A bus rides the midwestern roads of the United States, its passengers suffer with the heat inside, despite the mild temperature of the day. Seems like the windows are stuck. All of them.
Obviously, plenty of better rides go through this path, but Volumnia Innogen, sheltered as she was, had no way of knowing before buying her tickets.
A few weeks ago, she was contacted by an anonymous person looking to hire her to join a pseudo-Holy Grail War. The war was a simple one, the usual supbar grail copy, six Servants, small town… except the job wasn’t to win the war. The person starting the war was Brevig Grottwader in partnership with an unknown party. The contractor — whoever they are — has some grudge against Brevig and hired Volumnia, alongside three other Masters, to join the war with a single objective: Kill Brevig.
Luckily, Lum also had her own reasons to want Brevig dead.
She was now heading for the town of Wall, South Dakota, close to the Badlands National Park within which the Grottwader Estate was located. A small town — no more than 700 inhabitants — and basically controlled by the Wall Drug Pharmacy, which decades ago had expanded from the pharmacy business into owning most of the tourist-focused business in town.
As Grail Wars ought to be, everything was a mess from the start.
As soon as her bus approached the city, it was immediately flipped. Without explanation or warning, the bus appeared a few meters ahead, as if teleported, facing the opposite direction. Despite the confusion of the passengers and driver, nothing else seemed to be happening. Lum, of course, was already on high alert: The war had started.
She walked through the main roads of the small town of Wall, headed to the hotel her contractor has indicated, only to find that part of the second floor of the building was covered by tarps, waiting repairs after some kind of accident destroyed the wall of one of the rooms.
Already exasperated at the situation, she went to the hotel, expecting to meet her contractor. She found a hypnotized attendant who led her to her room, where she only found a flip-phone. In it, two applications: CHAT and The Great Cryptids of America III.
Realizing the phone will be her only contact with the contractor, they start messaging.
She receives the coordinates of the Niobraran Lakeside — Brevig’s workshop — and the name of her three allies:
Rute-Elena Terolecha
Giulianna Peilou di Romanicci
Hanah Kartraksonn
The three people with whom she’d share the trials and troubles of this war… But oh, there was another message.
“Giulianna and Hanah have gone rogue. Kill on sight.”
Great start! Let’s contact our remaining ally through the CHAT then.
“Don’t contact me.”
Superb!
The growing exasperation settles as Volumnia realizes her current situation. She feels the energy of the leyline flowing below the hotel, how convenient.
She had reasons to be in this war besides Brevig, of course. Despite everything else going haywire, she is sure that her Servant will be here.
All she needs is to say the words———————
To activate her circuits———————
To create the magical circle———————
To let magical energy flow, sparks fly, fire fill her body in the rush of mystical power that is the connection to the grail.
Her Command Spell takes shape, as well as her Servant.
But she should’ve known — everything was going wrong, and the face looking down on her is not the one she expected.
Rider Dorothy Gale, though she won’t reveal her identity to her Master for quite a while, manifests. Abrasive and distrustful of mages, the two trade stern stares and blunt words before settling on tentative politeness. It’s time to start.
Rider finds three fireflies trying to fly out of the room, and Volumnia quickly recognizes them as rudimentary Familiars, sets them aside and moves on to investigate the room next to theirs.
The broken wall there makes it seem like something flew out of the room, taking the wall with it. On the ground is a flip-phone, broken and abandoned.
Without losing any time, they attempt to leave the town and confirm that some kind of magecraft is keeping them in. Trying to leave causes Volumnia to be flipped back into the town, as if her position was mirrored with the limit of the town as the axis. Dorothy’s innate magical resistance protects her, but it’s of little use if her Master can’t come along. She does get the sense that killing whoever is in control of this will free them, so the poses the question to her Master: is she willing to do it?
Absolutely.
"Braid buds bonding over mage murder", illustrated
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Decided to get a better feel of land, the pair goes to the top of the highest building in town, a three-story building a few meters away from the famous (?) 80ft Dinosaur, a green sauropod statue and one of the main road attractions owned by Wall Drug.
They feel the remnants of magical energy use in a rescue farm on the other side of town, from the hotel they just came from and around the dinosaur they are next to.
Going down, they find a group of tourists gathering around something on the road instead of the sauropod, and are quickly drawn into a tourist scam as an excited guide offers to sell a photo of the legendary Thunder Horse, which has been visiting the town lately, apparently.
They pay $5 for the photo, a shadowy shape with little defining features besides being a quadruped. Then pay $10 to see the footprints it left… which are just out on the street.
Fifteen dollars poorer, they move on to the National Grasslands Visitor Center hoping to find more concrete information on weird sightings. Rider invades the office of the building and looks through the emails on a computer left on. There’s a series of emails from a certain Dave, raving about different cryptid sightings of late.
PEOPLE HEARD THE BADLANDS BANSHEE!
THUNDER HORSE SIGHTINGS?
MOTHMAN SIGHTINGS THREE DAYS AGO! I HAVE PROFF
THUNDER HORSE WITNESS AT DINOSAUR
THUNDER HORSE ACTUALLY MAKES LIGHTNING
THUNDER HORSE SEEN IN THE CITY
THERE'S A CHUPACABRA NOW!!!
The last one arrived just as she was looking, so they head to the Rescue Farm where the chupacabra apparently attacked. There, they find Dave harassing the workers for pictures and the bodies of six cows, all of them with a perfectly circular wound indicating they had their heart removed. In all of their wounds, bunches of dead fireflies.
Still trying to understand the trail of cryptid talk, they plan an ambush on the 80ft Dinosaur, where the thunder horse has apparently been sighted.
It doesn’t take long for their target to appear. It comes in from the badlands, gleefully skipping and humming as it approaches a pond close to the dinosaur. The pair is weirded out by the attitude of the supposed Thunder Horse, but even more by its appearance: it’s obvious that it’s some kind of bulky quadruped, but their whole body is covered by shoddy concealment magecraft that only reflects the surroundings instead of granting any kinds of invisibility.
They engage the creature, and it suddenly sprouts wings to try and flee. It even breathes fire to protect itself, but Rider dominates the fight, eventually convincing the thing — which is clearly sentient — to stop and talk.
The creature acts almost childish and easily spouts out information. It is the ride of a female Rider, who it is looking for. They have the hots for Dorothy. Their Master is male. They—
BAM—A gunshot interrupts their conversation. Not aimed at any of them, it instead flies between them and the Thunder Horse, leaving a red trail in the air and then activating a spell much like the one surrounding the town. Wherever the dragon was sent to, they can’t see, and neither of them are comfortable out in the open with a gunner around.
They run back to the Visitor Center to spend the night there, but feel a sudden surge of magical energy on the rescue farm. Sadly, they take too long and only get there to find more animals dead. This time, more, smaller species have been killed, and there seems to be some progression to their wounds. Most still have the very neat heart-aimed circle, but a few have more wounds or have been almost tore apart.
They follow their plan to spend the night in the Visitor Center and leave early the next morning, only to find the town in upheaval as news of a murder spread through the townsfolk. The pair overhear some of their talk:
“He was killed, man. It was the fucking mothman, man!” |
The absurdity of the supposed culprit rains annoyance onto Volumnia, who continued to hope this was just a simple Holy Grail War as they headed to the crime scene.
The victim was the man who scammed them out of $15 dollars the previous day… or at least it looks like him. Volumnia is quickly filled with dread once she realizes that it is not a person, but some kind of artificial construct. Ready to leave as soon as possible, she calls for Rider before being hit in the back by a small pebble, directing her attention to the alley behind them.
In it, she sees an unconscious person: the very same man who was supposedly killed. On him, a very obviously placed note: “You should take the body before it turns back.”
Rider acts quickly and goes into her spirit form to enter the police car taking the body away, while Lum has a quick but aggravating conversation with the invisible helper who refuses to show themselves, instead just… placing notes in her pocket without her noticing. Worried about the fact that this stranger has managed to avoid detection despite all this, she heads out to the same building roof they used in the previous day. There they examine the body Rider stole: closer to a golem than a homunculus, the creature is just a mass of meat devoid of bones or internal organs, covered by a skin entirely composed of artificial magical circuits with the sole purpose of imitating someone’s appearance.
For the first time, Volumnia checks The Great Cryptids of America 3 on her flip-phone in search of something that fits Brevig’s foundation.
An article about skinwalkers calls her attention, describing a collection of legends that could very well have been co-opted by the Grottwader magecraft. Putting insensitivities against native american culture aside and tired of the obtuse directions this war keeps pulling them towards, they head to the outskirts of the city to try and break the ‘barrier’ once again.
Without much to keep them from doing it, the due keeps triggering the barrier again and again in the hopes that they’ll figure something out, and Rider in fact does. This is not a bounded field, which means someone is activating the spell manually, which in turn, means they are watching from somewhere.
Rider instructed her Master to just keep walking in circles on the limits of town, a plan that is not kind to Volumnia’s physical disposition but soon enough gets results: just not the one they were hoping for.
Without warning, the bullet hits Volumnia on the shoulder. Rather than something out of a regular gun, the bullet that is more akin to a needle immediately activated some kind of magecraft, attempting to take control of her Magic Circuits.
Innumerable processes are initiated by the malicious mystic malware carried by the needle, overwhelming her body’s processing power to the point she becomes completely paralyzed, barely being able to think or feel.
Rider throws Volumnia over her back and presses her against the emerald protrusions jutting out of her own spine. The connection between the two is intensified tenfold as Dorothy takes much of the burden into her own body and gives Volumnia enough momentary consciousness to try something: from within Dorothy's arms, Volumnia raises her cane. "Bewegende Erdreich: ! Dust to Dust SHTAUB ZU SHTAUB
With a gust of wind strong enough to be confused for a jet engine’s flames, Rider leaps from the ground, zig-zagging into the sky, dodging bullets as she’s taken by her Silver Slipper Sky in the direction of the shooter.
Fast and faster, she sees the sniper’s hiding place: the head of Wall Drug’s 80 ft Dinosaur. Shifting her position mid-air and she approached, her right foot impacts against the head in a devastating Rider kick that completely destroys the skull of the road attraction and launches the enemy Master out of it.
The Master doesn’t waste time and desperately calls for his Servant, a white haired cat girl, who materializes not far from there, running to catch him.
The enemy Master uses his magecraft, drawing a red line in the air and suddenly swapping places with the duo, who had already landed. In a moment, he’s there safe on the ground while they are the ones falling towards it.
Volumnia takes advantage of it, using her Expression of Will to give Rider a headstart, swinging her back in his direction. Dorothy is ready to dish out another kick to devastating effect, but is blocked by the mysterious Thunder Horse, whose camouflage shatters as it defends his Rider, revealing a massive white dragon.
They are fighting Rider Dobrynya Nikitich.
Rider manages to hold her own against the mystical beast and its lady, but the enemy’s Symmetry Magecraft keeps swapping their places, saving his Servants from multiple critical movies and immobilizations.
Our pair of protagonists throws dinosaur-statue debris towards the enemies to confuse them, eventually resulting in Volumnia using her Assertion Magecraft to grab onto the entire headless neck of the sauropod, dropping it onto the enemies like a massive bat.
It works, Dobrynya kicks her Master away to safety, but her and the dragon are pinned down, a massive opening… that doesn’t last. The enemy Rider kicks out the statue’s neck and grabs onto it to use it as a bat herself, swinging from the right towards the two of them.
At the same time, her Master shoots towards nothing, but the bullet creates a red line in the air and suddenly it’s like two Dobrynyas are swinging from opposite sides.
Volumnia tries to blow up both of the improvised weapons at once, but fails, and her and Rider are sent rolling through the ground with the hit, Volumnia flying so far that she hits the limits of the town and has her position promptly swapped, throwing her once again in the opposite direction.
Dobrynya doesn't let up and mounts her dragon again to descend upon the recuperating Dorothy in a devastating hit, but our Master takes inspiration from their enemy and activates her Commanding Spell to propel Rider upwards, essentially swapping both Riders' places as Dorothy descends with a kick strong enough to end this battle right then and there.
However, the enemy master was prepared. He once again shoots the red-streaking bullet between the two Riders, swapping them once again and allowing Dobrynya and her dragon to crush Dorothy under the weight of her own attack.
Brones break and veins burst as Dorothy is crushed into the ground and Dobrynya prepares herself to deal the finishing blow.
But her master stops her, they 'still need to kill Brevig' and 'someone has to deal with Rute'.
'Don't y-you try t-to... don't you try to leave this town before you deal with your teammate, okay?' the enemy master pathetically yells out before being dragged away by his Servant, leaving the two to wallow in their defeat.
"What do you mean the first enemy has three break bars?", colorized
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