The Docks

The multiple reverberations through the ground from all manner of impacts upon it threw Jannik to his face, the grime of the sewer floor, albeit old, causing him to slide along a bit rather than simply impact and stop. While disgusting, when the magus looked over his shoulder to see what had been so rough as to throw him so hard he was glad to have only the muck to worry about. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the sewer that had been beneath the warehouse was now a slurry of molten slag and stone, with bright red and orange-glowing stones acting to form a small cataract of magmatic destruction. Luckily for him, though not for the municipal workers who would no doubt end up having to fix this problem, the impact had sheared a crevasse into the floor of the sewer, causing the liquid rock to seep lower into the earth, rather than chase him down the tunnel.

Still, he could feel the heat from here. He stood and wiped himself off, discarding his jacket after using it to remove the waste from his face and chest, then sighed. he'd survived, but he could still feel Mag fighting. He didn't have a reason to end the fight, but he couldn't do much to support his Servant at this point, as he had no visibility on Lancer.

"I only hope he learned his lesson after wiping out my traps. Can't say that last rune was my finest work, but I'll be damned if I can't say I didn't learn something from it. He can outrun one, but there were hundreds there. Hopefully one or two of them will slip past his guard and give him the impact I had intended." He shrugged and tried to contact Rider through their mental link.

Rider, be careful if you can. I can't see you two anymore, and while I don't doubt that I'll be able to make it out of this sewer quickly enough, I don't really know how far away I'll be once I'm out. I'm in a safe enough position right now, but I'm going to move a bit further on to make sure of it. I know he's only shown that he's got a few tricks to play with, but he's obviously got an endurance that's starting to become aggravating. If things end up looking too badly, just leave. I don't know what impact my last flare of runes will do to him, but hopefully it'll either give you a clear victory, or it'll give you the edge you need to force him to back off and think a bit better about engaging you again.

With his message sent, Jannik looked around. The only real light around him was the dull, angry red glow of the molten material behind him, which gave him just barest amount of light to work with. He sighed, wishing he'd not used up so much mana earlier with the frozen runestones, but pulled just a small amount together to form a net-like rune, trapping light from his surroundings within it to act as a lamp as he moved on. With the orange-red glow cupped in his palm, he raised his hand and stepped away from the ruin behind him, making a mental picture of what direction he was facing relative to the shoreline.

He would be out soon enough, but he didn't plan on going too far for now.
 
The sounds of the battle overhead were muted enough that even amidst motion, Thomas's straining senses caught something...different. Loud enough to be questionable, and he reinforced his senses with his mana to confirm. Focusing, he concentrated on ignoring the sounds from afar, tuning his hearing to what might lie in this dim, underground domain.

Footsteps.

He resumed his motion, homing in on the sounds of the other underground with him, though he made his own gait more stealthy. More cautious in step, walking without allowing the balls of his feet to slap against the pathways in the storm drains. He readied his staff, careful to peer around what corners he might encounter for sign of the interloper in this space.

While Ira fought above, Thomas hunted below, a slight thrill at the prospect of catching the other Servant's master.
 
The impact of Mag's shield was enough to send the lance off-course, but not enough to spare the entire warehouse from the following blast. Instead of tearing the entire building down, the blast ripped apart around two thirds of the structure on one side, leaving the remaining third a hollow, charred skeleton. It was still enough to trigger Jannik's final trap, and so for the following minute, Ira was nowhere to be found. The runes spiralled, confused, without a target to seek, and eventually they dwindled into nothing.

Only then did Ira reappear, body reforming close to the ground and ready to meet any retaliation. He flexed, testing himself - he'd used up quite a lot of power at this point, but his artefacts had put in most of the work. That gave him an edge over his opponent, or at least he hoped so. He'd been having to avoid anything that could potentially give the big guy too much of a refuel after what he had come to dub the "Big Whoopsie" near the start of the fight. If he'd figured out how the shield worked sooner... this would already have been over.

Still, then they wouldn't have had all this fun! It'd been a rollercoaster of flipping back and forth between friendly banter and spitting rage, but Ira was having fun at least.

"Well, that didn't go exactly as planned," he called across to Mag. "But looks like we're going to be able to do the rest of this without any more pestering from your master, so that's good. And you're not vanishing, so I didn't accidentally kill him, which is also good! I'd have felt bad about that. Shall we pick up where we left off?"
 
As Magnan had waited for Ira to return, he had focused upon moving to retrieve his arm and replenish his energy. He had achieved the first, and a little of the second before Ira appeared below him just as he reattached his armoured arm, the limb holding the shield twisting and crunching unnaturally as he gazes down at Ira. By his side, Revenant growls, hunched and ready for action, before blurring and disappearing from sight with a sharp crack.

He was pretty sure he had less energy than the Lancer Servant, but the longer time went on the more and more that gap closed, Magnan putting all of his effort into drawing from the realm of spirits. Notes of blue light seemed to drift into existence and be pulled onto his armour, tiny waves of energy flowing across the burnished steel.

“I feel as if all of this ending without one of us being defeated would be cheap, Ira.” He rumbles, voice echoing out through the post-explosion silence. In the distance, he could hear the whine of police sirens. “If you wish to continue this fight, I recommend you try and make it quick. Show me what else of your pathetic jesters tricks are up your sleeve, so that I may show you back to the Throne.”
 
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Jannik kept pressing forward, at times having to slop noisily through the muck and sewage. He wished he could've been more stealthy, more tactical, but he didn't have any option that he could think of. And he was thinking the whole time he walked. Where was the other Master, that Lancer had been so able to draw from him and continue the fight? Who were they, even? It didn't make sense at first, but as he thought things over, a few things became clear.

He'd been trapped in a place he'd hoped to snare others. At least he wasn't the only one in this War who had some concept of tactics.

As the thought rolled through him, he had a moment of clarity, and with it, he sent the light hovering above his hand forward, bobbing and floating as if he were still carrying it. Considering that his current course kept going straight for some time, with cross-tunnels branching off every so often, he simply watched the little nimbus grow smaller and more distant as he sat in a thin layer of muck. As he began to settle into it, now that he wasn't moving, he could feel the stuff congealing a bit around his feet, and he smirked a bit.

I wonder if they're down here, with more than enough juice to bring a fight to bear. If so, I might be able to turn the tide a bit. After all, I still have my darts. He kept his thoughts to himself, not wanting to distract Rider, assuming he was still fighting. Instead, he pulled two of the darts out of his satchel, keeping an eye on the light still in the distance as he did his best to remain silent.
 
Catching sight of light reflecting through the tunnels, Thomas sped his stride, turning at one intersection to streak down the tunnel. Glancing to the side he'd seen a light, he caught it again, behind this side branch. Easing down this connecting path, he shifted his stave to a poised stance, tilting his head down and slitting his eyes as he watched the trickle of water at the center of the drain. Stilling his breath, he assumed a state of virtual motionlessness, waiting.

As his peripheral vision detected the light come parallel, he closed his eyes as he pivoted out into the open space, the staff in his hands arcing around, over, and down, his reinforced muscles propelling it twice as fast as a major league batter could possible execute. It was aimed to strike from over the left shoulder to the right hip, a thundering blow that should have felled any mere mortal it struck...

Thomas felt it miss, slamming into the walkway to shatter the concrete there, sending chips bouncing off the wall. His eyes snapped open, his augmented vision immediately revealing that the light was unaccompanied, and scanning the darkness in the tunnel for the other Master he knew was down here.
 
"That's kinda rude, just 'cause I like to add a little flare to my fighting doesn't make it jester's tricks, Maggy," Ira replied with a smirk. "But sure. Let's take this to the climax already... although this might be the third, fourth time we've said that? Eh."

He shrugged, then with a beat of his wings, flew forwards. He'd clocked Revenant's disappearance, and was ready for the wolf to appear out of nowhere again, but for the time being he focused on getting back into the fray. Rather than relying on a blink, he swept down directly, lunging forwards with a spear and then swerving aside at the last second to skim past Rider rather than strike his shield. He aimed to duck in close, staying on the move and never sticking to one spot for more than a moment, long enough to deliver a quick strike then duck away. He was faster than the other servant, so provided he mixed things up a little and avoided being too predictable, he'd be able to wear the big guy down - that was the theory at least. After a few moments of this, he blinked off to the side, and began mixing blinks in with his ducking and dodging, making sure to avoid patterns, and taking advantage of his superior manoeuvrability to the fullest.
 
Magnan didn’t bother to lash out at Ira. Instead, the servant did what he did best and defended himself. He crouched, minimising his profile as his shield flashed and his body gyrated. The servant put everything he could into simply surviving, wasting nothing as he called upon everything he stood for.

Each of Ira’s lance attacks found themselves met with a wall of steel as his entire body from the hips up began to spin at an incredible rate, blocking and knocking aside lance strikes with ease.

Once he began to get more familiar with the movement, a blue sheen started covering his shield, and with each strike stopped he found himself growing incrementally more powerful. All the while, Revenant was nowhere to be seen.
 
Realising quickly that this bizarre skeletal spinning top strategy was proving uncannily effective, Ira didn't let his blocked attacks feed the other servant for long before he switched things up a bit. With two quick strikes, one to either side of the one-man shield wall, Ira thrust his spear into the ground with a burst of telekinetic force. The strikes, fast as they were, shattered the concrete, causing a crack to appear between the two points of impact. A moment later, the ground would give way beneath Magnan - not enough to drop him into a pit of any sort, but enough to disrupted the integrity of his spinning guard as his stable base was suddenly a lot less stable.

Ira was quick to try and take advantage of the opening, if one was created, launching quickly back into another volley of strikes before the other servant had a chance to correct his stance. Hopefully he'd be able to rinse him before he got back into his spin cycle. Heh.
 
This time Ira managed to sneak a few strikes past, the spears glancing off of armour or creating gauges that sealed over almost immediately, yet costing Magnan precious energy to fix. He couldn’t waste time trying to correct himself, so he did the next best thing. With shuddering force, his armoured feet plant themselves inside the ground, re-stabilising him.

And with that re-stabilisation, he was able to once again pick up his defence. His shield managed to catch only the last part of Ira’s volley of attacks, but it was something at least.
 
"Alright, this is getting old," Ira muttered as the other servant began to spin again. 'Let's see you play spinning top when you barely have room to swing a cat, let alone a shield,' he added internally as he took a half-hop back, raising his spear and launching himself forwards again. Like before, rather than striking at Magnan he struck at the ground. This time, however, it was with a lot more force. With a yell, Ira drove his spear into the concrete and loosed a blast of force downwards. As he did, the earth shattered beneath the two of them, splitting and dropping them down through the already weakened foundations to the sewers below.

The explosive crash and shaking was enough to reach the tunnels where Jannik and Thomas were about to face off, but the two servants had descended a few tunnels away from their masters, leaving the humans still relatively safe from the collateral damage of a servant-on-servant brawl for the time being.

Rather than ride the fall himself, Ira blinked down into the tunnel below, dismissing his wings with a flash as their span was too broad to easily fit in the confined space. He aimed to take advantage of the moments he had before Magnan could reorient himself from the fall, launching into a forceful spear-strike at the other servant's descending form moments before he hit the ground.
 
Jannik felt a presence surround him, ethereal but friendly, as he waited. With his nerves on edge, his thoughts racing, it took him a moment to fully parse the information he was getting.

He was not alone.

As he watched the light bob further and further away, he prepared to throw his darts. They weren't much, but their obsidian heads were keener than the finest razor and against flesh they would drive deep. The sudden motion crossing the path he'd have occupied showed him Thomas, looking at the light in slight confusion, then understanding. Jannik whipped his hand out lightning fast, twice, letting the two darts loose with hardly a whisper of sound.

With the silent and somewhat magical propulsion of the darts, along with the sudden visual chaos from having looked at a light in a dark place, Jannik could only hope that his aim held true and his strike was left undefended. He lifted a hand and felt Revenant's form beneath it, causing him to smile.

As Thomas stood in the light, his enhanced physical abilities having been shown, the magus prepared to engage. He felt the rumble as something massive crashed into the sewers nearby, but rather than let his attention get dragged to it, he willed the massive Wulgar to attack the man in the faint, ruddy light of his spell.

Revenant surged forward, his massive body taking up a vast portion of the tunnel, blocking Jannik from sight and leaving two blue pinpoints of light coming closer to Thomas at a frightening pace. Jannik used the wolf's charge to dip into a tunnel that ran parallel you the one he was in, with gaps every so often. He pulled out two more darts and prepared to throw them, though he wondered how long the other Master would be able to deal with Rider's mount.
 
Thomas had been careful to only view the light peripherally, and the hints of motion in the darkness drew his attention as thoroughly as neon signs. But the motion was swift enough to realize the peril it represented, and he frantically spun his stave like the blades of a helicopter before him, relaxing slightly as he felt the slight contacts of things striking the weapon's fast moving length. He scrutinized one as it spun aside, puzzling over the image.

"Darts? Is that the be-" His eyes found a new light source. And the very large form they occupied. "Fuck."

One hand released the staff and rapidly scrawled in the air, throwing three runes into the tunnel that loosed a shimmer across the expanse before fading from sight. A fourth he hurled into the ground before him as he jumped back, the blasting rune chewing into the concrete before erupting it into slivers and dust, a smokescreen as he turned to sprint back down the tunnel. A single step hurled him into a sprint, a lunging step that took him across to the next four-way in a second. A second sent him to the next, before he dove into an adjoining tunnel. He threw three more runes, each flashing a barrier over the three possible exits of this junction, instead of three over one immediate link to his position as his first cast had been.

Damned Rider's hound down here. And that crash must have been from above. Getting crowded down here, damnit.

He sighed, then shrugged. No use holding back he reasoned, and turned his attentions to personal reinforcement, pushing the edges of the boundaries he'd performed on himself. His research had touched on Servant's and their exceptional abilities, a goal to attain one day. His focus turned inwards, examining his flesh, blood, and bone in excruciating detail, dissecting its makeup and then pushing mana into it, molding it like clay, strengthening it with the skill of a master metalsmith forging his craft.

His body felt heavier, more solid, at the same time as his senses expanded, the darkness of the subterranean labyrinth vanishing into a twilight state of a clear night sky under the full moon. He could hear, and nearly feel the footfalls of the creature that pursued him, and his awareness only sharpened as he let his memory partitions operate at their fullest capacity. He'd heard of magus who could alter their personal time, and now he understood the sensation of an accelerated perception, each second stretching ineffably into something more. He felt more confident now, unleashing himself to this most extreme he'd dared to approach as of yet.

While he might not have felt so against a Servant that specialized in close-quarters fighting, he thought he could handle keeping away from one's beast.
 
Magnan’s foot lashed out, kicking the spear to the side, the blade cutting through the stone of the sewer wall like a hot knife through butter. Landing with enough force to shake the sewers, Magnan wastes no time in locking Ira down. A fist swings out, the agile servant easily dodging as the blow continues on to shatter the wall next to it.

A burr of rubble flies from the impact around them, large chunks of stone simply bouncing off of Magnan’s armour as he spun. His shield flashed in the low light, collecting rubble along the way as it hurtled towards Ira, fully intent on capitalising and smashing the smaller servant through the wall.

As he did so, he was keenly aware of Revenant’s activities. He had sent his wolf to care for Jannik, but it seems ansteoke it luck had his Wulgar hunting the enemy master. The master had done something to speed himself up, as well as using a variety of tricks to try and escape, but it was pointless. Revenant could smell his magic, the sweat on his skin, and it guided the undead mount as he moved faster than the eye could see through the tunnels.
 
Jannik moved cautiously, not wanting to take the brunt of any attack so long as he had Revenant to operate with. Through his link with Rider, the magus could understand what the wulgar was getting in terms of sensory information, how it was tracking the other Master, but despite the barest flickers he got, he knew that the duo were able to understand each other so much more. He thought about sending in the massive wolf to simply attack and possibly kill the other Master, but a thought struck him as he looked down the tunnel, seeing runes flare into life to form transparent magical barriers.

"Revenant, harry him and keep him distracted. Come when called," he whispered tot he air, driving it as an order to the mighty creature through his mental link to Magnan. At the command, the wulgar shot forward, crashing through the first barrier and smokescreen made by Thomas, only to pause and sniff at the air. The heavy scent of a casting mage rocketed into it's nose, keying it to where Thomas was. Rather than bound forward, however, Revenant would simply turn into the side tunnel and growl deep in the back of it's throat, the pale blue pinpricks flaring slightly in the darkness. To Ira's Master, the creature would be wholly visible, but the ephemeral blue light from it's body would still mark it as dangerous, even in his enhanced state.

While Revenant went about his orders, Jannik moved to where the other two barriers still shimmered faintly. As someone who specialized in purely runic magic, he had to chuckle at the simplicity with which others tossed the magic around. He could see that his opponent had simply willed the rune to stick, rather than using carefully crafted runes to withstand greater force. What most didn't understand is that the rune held it's mana until it broke, becoming free for anyone to take at a later time. As he crouched before the runes, their gossamer-thin line hovering in the air, he tampered with it carefully, deconstructing it and absorbing the mana it held, replenishing his own mana stores.
 
As the shield swung around, predictably, Ira vanished in a flash of light. However, perhaps less predictably, rather than immediately appearing behind Rider, a split second passed - just barely long enough for the other servant's shield to swing past - before Ira reappeared in the exact same spot he'd disappeared from, hopefully subverting his opponent's expectations. After all, of all the places for him to teleport to, traditional wisdom would suggest that the very spot he'd started was perhaps the least likely place to expect. There was no hesitation on Ira's part, and as he reformed he was already striking forwards with his spear towards Rider's face, once more carrying a payload of explosive radiant fire upon the tip. The momentum of the heavy shield swing would still be in full effect, and even accounting for Rider's extreme strength, it would hopefully take him a moment before he could redirect it, leaving him no time to block.

But Ira'd tried variations on this trick before - using Magnan's shield's momentum to get through his guard - and he knew the other servant's body could move in inhuman ways. He was poised, ready for if Magnan should contort himself away - ready to launch with the momentum of his first spear-thrust to follow him and direct his second spear in a similar fashion at the retreating head - ideally - before there was a chance for a second dodge.
 
The hound came to the intersection, looking to him. Thomas ignored the snarling challenge, moving to the center of his tunnel, holding his stave across him, poised and ready. His movements were measured, purposeful, eyes studying this enemy in great detail from the other side of the barrier, so thin and frail before this manner of beast.

It was a skeletal thing, otherworldly azure light wreathing its form. Thomas felt a surge of inexplicable fury blitz through his mind as he realized what stood between Ira's victory and his own was an oversized dog that didn't realize its own time had passed long ago. He drew in a breath, a great whistling heave that filled his body with oxygen, winding his body as his stance shifted from defense.

Concrete detonated with the first step, a bomb's report as the magus covered ten feet in an eyeblink, one hand lashing out as his glove radiated crimson light, streaking lines of burning orange rippling up his arm and across his shoulders as his fist struck his own barrier with the force of an artillery shell. Magic force broke like glass, scattering shards of crackling light, as his second step struck the ground with cratering force.

Thomas launched off the ground as though fired from a cannon, twisting in the air as he slammed into the ceiling of the tunnel, bringing his staff around and angled straight down over the hound's back. Once again his gloves gleamed and reinforcing lines ran, as he aimed not for contact, but to slip the stave through the beast's ribs. His mental calculations were on overdrive, if his first threading of the needle he intended his staff to make succeeded, the next was a quick shift to angle it's downward path between the ulna and radius of a foreleg before embedding it into the ground.
 
As the last of the mana flushed into his body from the second rune, Jannik rose, only to see the orange glow of Thomas' attack. If it hadn't been for the fact that the man was simply a blur of motion, Jannik might've been more inclined to put fort a fight, but with his mana stores lower than he'd like and his opponent moving like a pissed off hornet, he wasn't keen on being anywhere nearby. Unfortunately, Revenant had less luck in that regard.

As Thomas moved, the wulgar tracked his movement, the glow in its sockets shifting like eyes as the massive head began to swing around. As it pivoted to meet the sped-up magus, planting its forelegs firmly and shifting its haunches around with jaws opened wide to snap shut on the man, the staff slid home between the two bones. As the staff moved, it shifted slightly against the immaterial essence of the wulgar's spiritual body, but it rammed home, embedding into the ground without much resistance with Revenant's right foreleg on either side of it.

Almost without regard to the staff now shoved through what remained of it's front leg, Revenant was already closing his mighty jaws, intent on biting deep into the torso of the man before him to break him like a doll. If his jaws caught only air, he would rapidly open and snap them shut again in an attempt to grab an arm or a leg as the man moved away.

"Oh shit," Jannik said quietly as he saw the shards of stone punch out of the ground where the staff had hit. He thought something had happened to the wulgar, but when he'd heard nothing more distressing, he took another look, and was more concerned than before. He knew enough about basic machines from primary schooling to see the potential lever and following bone-shattering motion that had been set up, but he couldn't save the beast the pain unless it was dismissed into spiritual form completely, a move he wasn't exactly wanting to pull. Having some amount of help versus none against someone like Thomas was the only way Jannik could see where he didn't flat out die.

So he began to cast.

Using primarily the mana gained from the runes he'd deconstructed, Jannik forged his mana into runes long and thin, shaping it like hot glass into panes of force thinner than razors and emitting only a soft white glow along their edges. It wasn't something he'd done for years, as his combat-casting training had been left to sit in the back of his mind since his schooling, causing the first of them to dissipate into the air with no effect. His second and third runes, however, stuck fast and floated beside him as if resting on a sturdy table. After finishing a fourth a fifth of them, he bound them together, and drew his arm back, moving all four as if on a giant bowstring.

"Dodge this, you bastard," he whispered to himself, rolling his drawn-back hand in a circle to set the four runic panes spinning like a whirl of blades, only to let go of the tether he held on them, launching them forward like arrows.
 
Reality was delicate. Less a shimmering bubble in the infinite void and more an intricately woven fabric of infinite timelines in infinite space, all connected at distant endpoints. And among the infinite infinities it stood so small. A precious blip among the abyssal sea between universes. A grain of sand among an endless desert. This was a boon and a blessing for those who called such a small mote home. For what horrors would visit their reality if it was worth such an endeavor when the gain was so little. Thankfully only one entity had it's gaze trained on the tiny knot.

An endless constellation of sickly green stars peered down at the knotted, balled up fabric of reality. Numberless fingers, jagged and contorted, caressed and prodded at the strands. Piercing claws wormed their way in between the massive knots and carefully pulled apart strands, making sure the whole tapestry was not undone.

"There." A bellowing voice sounded out in the void as a trinity of green stars set their focus on a growing knot, and the four timelines that were feeding it. Six of the tendril like fingers rushed from the entity's infinite, indescribable form. Each worming their way into the same spot of space and time.


Speed is relative, described by distance and time. To Jannik, Thomas was quick. To Thomas, Rider was fast. To Rider, Lancer was a blur. To them all, what appeared next to Thomas was beyond speed.

In that singular moment, when Thomas's feet landed against the ceiling of the tunnel and he speared the undead creature, six curved claws slid out from the cracked concrete. Each was nearly as long as Thomas's forearm, and the fingers they were attached to even longer than Thomas was tall. They curved and curled inwards, forming a cage as a palm appeared under the mage, pushing him off the ceiling in the process. The grip curled completely around him, and in the process the mighty claws caught the pinned wolf's form between their sharp edges, cutting it to pieces. A moment of collateral damage.

With the mage completely encircled, the pockmarked and gnarled green hand retreated from whence it came, causing Thomas to blackout for a moment as the acceleration subjected him to forces not even he could withstand. Leaving Jannik with empty space as his target once time mattered again.
 
As Ira phased out of existence, only to reappear in the same place, Magnan couldn’t help but feel a spot of mirth. He was going to rip the cowardly fighter apart, but he couldn’t help but admire just how adaptable his opponent was. However, when it comes to adaptability, he wasn’t the only one good at it.

As the shield passed by Ira, the lancer’s spears darting towards him, Rider’s shield forearm spins out of its socket and reverses itself, his torso following he same direction as he cancels out his momentum. The shield spun back, turning midair to collide with the first spear’s tip, blue sheen absorbing the impact as the solid wall of steel passes in front of him for a moment.

His free fist begins to rotate in its entirety, the appendage resembling a drill as he arcs his fist around the shield and through the air towards Ira, the added spin intent on ruining the servant before him.

Of course, he didn’t really expect to land a hit on the servant. Ira was far too slippery to fall for such a straight forward attack. His real target was the broken brickwork to the side of the servant. Should his fist impact that stone, the force would send masonry, sewage and dust flying everywhere, acting as an effective smokescreen long enough for Magnan to capitalise and stomp on the rival servant.
 
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