one joint lagging where a shaft had clipped it, but it was leveling out, barbed tip ready this time.
Medea tilted her head.
More circles branded into being at the bottom of the staff, and their angles flipped, violet shafts erupting away from her, a counter-thrust swinging her from straight down to horizontal in an abrupt reorientation that happened between one heartbeat and the next.
Her posture didn't change. Back to the ground. Face to the sky. Staff horizontal beneath her, knees curled around its length, one hand resting on its surface.
But her direction changed.
Every ounce of her downward velocity redirected sideways in a single instant, and the staff punched forward along a line parallel to Fuyuki's streets.
A shockwave detonated from the point of redirection, rings of displaced atmosphere that hit rooftops below. A solar panel tore from its mountings and cartwheeled into an adjacent alley. A concrete water tank split along its seam and collapsed, water bursting out from it.
Medea was already gone, staff horizontal, spine now straight and perpendicular to the ground skipping past.
That stingray pulled up behind her.
Its wings snapped open, full extension, both membranes catching air in a single brake that nearly tore them apart. Glitter trailed from it while arresting its descent, belly dropping toward the tallest building in the block. A residential tower, ten stories, plain rooftop.
It hit.
Concrete cracked in a burst at impact, fractures running to the rooftop's edge and continuing down the whole architecture. Top floor's ceiling dropped two inches, windows on the ninth floor blowing outward, glass cascading down in waves.
The stingray's belly planted on the rooftop. Body tense, wings draped over the building's sides, muscles pulled back.
It released.
The rooftop exploded upward in a slab of concrete and rebar, the top three floors beneath it crushed flat by that launch. Walls flung sideways. Windows on adjacent buildings shattered from its shockwave.
Lancing forward from the ruin in a straight line, that creature's mouth hung open, air pulling inward toward a point of light in its throat. Green-blue luminescence along its belly dimmed as every pore contracted, feeding that gathering brightness.
It was charging a strike.
Medea's chin rose. Her eyes tracked forward.
Buildings. A wall of them, residential towers, office complexes, concrete and steel, standing shoulder to shoulder, growing taller with every meter she traveled.
The path ahead was sealed. No gap or exit.
Medea looked back.
The stingray's jaws split open. Blue erupted from its throat in a column that screamed toward her. That beam's edge clipped a balcony railing on the left, and it vanished. Its opposite edge caught a row of windows on the right, glass spraying, breaking apart into dust mid-fall.
Its beam was on her heels.
Medea's neck whipped toward the buildings. They had shut her way, spreading side to side, no left or right path to take.
Forward.
Concrete and glass.
Behind.
Blue.
She sat sideways on the staff's length, hair flying behind her, knees curled around her weapon.
Her left hand extended, fingers closing over the staff's front section. Her right hand reached backward, fingers settling over the staff's rear section.
Both grips sealed.
"Trying to trap me... How cute."
Violet ignited.
Whrrr!
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[15 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Author's Thoughts]
Yes, this was the big idea for Danmachi one, have staff fights and sword fights on the weapons itself. I mean it's possible for there to be an enchantment that makes a weapon flyable or controllable, and even if there isn't one, creating one wouldn't be so out of the box.
Anyway, take care!