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[SummonHouYi]: SOMEONE SUMMON HOU YI. RIGHT NOW. WE NEED AN ARCHER WHO SHOOTS SUNS.
[Panicking]: WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THE SKY—
[AlsoConfused]: Two suns. There are two suns. I want to go back to the mop situation, the mop situation made sense.
The chat was chaos. Which was appropriate, given the circumstances.
Max was barely keeping up himself. The day had started as a ranked match in a game he'd built from the ground up, and it had somehow escalated to the point where the sky above Fuyuki City contained one more sun than it was supposed to.
He had a theory about why. The theory was not comforting.
Before he could voice it, the answer arrived on its own.
Something colossal hit the harbor.
Not fell — hit, with the specific percussive impact of something enormous that had chosen its landing spot deliberately. The shockwave rolled outward across the city, rattling windows that hadn't already been broken by the afternoon's various explosions, and in its wake the temperature spiked — not gradually, not as a slow creep, but immediately, as if someone had opened an industrial furnace pointed directly at Fuyuki's downtown.
The moisture in the air evaporated. The shadow of the second sun stretched long and red across the ruins.
In the harbor, something the size of a small mountain was settling into position.
Shuten-dōji, who had been moments away from resuming hostilities with entirely too much enthusiasm, went still.
She looked at the harbor.
She looked at the second sun.
She touched her own cheek thoughtfully.
"Oh my~" She sounded genuinely put-upon for the first time since her arrival. "I don't mind a certain amount of warmth. But I do rather like my skin, and cracking is not a good look." She turned to Max with an expression of elaborate regret. "I'll let you go this time, Master. But don't think this means anything. Next time, I'll make sure to take my time — right in front of your Servant."
"Please don't," Max said.
"Hiss," Medea said, with feeling.
Shuten-dōji laughed, light and unbothered, and turned toward the nearest shaded alleyway. She moved through the ruins like water, effortless, and was gone.
Derek, watching his Servant retreat, did his own rapid assessment of the situation — the harbor, the temperature, the general atmosphere of impending catastrophe — and arrived at the correct conclusion, which was run. He ran. His armor, still bearing evidence of the sewage pipe incident, caught the afternoon light in a way that Shuten-dōji pointedly did not look at as she passed him.
Max let them go. He had bigger problems.
He turned to the blond man, who was standing on the broken streetlamp with the posture of someone who had decided to be above all of this, literally and figuratively.
"This should be your wheelhouse," Max said. "What do you say — temporary alliance?"
The blond man looked at him. The expression was not unfriendly. It was simply the expression of someone who had made a prior commitment and was not the type to break it.
"You know who I am," he said. It wasn't a question. "Then you know I meant what I said. I won't interfere in this Holy Grail War. As long as no one actively comes after me, I'll remain uninvolved." A pause. "I do mean that."
He shimmered — spirit body, the transparency of a Servant choosing not to manifest — and was gone.
[Frustrated]: COME ON. He just LEFT?
[Arrogant_But_Correct]: Okay but his consistency is actually impressive. Most people would fold with a dragon in the harbor.
[NotImportant]: By the way, who IS that guy? Someone please confirm.
[LinLiangKnows]: Max recognized him instantly, which means he's important. Very important.
[WaitingForExplanation]: The lore drop is coming. Be patient.
The Holy Church's wanted bulletin arrived approximately forty seconds later, right on schedule, updating everyone's minimap with a new high-priority alert.
[LancerAlert]: LANCER?! All of this was a LANCER?!
[ClassDiscrimination]: Why does every other class get to have a great day while Saber mains get bullied?? Didn't they say Saber was the best class??
[ExplanationRequest]: Max, I need you to explain the two suns. With words. Now.
[BlondCritique]: That blond guy has serious attitude problems. My Astolfo is worth more than his entire existence.
[Hair_Focused]: Worth more from where, exactly?
[OpeningAnotherRoad]: I'm not going to answer that.
[BusStop]: Is this a kindergarten bus? I want to get off.
More of the chat wanted the explanation than the innuendo, which was progress. Max obliged.
Vritra.
From the Rigveda and the Mahabharata. Indian mythology, ancient classification, the category of serpent demon god and evil dragon.
Her name translated directly to Obstacle. Not metaphorically — that was her function, her purpose, the thing she'd been built by the universe to embody. She held water back with dams and caused drought, and the suffering that produced was not incidental to her existence. It was the point.
The god who'd defeated her and released the water was Indra — and people needed to understand what that meant in terms of scale. Before the Puranas tradition introduced the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, Indra wasn't one of eight guardian deities. He was the chief of all gods. The Emperor of Heaven equivalent. He'd since been demoted by the arrival of more comprehensive theology, but in the older texts, in the Rigveda, Indra's most important title — his defining achievement — was Slayer of Vritra.
That was how you judged the strength of a weapon: by what it was made to cut. Indra's primary identity was defined by killing Vritra. What did that say about Vritra?
But here was the part most people missed: Vritra wasn't evil. Not in any meaningful sense. She blocked water, yes. She caused drought and hardship and suffering. But the world needed obstruction. Without resistance, nothing grew. Without difficulty, nothing developed. Without the dam, there was no force required to break through it — and the breaking-through was where growth happened.
What Vritra truly presided over was the necessary evil of obstacles, and the inevitable evolution that came from overcoming them.
Which meant her favorite activity was setting up trials for humanity and watching from the best seat available as humans struggled, adapted, and became something better than they'd been before.
No mercy. No accommodation. No softening of the difficulty to make it more manageable. Full force, every time, because anything less would produce less.
[Processing]: So she makes things terrible on purpose because she loves humans.
[Alignment]: Chaotic Good. Extremely Chaotic Good.
[Worried]: "What kind of trial did she set for her own Master?" is a question I didn't think to ask until someone in chat mentioned it and now I can't stop thinking about it.
[SameWorry]: Same. Same worry.
[DragonSize]: She's the size of a mountain. One tail flick ends Fuyuki. I love this game.
[Optimist]: But she's not moving! She's stationary in the harbor! Artoria just needs to hit her with Excalibur a few times and—
[Pessimist]: I don't think it's going to be that simple.
[Pessimist_Confirmed]: It's definitely not going to be that simple.
The voice that answered their questions was not human-sized.
It rolled across the city like distant thunder, massive and resonant, female in register despite the scale:
"My name is Vritra. The Dam-Dragon Vritra."
The temperature ticked up another degree as she spoke.
"I shall now bestow a trial upon you, humans. From this moment, the temperature will rise by five degrees Celsius every hour. After six hours, no living creature will be able to survive on this land."
A pause, as if she wanted this to land properly.
"So — humans. Come and kill me with resolve. Come and overcome the trial."
And then, with a warmth that had absolutely no business existing in a declaration of environmental catastrophe:
"Trials are a blissful thing."
The chat sat with that for a moment.
[Silence]: ...
[MoreSilence]: ...
[EventuallyProcessing]: She said it so warmly. "Trials are a blissful thing." She MEANS it.
[Math]: Six hours. Five degrees per hour. Starts at current temp, ends at unlivable. We have a clock.
[AlreadyHot]: It's already noticeably warmer than it was ten minutes ago. This is real.
[MasterQuestion]: I NEED to know what trial she set for her own Master. Someone find out.
Max looked at the harbor. At the second sun. At the assembled group around him — Medea, Maverick, Chen Ge, Astolfo, Lily, and a blond Servant whose name he wasn't going to say out loud yet.
Six hours.
One mountain-sized dragon in a harbor.
No aircraft, because apparently those were stuck at customs.
He started thinking.
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