Time passed, and I turned ten.
The training I had begun at four, along with Merlin’s guidance, had not been in vain.
The body of a Pendragon, bearing the heart of a dragon, had easily surpassed the growth rate of an ordinary human.
Though I was only ten, my bones and muscles had already been tempered to rival those of most adult knights, while the Mana flowing through me had grown so immense that it felt as though I had swallowed an entire forest’s ley lines.
Even in the original story, Arthur had stopped physically aging at fifteen, yet he still stood over 180 centimeters tall and possessed the build of a sturdy knight.
At last, the time had come to put the plan I had long awaited into action.
"Are you ready, Merlin?"
In a secluded clearing deep within the forest of Tintagel, where the chill night air had settled, I addressed Merlin as she stood with the moonlight at her back.
"Of course~ How could big sister Merlin possibly sit still when our little king has been begging her so earnestly?"
Humming to herself, Merlin carefully drew something from her robes and held it out to me.
It was an impossibly soft, luxuriant fleece that shone with a dazzling golden radiance even in the dark forest.
I recognized at once the object steeped in the dense Mana of the Age of Gods.
"The legendary treasure the Argonauts acquired... the Golden Fleece."
"Correct! I practically wore the soles of my feet out getting this. Well, I did use a few little tricks and call in some favors."
Britain might still retain remnants of the Age of Gods, but retrieving a mythological treasure from Greece across the sea was a feat worthy of a great magus.
With this catalyst, I could reliably summon at least one of the three Servants.
I intended to summon a total of three Servants.
Three was the limit my magical core could support. Of course, that was assuming both the Servants and I could use our Noble Phantasms without exhausting our Mana reserves.
Without counting myself, I could perhaps manage four. But Excalibur consumed an enormous amount of Mana, after all.
Taking the Golden Fleece from Merlin, I approached the immense magic circle she had drawn on the ground beforehand.
Tonight’s summoning ritual had to proceed in absolute secrecy.
Outside the cottage, Ector was personally standing guard.
He might have grown old and retired from knighthood, but the instincts of the battlefield carved into his very bones remained as sharp as ever.
Fearing that Vortigern’s spies or magical beasts might sense the waves of Mana and approach, he stood an impenetrable watch at the edge of the forest, a heavy greatsword in hand.
"Yaaawn... Arthur, do we really have to do this in the middle of the night? I’m sleepy enough to die."
"Then go inside and sleep, Kay! I’m going to watch Arthur use magecraft with my own eyes!"
A short distance from the magic circle, Kay and Artoria sat side by side on a tree stump, both in pajamas with shawls wrapped around their shoulders.
Unlike Kay, who kept yawning wide enough to split his face, Artoria’s emerald eyes sparkled as she watched my every movement with reverence.
With my precious little sister cheering me on, a smile naturally rose to my lips, and my spirits soared.
"Watch closely, Artoria. Your brother is about to call forth some incredible people who will protect our family."
I drew a deep breath and began warming up the Dragon Heart within my body.
The summoning circle Merlin had drawn differed fundamentally from the one used in an ordinary Holy Grail War.
It was a special multilayered summoning circle: three independent circles interlocked like gears within one great circle.
"All right, Arthur. Place the Golden Fleece only in the circle on the left. I’ve twisted the flow of the ley lines, so the catalyst’s influence will be confined to that one spot. The other two will be answered solely by Heroic Spirits drawn by your immense Mana and your fate."
Following Merlin’s instructions, I carefully placed the Golden Fleece at the center of the left-hand circle.
I was summoning three Servants at once. It was madness that would turn even a first-rate magus into a dried corpse from Mana depletion, but the dragon’s Mana boiling within me could handle it with room to spare.
Standing at the center of the magic circle, I extended my right hand.
I closed my eyes and opened the magical circuits within my body. A dense heat exploded from around my heart and spread through my entire body.
The chant that slipped past my lips weighed heavily upon the still air of the forest.
"Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill. Let each repetition be fivefold. Simply shatter when filled. Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the Archduke of Contracts be the foundation. Let our ancestor, the Queen of Victory, be the progenitor. Let a wall stand against the descending wind. Let the four gates close, and let the three paths that emerge from the crown and lead to the kingdom revolve."
Hummm!
"Your body shall be under me, and my fate shall be at your sword. If you heed the guidance of Britain, then answer to this will and this reason."
Blue Mana began to spread along the magic circle like veins.
The fallen leaves carpeting the ground rose into the air as if caught in a whirlwind, and Kay and Artoria, who had been watching, covered their faces with their arms in surprise.
"Let the oath be made here. I shall be the one who accomplishes all virtue. I shall be the one who restrains all evil."
The dragon furnace within me spun fiercely, pouring vast quantities of Mana into the magic circle.
My bones and muscles tingled from the strain, but my tempered body easily endured such a burden.
"Come from the seven heavens clad in Pendragon’s words of power, O guardian of the scales, from the cycle of restraint!"
Wooooosh!!
With the end of the chant, a colossal storm of Mana swept through the clearing, as though it would tear apart Tintagel’s night sky.
Blinding flashes erupted over the three magic circles, while the Mana in the surrounding air whirled as though screaming.
The remnants of that storm-like Mana gradually scattered like mist.
And beyond that mist, three distinct silhouettes revealed themselves in all their majesty.
"..."
The first figure to catch my eye stood in the summoning circle on the left, where I had placed the Golden Fleece.
A mysterious woman in a deep violet hooded robe, with pointed ears like those of an elf.
The white skin and alluring lips visible beneath her robe drew the eye. She possessed both the dignity unique to a magus of the Age of Gods and a faintly sorrowful air.
Caster, Medea.
Just as expected, she had been summoned perfectly through the Golden Fleece.
Jason would not have been a bad result, but it seemed Medea was the obvious choice after all. She had been the princess of the kingdom that kept the Golden Fleece, after all.
My gaze immediately shifted to the summoning circles in the center and on the right.
"Are you the one who summoned me?"
There stood a female knight with a towering frame that appeared to exceed 190 centimeters, large enough to overwhelm most grown men.
Her ornaments resembled beastly horns, and her body was overwhelmingly muscular, yet she could not conceal her sensual charm or the pride shining in her eyes. She was not a knight of Proper Human History, but an anomaly from Fairy Britain.
Saber, Barghest.
"Hehe! This Ushiwakamaru has crossed the ages in answer to my lord’s summons! Now then, whose head would you have me bring you?!"
Light armor, her distinctive revealing attire, the famed blade Usumidori at her waist, and wooden sandals upon her feet—a lively young swordswoman hopped eagerly in place.
Her eyes shone with the blind devotion of a faithful hound. She was Japan’s ill-fated military genius.
Rider, Ushiwakamaru.
"..."
The moment the three Servants greeted me in their own ways, I maintained the expression of a dignified Master on the outside—but inwardly, I was in complete chaos.
Barghest was from an entirely different timeline. And Ushiwakamaru had somehow become a Heroic Spirit summoned from the future, like EMIYA.
This sort of thing usually did not happen. Maybe it was only possible because this was Britain at the end of an age?
And then there was my heart.
The heart of the Red Dragon.
The Red Dragon, and the White Dragon born alongside it. It was said that the two dragons had sprung from the same origin.
Albion.
When Albion, the first and most ancient dragon, died, the Red Dragon and White Dragon had been born—just as Chrysaor and Pegasus were born from Medusa’s corpse.
Had my heart itself acted as a catalyst?
Then shouldn’t it have been Melusine? But perhaps Barghest had appeared because she was a fervent fan of the Round Table. Or maybe Melusine was too far beyond the standard, and Barghest was the next best option.
My confusion lasted only a moment.
An irrepressible smile of joy spread across my face.
Barghest possessed overwhelming martial strength as well as the ability to support her lord.
Ushiwakamaru would ravage enemy lines with her genius tactics and mobility.
And Medea would support Britain’s barren administration and magecraft.
In a way, it was the perfect lineup.
Artoria approached cautiously with the wide-eyed look of a startled rabbit, her eyes gleaming, while Merlin too watched the Heroic Spirits with an intrigued smile.
Smiling, I spread my arms toward the three Servants.
"It’s good to meet you all. I’m Arthur Pendragon. I look forward to working with every one of you."
The wind blew fiercely, scattering the leaves of the forest.
It was the first meeting between three mighty heroines and the audacious child Master who would command them.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register