Edge of Meadow, Southern Forest, Town Outskirts
Slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep Rostam seemed to become aware of the small homunculus who was apologising to him. He blinked a few times, his eyes focusing on her at last as the last of his chuckles subsided.
He tried to speak, but produced only an incomprehensible gurgling noise until, clearing his throat, he spat out a huge quantity of blood and began again.
"So... I still live." The voice of Rostam was a slow sonorous baritone that seemed to come from somewhere under the earth.
"Forgive me my lady, I was... greatly distracted until now. I am Rostam, Servant of the Rider class." He shifted against the tree trunk he had been braced against, his tremendous weight causing the tree to shudder and sway. He looked down on himself for the first time, inspecting his slowly healing injury with fascination, before wiping the blood from his beard with the back of his hand as best as he was able.
"Do not blame yourself for the attack. It was not the dart of any enemy which struck me down, but the judgment of Ohrmazd. It would have fallen on me even were I sealed in a vault of adamant."Rostam turned his eyes up to the stars, looking weary and pained, but still happy for all that.
"I must apologise again however, my lady. I cannot help you achieve the Grail I'm afraid, for I no longer have any use for it. Through the perfect workings of Asha, my wish has been granted without even having to lift a finger."
The Scuttle, docked in the Fuyuki harbor.
Alex had never paid much attention to mythology as a boy, and had looked into it even less as an adult. Beyond those figures which have become directly correlated with the zodiac and Astrology as a whole, his knowledge trailed off sharply. For him, the summoning of this peculiar familiar had been simply part of the ritual. That what he was calling up had once been a famous hero was something that had come to him only as a footnote in his hasty research on the topic of the ritual which his cards had insisted he participate. In short, Alex was one of the last people who might be expected to marvel over, or understand the history behind the abilities of a Servant.
But even for such a man the claims of Archer now gave him pause. He had before been half impressed, half wary of this strange inhuman man who radiated prana so powerfully. Now though as Archer made his claims of having contended with a god of the sea, his legacy suggested itself to him for the first time.
The idea of having summoned a legendary mariner from some bygone age, one who had contended with the ancient spiritual masters of the sea themselves now occurred to him, and he felt a quiet twinge of awe.
"Good, that's... good. If we can harass the enemy untill they are forced to come looking for us, then they will eventually converge on this spot, at which point we can sail away leaving them facing each other. If we play our cards right we may be able to bait them into killing eachother."He reached into his pocket, drawing forth a map of the city, and pointed to the bridge in the center of town, the station front to the east, and the shopping district.
"Ideally I plan to set up listening posts for you here, here and here. With a bounded field around each one in a high location this should give you nearly full command of the town and river."He checked his watch, frowning at the time. The night was still young, but even so, he was latter to the party than he hoped to be.
"For tonight though, we need to accomplish a specific task. The church here," He tapped the far south east corner of the map.
"is the home of the moderators of this ritual. We will need to report in to them to let them know of our existence before we are declared outlaws. I would prefer not to move about openly at night like this, but it is still early. I guess we had better get going."
@Cu Chulainn @Holy Grail