[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/271031448755109888/452429537993818112/AchBanner.png[/img]
[h2]’Lancer Prime’[/h2]
[h2]Church Outskirts, Site of the Spear, Shinto[/h2][/center]

The replacement was swung. Another skeleton fell.

He was a comet, quick and raging and perhaps beautiful in a sense. All who approached were struck down, all who tried to retreat were cut down. 

But there was no excitement to be found here. For one, his enemies were not the sort he could have fun with regardless, and the situation was not a fun one either. Anger had given place to grief, rage had given place to mourning.

The spear was a part of it, but at the same time, he mourned for much more. For the memories it held, for what it symbolized, for the incalculable value it possessed, for the friend he had lost, for the friend he had not even been able to speak to, for the irony that the fastest hero was once again [i]too slow[/i].

Always too slow, always a step short, always, at the most critical time. . .

The enemies were different, but this was all too similar, wasn’t it? A slain comrade without him being able to do anything, a lost treasure that only served to remind him of his failure. The faces were not the same, the names were not the same, but even so. . .

[i]Pathetic[/i]

—Heroes, it seemed, were destined to repeat their tales no matter what. To Achilles, who hated the idea of fate, the knowledge that came crashing down on him, the fact that his actions — his rage and grief — mirrored those of days long gone. . .

[i]Pathetic.[/i]

Was this all there was to it? Doomed to lose, doomed to fail those he cared about, doomed to always have precious things slip through his fingers when he could have stopped it?

Indeed, what a pathetic fate to be bound to. Was there meaning in that struggle, then?

Such were Achilles’ thoughts, though that did not stop his carnage — it had not stopped him in life to begin with. If his tale was to be repeated, at least the perpetrators would die by his hand once again, and then. . .

. . .And then, he would run forward. Even if his regrets caught up to him, even if his grief was the one thing he could not outrun, the hero Achilles would continue to run forward.

[i]”You’re being really pathetic right now, boss.”[/i]

A voice whispering at the edge of his consciousness like a half-remembered dream, almost drowned out by the grief that had at last come to swallow him.

[i]”Is this really all the hero Achilles is worth?”[/i]

His enemy was running. His spear had broken. But that did not matter.

The obstacles he had placed between them did not matter.

Without delay, he analyzed the sea of bodies between himself and Darius. Without delay, he devised a plan.

To begin with, if it was just a matter of running, no hero could oust him, no matter the skills at their disposal — after all, he was the swiftest.

To begin with, obstacles had been nothing to him in the first place.

To begin with, turning your back on him and trusting an army to stop him was a mistake—!

He jumped, and landed on a skeleton’s head, eyes transfixed not on Darius, but on a point [i]beyond[/i] the hulking Berserker, extending his arm outward.

That is right. No hero could beat him in a proper race, and regardless of obstacles, he could close the distance with the same quickness. The army of Darius was not terrifying due to its soldiers alone, but due to their nature as beings who would always get back up, as well as the ways their leader could control it. Individually, a single one would not match a Servant, even like this.

They could not keep up with Achilles if he ran properly, if he found the single instant of an opening between barrages, if he found the moment to strike.

With his arm outstretched, he ran forward, with the speed that might as well have been called teleportation. And with that same speed, avoiding the obstacles in his path he — 

[i]Hooked the enemy with that arm in a lariat, and took him on a trip far away from the army.[/i]


[@Yukitamas]